Aloha Shirts Are Not Racist
Here in Hawaii, we say: “Speak softly and wear a loud shirt.”
Speak softly and…
In Hawaii, we say speak softly and wear a loud shirt.
If your shirt is loud, you are happier. You are expressing, color, joy, lightness, and a plethora of weird objects interpreted as things to be grateful for: flowers, surf boards, palm trees, ukuleles, jalopy cars, pineapples, and hula dancers.
That our shirts have been appropriated by rich, white bros, or worse, racist Buggaloo boys, is not the fault of the thousands of people who benefit by creating, or selling aloha wear.
I read an op-ed recently that suggested Aloha shirts could be insensitive. Hey, guys/gals, it’s a shirt. It’s not a forced/abortion/police brutality/swastika flag. It’s a piece of clothing that suggests you don’t want to be a boring as a cardboard box every day of your life.
Except for Joe, of course.
Cardboard and color
We used to go to parties in the gloomy northwest.
My husband, among all the vampires, goths, emos and black draped outcasts used to attend parties with a glaring Aloha shirt that practically made the vampires sparkle with fear. Everyone thought it was the…
