Once again the Leisure Fascists™ are accusing those who admire and adopt aspects of foreign culture of the sin of “cultural appropriation.” (I use the word “sin” deliberately, for these ideologues behave much like theists.) Such people don’t seem to grasp the distinction between “appropriation” and “appreciation,” producing articles that could have appeared in The Onion. And this time it involves something dear to my heart: food!
In an Onion-esque article at Everyday Feminism called “The Feminist guide to being a foodie without being culturally appropriative“, writer Rachel Kuo is offended that Americans are appropriating not only her cuisine, but foreign cuisine in general—in particular the cuisine of minorities who aren’t white.
Here’s the first of six things Kuo scolds us about. In this whole post, Kuo’s words are indented and the headings and emphases are hers.
a. Don’t go for “fusion foods”: culturally appropriative!
Mainstream media has made a spectacle out of foods from seemingly exotic places.
I’ve also observed a lot of White chefs create “Asian-inspired” dishes. When going out to eat, I notice many “Asian-fusion” themed restaurants where chefs combine all the countries and flavors in the vast and diverse continent of Asia and throw them together on both plate and menu.
What is “Asian inspired” or “Asian-fusion?” I have a sinking suspicion it’s not like when my mom made me sushi with cucumbers, lunch meat, and eggs growing up. Or toast with mayonnaise and pork sung. People used to make fun of the food I eat, and now suddenly, stuff like spam fried rice is selling at a hip new restaurant for $16.
It’s frustrating when my culture gets consumed and appropriated as both trend and tourism.
Cry me a river! Some of the best cuisine has resulted from taking influences from diverse sources. Last night, for instance, I made chicken and rice, but put hoisin sauce, a Chinese condiment, on the chicken. That was my fusion food, and it was good. I was certainly appropriating Chinese cuisine, but was I being exploitative or somehow denigrating the Chinese, or ignoring their plights? No way! Kuo’s rationale is itself Fusion Argumentation, combining postmodernist discourse and Offense Culture:
Cultural appropriation is when members of a dominant culture adopt parts of another culture from people that they’ve also systematically oppressed. The dominant culture can try the food and love the food without ever having to experience oppression because of their consumption.
With food, it isn’t just eating food from someone else’s culture. It might not be appropriation if you’re White and you love eating dumplings and hand pulled noodles. Enjoying food from another culture is perfectly fine.
But, food is appropriated when people from the dominant culture – in the case of the US, white folks – start to fetishize or commercialize it, and when they hoard access to that particular food.
When a dominant culture reduces another community to it’s cuisine, subsumes histories and stories into menu items – when people think culture can seemingly be understood with a bite of food, that’s where it gets problematic.
Leaving aside the superfluous apostrophe (do they have editors at that site?), who on earth pretends that they can understand a culture by eating its food? And what does Kuo mean by “fetishizing or commercializing” food? Does that mean selling it? Does “fetishizing” mean, as I do, loving Chinese and Indian food and eating it frequently? One gets the impression that Kuo has no idea what she’s talking about, but something has offended her and she has to express her hurt.
Kuo then gives us a list of five other no-nos when it comes to food.
b. Seeking “authentic” or “exotic” “ethnic” food.
Often, when we talk about “ethnic” food, we’re not referring to French, German, or Italian cuisine, and definitely not those Ikea Swedish meatballs.
Usually, we re talking about Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Ethiopian, and Mexican food –places where food is cooked by the “brownest” people.
While food can connect people together and also serve as a way to learn about cultures other than our own, what happens is that food becomes the only identifier for certain places. Japan reduced to ramen and sushi, Mexico reduced to tacos and burritos, India reduced to curry, and so on.
Entire regions become deduced to menu options and ingredients without any thought to the many different communities in these places. There’s a loss of complexity and cultures end up getting homogenized.
. . . In seeking “authentic” food, we’re hoping for a truly immersive experience into another culture.
I reject this categorically. Yes, food from cultures far removed from ours is often worth seeking out because it’s not our everyday fare, and mainly because it’s good. It’s not an immersion experience, it’s a good meal, for crying out loud! And as for looking for “authenticity”, there’s a perfectly good reason: “ethnic food” is often de-spiced, de-complexified, or sauced to death to satisfy the untutored American palate; while on its home ground, cuisines like Chinese, Indian (or, for that matter, French) have been perfected for centuries. All too often Chinese food in American restaurants is drowned in a gloppy sauce, or has added sugar (as in the dreadful “sweet and sour” concoctions) to cover up its essential blandness. The fact is that “authentic” ethnic food is often BETTER ethnic food, and that’s the reason I go to only a few Chinese restaurants in Chicago. (Because good Chinese restaurants are so rare, I cook it more often at home, having taken classes as a grad student and then cooked Szechuan food for 35 years).
c. Having your friend of color be your food expert.
Some friends have expected me to know where to get ramen, “real” Chinese food, “street-style” Thai food, Korean BBQ – and they’re disappointed when I don’t know. These are also the friends that once made fun of my food.
Don’t constantly treat your friend of color as your food tour guide. We’re happy eating our cultural foods with you, but that’s not what our entire friendship should be about.
