Culture

‘White Girl Asian Food’ Reaction: Cultural Appropriation Police Want to Control What People Think

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

White Girl Asian Food and Breakfast Tacos

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Identity politics zealots will not rest until they control the thoughts, as well as the behaviour, of everyone else

Taking a break from writing something more serious on the subject of identity politics (watch this space), I spent some time today amusing myself by reading some of the apoplectic reactions to the White Girl Asian Food truck in Austin, Texas.

Some of the sentiments expressed were hateful and vile, while others tended towards hand-wringing incredulity.

This blogger has trouble balancing her desire to praise a female entrepreneur with her clear uneasiness at the “cultural appropriation” at work:

On one hand, I’m glad it doesn’t claim to be authentic Asian food. According to an interview with Vice, she changed the name of the food truck from “Com Bun Yeu” to “White Girl Asian Food,” so people would stop assuming she sells authentic Vietnamese food. Her goal was to make it clear that she was “a white girl cooking [her] rendition of Asian cuisine [and she] couldn’t think of a name that was more honest and straight to the point” than “White Girl Asian Food.”

I also respect her and her family for leaving their home and living out their dreams of owning food trailers – that takes a lot of guts. It’s also amazing that she’s part of the 26% of female-owned food establishments. You go, girl.

But, on the other hand, I’m irritated that she combines the bare bones of a few cuisines and shuffles them under the umbrella of Asian food. There will be people who eat at this food truck and assume this is what Asian food is all about when this is a false representation of an extraordinarily broad cuisine.

At the end of the day, I think the food truck should stay if it receives a large helping of cultural humility. But changing its name (again), in English and Vietnamese, to better represent the food served would be a great next step.

This is certainly one of the more measured responses, but still it reveals everything which is ultimately wrong (and doomed to create more problems than it solves) about the broader identity politics movement.

At one point, the author – Jocelyn Hsu from UC Berkeley – frets that “there will be people who eat at this food truck and assume this is what Asian food is all about.”

So what? Every day there are people who eat at places like Wagamama or P.F. Chang’s and lazily believe that they are having an authentic culinary experience. They happen to be wrong (not that there is anything wrong with P.F. Chang’s – I would pay good money if they opened a restaurant here in London), but their misapprehension in no way impacts on anybody else.

At most, one could argue that by splashing around in the paddling pool of more Westernised interpretations of Asian cuisine they are denying themselves the opportunity to experience the authentic food of another culture. But even if this is so, the cultural appropriation police are still light years away from establishing a link between one person’s ignorance and another person’s harm.

In his epic debates against the religiously inclined, the late Christopher Hitchens would often say that even accepting the deist view that there is a God, the faithful still have all their work ahead of them in order to prove that God has indeed revealed himself to mankind, and that certain chosen people have been favoured with knowledge of God’s nature and detailed commandments for how we should live our lives. Similarly, even accepting the idea that cultural ignorance harms the culturally ignorant, the identity politics cultists of today still have all their work ahead of them to prove that a white American’s assumption that chop suey is a commonly eaten dish in China in any way harms Chinese or Asian American people.

Unless, that is, one believes that minority groups can be harmed by even the unexpressed thoughts and beliefs of another person. If you believe that it is possible to inflict grave harm merely by misunderstanding the cultural history and “lived experience” of another identity group in your own head, then the anger and paranoia start to make more sense.

And of course this is exactly what the cultural appropriation protesters do believe. To them, it is not enough for other people to think their own private thoughts unmolested, facing criticism only when they commit an act of overt prejudice. Rather, all unknowing heretics must be badgered into thinking the “correct” thing, even if they were not themselves spreading misinformation.

By applying this extremely high standard for cultural awareness, minority groups will not stop incurring real harm until every last septuagenarian in Des Moines understands that the Panda Express drive-thru they visit every Thursday lunchtime is in fact not typical Szechuan cuisine.

There may be an academic term to describe this frantic need to control and tweak the thoughts of other people, though I have not yet come across such a phrase in my reading of Haidt, Haslam, Campbell or Manning.

