Portland Burrito Food Cart Forced to Close Due to ‘Cultural Appropriation’

The owner of a burrito food cart in Portland has been driven out of business by social justice warriors who accused the two white women who run the business of “cultural appropriation.”

Fox News:

Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly, the two white women who started Kooks earlier this year, have been accused of stealing their techniques from the “tortilla ladies” of Puerto Nuevo, Mexico — because Connelly told Willamette Week that they gathered their recipes and tortilla-making processes during a holiday road-trip to the Baja California village.

“I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever, and they showed me a little of what they did,” she told the site. “They told us the basic ingredients, and we saw them moving and stretching the dough similar to how pizza makers do before rolling it out with rolling pins.”

In another age, the two women would be praised for their ingenuity. Combining recipes and techniques is not “stealing” anything. In fact, their creation was wholly original, using the best from several cooks to develop a successful product.

Connelly then said she used a trial-and-error process to recreate a tortilla with the same flavor and texture after returning to Portland. She and Wilgus then opened their weekend pop-up inside a taco truck on SE Cesar Estrada Chavez Boulevard, and began serving their Mexican-style tortillas filled with California-inspired ingredients.

Though the eatery had been open for several months, the owners of Kooks were only recently accused of cultural appropriation by The Portland Mercury and Mic.com based on Connelly’s revelations.

“Because of Portland’s underlying racism, the people who rightly own these traditions and cultures that exist are already treated poorly,” The Portland Mercury said, calling the closure of Kooks a “victory.”

The article continues,”These appropriating businesses are erasing and exploiting their already marginalized identities for the purpose of profit and praise.”

Obviously, the SJW’s have missed the point. All of American culture is appropriated, if you define “culture” as that which is excellent in arts, letters, manners, food, etc from a region, race, or country. America has taken the best from each wave of immigrants who have come to our shores, embraced it, adopted it as “American,” and celebrated it. We do this because America is a made up country with very little “culture” that can be identified as our own.

This is the “melting pot” method of assimilation that has been completely rejected by multi-culturalists because it takes the motto of the United States to heart: “Out of many, one.” The multi-culturalists can’t stand the idea of America being one country, looking instead to Balkanize our people and split them into ethnic, racial, religious, and now sexual minorities. The charge of “cultural appropriation” is just a logical extension of their rationale – to absurd lengths, of course. But multi-culturalism has its own logic and soon, a strict racial and ethnic code will be enforced that divides America even more than it already is.