Yes, of course it’s exploitation to use a friend only for food advice, but who does that? I tell you, though: I’ve discovered the best Chinese restaurants in Chicago by asking my Chinese-born colleagues where they like to eat. That’s not the entirety of our relationship, of course, but who would know better where to get good Chinese food than an expatriate homesick for their land? How many friendships between American and foreigners consist solely of the American using the foreigner to find good places to eat?
d. Wanting adventure points for eating food.
When people think they’re being adventurous for trying food from another culture, it’s the same thing as treating that food as bizarre or weird.
The person outside of the culture becomes the person with “insider” knowledge about this exotic, other culture. The theme of “Westerner as cultural connoisseur” is rooted in imperialist ideas about discovering another culture and then making oneself the main character in the exchange. “I was transformed by my trip to [fill in the blank].”
Some folks want to be applauded for trying chicken feet, fermented bean curd, or just for eating with chopsticks. It’s disconcerting to eat with folks who are going to giggle about ingredients make comments like, “Oh my god, this is so weird! This is gross!” and run back to tell all their other friends about trying it and how “awesome” that experience was.
. . . By making a big deal out of someone’s culture and food, it reminds them that they’re [sic; where’s the editor?] culture is abnormal and doesn’t quite belong in this world.
I remember the first time I tried chicken feet. They were served at dim sum, and cooked in soy sauce and ginger. I loved them: the texture was unusual and the meat tasty. I didn’t expect to be praised for doing that: I wanted to see why so many Chinese people were eating them. Many people bridle at the thought of such a dish, and I won’t criticize them for it. But nor do I criticize people who try “weird” foods and wind up liking them and being pleased about that. That is indeed being adventurous, and being rewarded for being adventurous. So yes, maybe we should urge people to be adventurous when trying new foods. I don’t see that as implying in any way that such food “doesn’t belong in this world”.
e. Loving the food, not the people.
When food gets disconnected from the communities and places its from, people can easily start forgetting and ignoring historical and ongoing oppression faced by those communities.
America has corporatized “Middle Eastern food” like hummus and falafel, and some people might live by halal food carts, but not understand or address the ongoing Islamophobia in the US.
Folks might love Mexican food, but not care about different issues such as labor equity and immigration policy that impact members from that community.
I don’t think eating hummus makes us forget the tumult or injustices in the Middle East. It may in fact remind us of them, but I again reject the notion that seeking out the good parts of a culture somehow inures us to the bad or hurtful parts, or the oppression experienced by its members. Does Kuo really think that we should harangue someone who buys a taco because it makes them forget the poverty of many Mexicans? By all means we should be aware of this issue, and of the plight of immigrant labor, but that’s not going to stop me from eating Mexican food, appreciating Mexican writers, or loving the paintings of Frida Kahlo. For if we eat a taco without thinking of labor equity, then it’s equally bad to appreciate literature, art, music, and clothing without thinking of labor equity.
f. Profiting from oppression.
More and more now, part of chefs’ culinary training also involves travel in order to learn about different cooking techniques and ingredients, and they’re opening up fancy restaurants that repurpose “cheap” eats from working class and poor communities that rely on affordable, local products and ingredients.
Food culture gets re-colonized by chefs seeking to make that “authentic” street food they tried more elegant. Often, these restaurants are inaccessible to the communities they’re appropriating from.
This is different from when members from that community repurpose their own traditional foods.
This is food gentrification, where communities can no longer afford their own cuisines and sustain their traditions.
Chicago is one of the best eating towns in the U.S., especially when it comes to foreign food. We have huge Indian, Thai, Asian, Hispanic, and Polish communities (not to mention non-“foreign” African-American communities) all with a panoply of good restaurants. And those restaurants are full of the locals. In what respect has “food gentrification” made these people unable to afford their own food? Yes, Rick Bayless has opened a high-end, expensive Mexican restaurant, Topolobampo, where I’ve been twice (I didn’t much care for it: give me a good meal of goat in a cheap birreria!). And I don’t see any group having a problem “sustaining its traditions” because there are some high-end “ethnic” restaurants. What Kuo has created here is a non-problem.
I’m looking very hard to see if there are any valid points in Kuo’s entire article, but, try as I might, I can’t. Her point seems to be that if you eat the cuisine of oppressed minorities, you’re helping oppress them, or at least are skimming the cream of their culture and forgetting the oppression. But I don’t think that’s true. Eating a taco doesn’t make you any less cognizant of the problems of Mexican immigrants than if you eschewed that taco. Indeed, patronizing “ethnic” restaurants is a way of supporting the local culture, helping perpetuate culinary traditions, and physically interacting with the locals who are also out to eat their own food. I can’t see a downside.
Why do I spend so much time on such a journalistic trifle? Because Kuo’s article is the harbinger of a generation who wants us to keep our hands off the things we like about foreign cultures, and the trend is growing quickly. Yet what she wants us to forego is the very basis of America’s “melting pot” ethos, which forged a hybrid nation with a hybrid culture. So I’ll continue to eat the local barbecue (a black cuisine), Chinese food, Indian food, and Mexican food, and I and my tummy will give thanks to the people who created these delights.