But I would call it a plain old inferiority complex – and a quite unnecessary one at that, for every cuisine and culture possesses its own inherent value, cannot be “invalidated” by the ignorance or even derision of others, and does not require the full understanding and approval of white America in order to exist.

There should be room on this Earth (and in America) for the White Girl Asian Food truck and authentic Asian cuisines to peacefully coexist. Ironically, the only ones arguing otherwise are the people who march under the banner of tolerance.

 

White Girl Asian Food - Oppression

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Top Image: Scoopnest

Bottom Image: FirstWeFeast.com

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Stephen Fry Commits Egregious Act Of ‘Victim-Blaming’, Torpedoes Own Career

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

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‘Victim-blaming’ the survivors of sexual abuse by daring to suggest that safe spaces and trigger warnings are not the best response? Stephen Fry clearly has a career death wish

Never one to avoid controversy, while giving an interview to American media Stephen Fry decided to share his thoughts on a number of subjects – including the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, the general infantilisation of our culture and (really pushing his luck given the current climate) the demands of some students to slap trigger warnings on works of art and academic materials which include discussion of rape or sexual abuse.

Naturally, this went down tremendously well with Safe Space apologists, who all immediately saw the light and took to Twitter praising Fry for introducing a note of levity into their carefully constructed  culture of victimhood.

The Independent reports:

Stephen Fry has been criticised for suggesting sexual abuse survivors should not “pity” themselves.

Fry made the comments when airing his views on free speech, religion and political correctness while appearing on US show The Rubin Report.

Speaking to host Dave Rubin, he discussed the practice of safe spaces and trigger warnings, including those that are used for plays and books which contain scenes of rape or abuse and can possibly set off traumatic memories and flashbacks for survivors of rape or abuse. They are sometimes used on university campuses.

He said: “There are many great plays which contain rapes, and the word rape is now even considered a rape. […] They’re terrible things and they have to be thought about, clearly but if you say you can’t watch this play […] it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once because uncle touched you in a nasty place.

“Well I’m sorry yes it’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that uncle touched you in that nasty place. You get some of my sympathy but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity.

“Get rid of it because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is we’ll feel sorry for you if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Grow up.”

Stephen Fry can currently be found being roasted alive by the permanently outraged, virtue-signalling Twitterati for daring to promote the sacrilegious concepts of resilience and antifragility, and – if the mob get their way – will be found next year as the “featured guest” presenting a QI knockoff show on a cheap Caribbean cruise.

Well, it was a good career while it lasted.

Grovelling apology and recanting of previous remarks in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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The Furore Over David Cameron’s Tax Affairs Reveals Britain At Its Worst

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

David Cameron Tax Protest - Panama Papers

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Responsibly lowering his tax liability through perfectly legal means is one of the few things that David Cameron has accomplished with any real competence. If only his stewardship of British sovereignty and democracy was half as accomplished, his premiership might not be such a letdown

No, I’m not going to write about David Cameron’s tax return, because despite the sound and fury emanating from the Paul Mason, “neo-liberalism” hating Left, it is a complete non-story.

That much is outlined well enough here, here, here and here.

This blog is more than happy to discuss tax reform – preferably of the fundamental and flattening kind – but not through the lens of our national envy and hatred of wealth and success. Because this tawdry intermission in our political conversation serves only to highlight all of the flawed parts of our national psyche – particularly the disdain bordering on hatred many people feel toward wealth and success – while fading out everything that makes us great.

Of course there are privileged people in this country with wealth and resources that the poorest among us can only dream about. But every moment we waste casting envious eyes at those with more than us, bemoaning our own lot in life and viewing ourselves as part of a vast Collective of the Oppressed and Hard Done By is a moment we are not accepting the agency and responsibility we have for our own lives and decisions.

