Privilege & Passive Racism

I am not a food purist. I understand that changes need to be made to accommodate a local palate. And a great many of the Korean inspired fusion dishes I tried in NYC were really rather good. But they all started with authentic Korean ingredients and an actual understanding of Korean taste profiles. In short, they came from folks who could cook Korean and chose to incorporate it into something else. What we are seeing here is not that.

Demosthenes wrote:

(Bing? Reaaaaaaaaally?).

I think Jayhawker owns a Windows Phone. And probably a Zune.

Is there some sort of official SJW think tank that will vet my restaurant choices, to make sure I don't accidentally eat ethnic dishes made by white guys?

And the shame of Bing? Really?

*exits, stage left*

Jayhawker wrote:

Is there some sort of official SJW think tank that will vet my restaurant choices,

like a cabal?

Stele wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

(Bing? Reaaaaaaaaally?).

I think Jayhawker owns a Windows Phone. And probably a Zune. ;)

Had a Windows phone, but I'm on an iPhone now. Never had a Zune. Been an iPod user since the beginning.

I also have a MacBook Air and an iMac, both with Bing as my default search engine.

I just use what works for me. Don't understand the Bing shame at all. Is is it a dudebro browser? Is there a SJW or cabal approved search engine?

I believe Dogpile is the preferred cabal engine of searching.

Jayhawker wrote:

Is there some sort of official SJW think tank that will vet my restaurant choices, to make sure I don't accidentally eat ethnic dishes made by white guys?

It's pointedly not about who is making the food.

Demosthenes wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

I don't care if it passes muster with Paleo or not, this is the best food truck in St. Louis.

IMAGE(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vd5KP-G-1Uo/T8kO-YDyeqI/AAAAAAAABc0/MHiRCcfR0d0/s1600/IMG_0518.JPG)

Seoul Taco

Whatever that link is, it's not working (Bing? Reaaaaaaaaally?). Please tell me that's at least run by a Korean dude. Because their website shows a white kind of hipstery dude standing in front of a truck in a news story. Says the owner's name is Choi, but I'm worried when the only person I see in a company t-shirt appears to be a white dude.

The website seems to be a personal blog...

DanB wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Is there some sort of official SJW think tank that will vet my restaurant choices, to make sure I don't accidentally eat ethnic dishes made by white guys?

It's pointedly not about who is making the food.

Exactly.

Most of the good Korean restaurants I have been to have Mexican kitchen staff, but they KNOW HOW TO MAKE KOREAN FOOD.

Making crap fusion food and calling it Korean because you want to differentiate it and profit from the marketing is shameless exploitation of the food of my people.

Your taco truck may actually be good Korean food. I won't know until I try it, but if it isn't it's just another minstrel show.

My point of posting that food appropriation article was to flag that I see it all the time in Sydney. Korean ethnic restauranteurs operate most of the Japanese restaurants here, serving mixed Korean Thai and Japanese foods to the point consumers can't tell the culture of origin for each dish.

I don't know where it should stop. For example, banh mi is prepared by substituting the pork with chicken pretty commonly, and grated carrot which has not been pickled in sugar and vinegar. A lot of people like it that way too.

Paleocon wrote:

Making crap fusion food and calling it Korean because you want to differentiate it and profit from the marketing is shameless exploitation of the food of my people.

This is the rub. By all means make fusion food (much of which is excellent) just don't tell me to my face that the food is 'authentic X' when it isn't and doubly so don't do that if I'm of the ethnicity the food is supposed to be from.

If you'd be embarrassed to serve your green curry to a Thai person then maybe you shouldn't go around telling everyone it's authentic green curry.

Bfgp wrote:

My point of posting that food appropriation article was to flag that I see it all the time in Sydney. Korean ethnic restauranteurs operate most of the Japanese restaurants here, serving mixed Korean Thai and Japanese foods to the point consumers can't tell the culture of origin for each dish.

I'm surprised to read this because my (admittedly limited) experience of Australians and Australia was that they are usually pretty on top of SE Asian cuisine.

DanB wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Is there some sort of official SJW think tank that will vet my restaurant choices, to make sure I don't accidentally eat ethnic dishes made by white guys?

It's pointedly not about who is making the food.

I was responding to this:

Demosthenes wrote:

Please tell me that's at least run by a Korean dude. Because their website shows a white kind of hipstery dude standing in front of a truck in a news story. Says the owner's name is Choi, but I'm worried when the only person I see in a company t-shirt appears to be a white dude.

All food truck parking spaces are activist spaces.

Nomad wrote:

I believe Dogpile is the preferred cabal engine of searching.

Zune - Welcome to the Social (Justice Warriors)

on a more serious note...

Bfgp wrote:

My point of posting that food appropriation article was to flag that I see it all the time in Sydney. Korean ethnic restauranteurs operate most of the Japanese restaurants here, serving mixed Korean Thai and Japanese foods to the point consumers can't tell the culture of origin for each dish.

That's what makes the subject so complex--is that cultural appropriation, or unofficial reparations?

I wonder if it's the kind of subject where the answers are less important than the process of asking these kinds of questions itself.

Jayhawker wrote:

Is there some sort of official SJW think tank that will vet my restaurant choices, to make sure I don't accidentally eat ethnic dishes made by white guys?

Btw, I don't think it was ever about the consumer... it's about the unethical practices of the restaurant owners. So no blame to you as a consumer.

I mean, if people ARE blaming you as a consumer that kinda moves away from the 'cultural appropriation' discussion and into old people shaking their fist as the community as a whole moves to different food preferences.

I actually owned a Zune! I consider the iPod vastly inferior to my Zune.

That said, I think there actually IS something to be said about who is making the food, but that may just be me thinking of The Search for General Tzo, which goes into a lot of history about how restaurant work is frequently one of the few options available to new immigrants who may not have the ability to work elsewhere.

DanB wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Making crap fusion food and calling it Korean because you want to differentiate it and profit from the marketing is shameless exploitation of the food of my people.

This is the rub. By all means make fusion food (much of which is excellent) just don't tell me to my face that the food is 'authentic X' when it isn't and doubly so don't do that if I'm of the ethnicity the food is supposed to be from.

If you'd be embarrassed to serve your green curry to a Thai person then maybe you shouldn't go around telling everyone it's authentic green curry.

Bfgp wrote:

My point of posting that food appropriation article was to flag that I see it all the time in Sydney. Korean ethnic restauranteurs operate most of the Japanese restaurants here, serving mixed Korean Thai and Japanese foods to the point consumers can't tell the culture of origin for each dish.

I'm surprised to read this because my (admittedly limited) experience of Australians and Australia was that they are usually pretty on top of SE Asian cuisine.

It's a mixed bag really. The growing foodie culture means there is general awareness in Australia of the different SE Asian cuisines but it doesn't help when restaurant operators blend menus to try and capture as many customers as possible or otherwise alter the food composition and attribute the original food name to capitalize on its image meaning association. It's not always a bad thing, I mean some of the best Thai noodles I've had in Sydney were served in a Korean run railway station noodle shop serving bibimbap and udon as well. The authentic restaurants however may be distinguished by the specific ethnicities which visit their store for the "real deal" and not some fusion or modern take on ethnic foods.

'Ban The Box' Laws,' Do They Help Job Applicants With Criminal Histories?

AGAN: The racial gap in callbacks by employers actually increased. White applicants were significantly more likely than black applicants to be called back. And that gap was larger than it was before the policy went into effect.

INSKEEP: Whoa, why would the disparity or the discrimination get worse?

VEDANTAM: Well, when companies were not allowed to check on the criminal histories of applicants, what they did is they fell back on their stereotypes and basically said black men are more likely to be associated with crime. So let me just reject black applicants more often or let me call white applicants more often. The net result is that white applicants as a group were advantaged. At companies that used to ask applicants about criminal history and now had to stop because of the new law, the racial gap in callbacks before the law was 7 percent. After the laws, it went up to 45 percent.

AGAN: To the extent that we want to use this policy to reduce racial inequality in hiring, it's definitely not effective.

I suppose a mitigating factor might be that black people without stereotypically black names would also be more likely to receive a callback, but that's a very thin silver lining to this cloud of racism.

One of the finest responses I've seen to 'Black Lives Matter' critique: Law Professor's Epic Response to Black Lives Matter Shirt Complaint

Here's a very interesting article by a pair of academics who have been studying perceptions of racial bias in the US. Turns out that Whites and Blacks use different benchmarks to measure racial progress in society; Blacks tend to compare it to an ideal which has not yet been reached, while Whites tend to look to the past and measure progress from there. Also, and importantly, Whites tend to consider social progress as a zero-sum equation. If your share goes up, mine goes down.

So Whites in the US, in the aggregate (and I have not doubt my fellow Baby Boomers and their parents skew this) feel that they have *lost* standing in society as Blacks have gained, and that's why so many of them actively push the (ridiculous) idea that Whites have become the subject of more racism than Blacks in the last 35 years or so.

Also, for Bekkilyn:
This is the classic hot dog bun. The reason "New England Style" (top-slicede) buns have a regional name is that they are different from the national norm.

IMAGE(http://www.inovafood.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/hot-dog-roll.jpg)

If you do a Google image search on "hot dog bun", 21 of the first 27 images are side-sliced rolls. Four are top sliced, one is cooked around the sausage, and the last one has been cored with the hot dog inserted into the end of an intact roll.

Robear wrote:

the last one has been cored with the hot dog inserted into the end of an intact roll.

That sounds awesome. I'm going to try it.

Stele wrote:
Robear wrote:

the last one has been cored with the hot dog inserted into the end of an intact roll.

That sounds awesome. I'm going to try it.

If you find yourself in the Raleigh area during food truck rodeos, try the sandwiches at Baguetteaboutit

I've probably posted this before, but it bears repeating: instead of feeling guilty and defensive about your White Privilege, use your powers for good.

Where The Atlantic goes to town on Portland.

“I think that Portland has, in many ways, perfected neoliberal racism,” Walidah Imarisha, an African American educator and expert on black history in Oregon, told me. Yes, the city is politically progressive, she said, but its government has facilitated the dominance of whites in business, housing, and culture. And white-supremacist sentiment is not uncommon in the state. Imarisha travels around Oregon teaching about black history, and she says neo-Nazis and others spewing sexually explicit comments or death threats frequently protest her events.
sometimesdee wrote:

I've probably posted this before, but it bears repeating: instead of feeling guilty and defensive about your White Privilege, use your powers for good.

Lately I find myself feeling that the fine art of using one's privilege to empower the voices of others rather than speaking for, speaking over, or ___splaining is something even some of the best allies could use some more guidance on. However some feel asking the less privileged groups for this guidance is furthering the burden on those groups and seek to avoid causing that.

Well. I suppose I should be happy that a white person finally said it? Maybe I'll get less flak for it now?

Well, you know, "white people have racist tendencies."

Larry, so glad to see that you are here and still safe!

Though I don't think you'll ever be fully free from getting flak.

David Duke is running for senate. Should I kill myself now, or just wait for the inevitable lynching? Hopefully my kids can pass as white enough to be okay.