Should we be outraged that the legal, private tax affairs of an elected politician somehow set a bad example? Okay – but only if we are really willing to go down a path that ultimately will lead to witch-hunts of anybody who fails to “voluntarily” donate 90% of their income to Our Blessed NHS (genuflect).

Bear in mind, many of those shouting the loudest themselves are guilty of the same (or worse) behaviour, cynically (and hypocritically) attempting to use this story to advance their political agenda. And in terms of Cameron’s mishandling of the media story, are we really going to focus on this one particular instance and not the many other clangers? I could write a blog post every day for a year about why David Cameron is a lousy conservative and a disappointing prime minister, and still not get around to talking about his family’s mundane tax affairs.

So if you want to read a furious polemic about the Evil Tories and their inherited wealth, look elsewhere – Owen Jones and Paul Mason will take good care of you. Likewise if you want to read a simpering, fawning defence of the prime minister.

Our country faces an existential choice in the coming EU referendum while the liberal, enlightenment values which we supposedly hold dear are under attack everywhere from GCHQ to social media to the university campus.

And so long as that remains the case, this blog will focus on the things that matter, not the shiny distractions which only serve to reveal our petty biases and jealousies.

 

Panama Papers - Mossack Fonseca - Tax Avoidance Evasion

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Top Image: Newsweek

Bottom Image: BBC

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Cultural Appropriation Hysteria – NPR Earnestly Debates The Merits Of Culinary Segregation

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

White Girl Asian Food - Cultural Appropriation

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Put the chopsticks down and step away from the rice bowl, Timmy!

While our universities become increasingly unrecognisable places where academic freedom is curtailed and human behaviour restricted in the name of identity politics, NPR is fretting about people of one race and culture having the audacity to cook the cuisine of another:

Recently, we started a conversation about food and race. Specifically, we wondered out loud, who gets to cook — and become the face of — a culture’s cuisine?

[..] As with many things involving race and class in America, there are no easy answers — and we’re not expecting to find any clear-cut ones. We’re more interested in starting a conversation.

Here’s some of what we heard from you.

On one hand, many of you pointed out that cooking the cuisine of other cultures is a tangible way to connect. That’s part of what makes America a literal as well as figurative melting pot.

[..] At its heart, food is about identity — about where we came from — which is why the topic of cuisine and who cooks it can be so personal and complicated for some.

[..] Many of you stressed the importance of approaching the cuisine of others with respect. And that means highlighting not just the ingredients, but also the culture behind a dish.

Read the whole thing. The article is littered with numerous examples of narcissistic, self-obsessed, virtue-signalling statements sent in by NPR readers and listeners, each competing with one another to be the most enlightened, compassionate warrior fighting for those poor people whose very identity is being erased by the likes of Panda Express and Chipotle.

The upshot seems to be that a plurality of NPR listeners will very graciously allow us to continue cooking the food of other cultures, as long as we do so with sufficient respect and reverence for the culture from which we are borrowing.

But don’t you dare seek to make a profit on the back of a cuisine which is not identified with your personal ethnic background, because that is clearly a step too far:

Some of you said what’s bothersome isn’t so much whether a person of one race or ethnicity is cooking the food of another culture. That can be done respectfully. The question, then, is more about opportunity — who has a chance to profit from making a cuisine?

The idea that the value of something should be determined by the consumer rather than some prissy Identity Politics oppression-based algorithm seems anathema to Twitter user Chandra Ram and a number of other NPR followers.

How long, then, until some virtue-signalling  Identity Politics cultist proposes a system of “culinary reparations”, whereby restaurants are entitled to serve the modified cuisine of marginalised cultures only if they pay a some kind of tax on their revenue, to be distributed equally among everyone who can prove membership of the “injured” ethnic group?

And if you think something so ludicrous would never happen, just wait until the current crop of students passing through university have graduated, entered the job market and worked their way into our political system.

That’s the hipster food truck industry in London decimated, for a start.

 

Postscript: One of the best responses to the attempt by Identity Politics cultists to re-segregate our cuisines along ethnic lines comes from this Reddit user:

Cultural Appropriation - Food

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Top Image: Vice

Bottom Image: Reddit User

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 25 – Student Action Alone Cannot Halt The Growth Of Safe Spaces And Censorship

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

St Olaf College Protest - Safe Space Policy

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Students are leading the fightback against campus illiberalism and the Identity Politics takeover with almost no support from professors and university administrators. No wonder they are having limited success

As this blog noted last week in a worrying development, even some of those students who are now making the news for opposing the most authoritarian clampdowns on free speech on their campuses turn out to support the idea of safe spaces, trigger warnings and No Platforming in principle. In other words, their problem is not with censorship per se, but merely a quibble over its overenthusiastic application.

Latest case in point, this student from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, who ruined a perfectly good protest about campus speech codes and draconian restrictions on free speech by conceding the broader point about the necessity of Safe Spaces.

From the Manitou Messenger:

On March 29, subscribers to St. Olaf Extra received an email from Anders Wahlberg ’17 in which he expressed his frustrations with St. Olaf ’s “incredibly broad and overreaching” policies regarding speech on campus and “the ridiculous concept of safe spaces.” Wahlberg closed the email with a call to other students who feel similarly to join his student organization, which “will offend people” and “will violate the sanctity of St. Olaf’s safe spaces.”

Within days of the email being sent out, Nikki Lewis ’18, Udeepta Chakravarty ’17 and Cynthia Zapata ’16 organized a rally in response. The rally was held in the quad on April 1 during chapel time and drew many students despite the cold temperatures. Both the organizers and representatives from safe spaces on campus spoke to the crowd.

“It’s always very hard when marginalized students on campus are trying so hard to make it clear that there’s issues at St. Olaf, and then emails like that go out,” Lewis said, “with so little regard to the fact that a lot of students on campus are subjected to hate speech and sometimes even hate crimes on this campus. So just sending out an email like that, what are you thinking?”

[..] Wahlberg’s email indicated that it wasn’t that safe spaces should be attacked, but that the mentality of safe spaces has not been contained in those safe spaces.

“By all means there should be safe spaces on campus. But making the entire campus a safe space is a threat to academic discussion and places people’s feelings above free speech. I don’t think there is a single issue that is ‘above debate.’ Classrooms, above all else, should not be safe spaces,” Wahlberg said.

In other words, limit free speech and infantilise students as much as you like on campus as a whole, just don’t do it within the classroom.

We should, perhaps, see the positive side in this. At least the student, Anders Wahlberg, appears to be motivated out of a strong and genuine concern for academic freedom. But tolerating any kind of exclusionary safe space where speech is restricted is inevitably the thin end of the wedge – conceding the principle of safe spaces means that the fight for free speech will ultimately be fought at the threshold of our own liberty.

Of course, one does not know the full extent to which potentially enormous social pressures force students to moderate or in some instances completely suppress their criticism of draconian speech codes, No Platform policies and other infantilising measures. It could be that Wahlberg would like to do away with Safe Spaces altogether, but knows that he would face total social ostracisation to the extent that speaking out fully is impossible.

And if so, who can really blame him? With very few honourable exceptions, most university administrations are running terrified of their student populations, falling over themselves to apologise and grant perks and concessions for the supposed injustices committed on their watch, almost before the Stepford Students themselves have had time to get into full outrage mode.

If I were a student today I like to think that I would take a vociferous, absolutist stance on free speech – but I would be under no illusion that the university hierarchy would have my back.

Cowardly concession after cowardly concession has shown that in a desperate final attempt at appeasement, many university administrations are happy to throw their allied supporters of academic freedom and free speech under the bus to buy a few more months of peace and quiet from their restive student populations.

It is always heartening to see students push back against attempts to infantilise them and limit their freedoms. But we are kidding ourselves if we believe that years of accumulated authoritarian and censorious policies can be overturned without the active participation of the academic establishment – dragged out kicking and screaming in support of academic freedom, if necessary.

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Top Image: Manitou Messenger

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