Would it have been offensive if the Rod Allen had said, “Man, we sure have a lot of Latino’s on our team now.”?
Jon Stewart had this whole thing a few weeks ago about Palin and Trump eating pizza that delved into Italian stereotypes about food, replete with over the top Italian American accent. I should have been horribly offended.
Instead, I laughed my ass off, and saved it on the Tivo to show it to my wife later.
I don’t know why certain ethnicities have no problem with this, and others do. But, rather than fight the system, I just sort of assume that there is something I don’t understand about it, and I know which ethnicities prefer to be in on the joke, and which would prefer not to be in on it and go with it from there.
Ah well I’ve been messing it up for all of these years.
I’ve travelled to many countries,many, many times, and yet I’ve been stupid enough not to drink alcohol in some countries in the M.E., not eat beef while drinking milk in Israel, not eat beef products in India ,or eat pork products in both Israel and other M.E. countries.
Damn my stereotyping !
Cos lets face it we’re all totally the same, and any recognition of any differences means that we are obviously racists and probably fascists.
I always like to get advice about foreign cultures from people who live in a continent wide country and whos only experience of foreign cultures is what they’ve seen on t.v.
Thanks for that !
:smack:
Look, the people who will or won’t be offended or hurt by your jokes aren’t “ethnicities.” They are individuals.
It’s likely true that different groups have greater or lesser tendencies to have a problem with this (I’d expect that, as a group, white Brits don’t tend to feel threatened or demeaned by the assumption that they like tea)… this still isn’t determinative for any individual in any group.
If you don’t understand the cultural context that leads to the group variances, that’s all the more reason to tread carefully. Unless you don’t care about alienating people, of course.
Cultural awareness and stereotyping are not the same thing. Stereotypes are simplistic generalizations that are often inaccurate or over-simplified. They may be derived from actual customs, but the stereotypes are exaggerated to the point of caricature and stripped of nuances and meaning.
If you’re aware of and respectful of cultural customs, religious observances, and social protocols of a community that you are visiting, then you are making the effort to learn about them, their contexts and meaning, rather than make very limited, cartoony assumptions.
Coincidentally this thread applies to a thought I had at Safeway recently. A sign that says Hispanic Foods, and another that says Asian Foods. My thought was how ludicrous and rude to classify food that way! Insulting, too.
It’s just one step short of pointing people with presumed Hispanic or Asian heritage to “their” aisle.
Which is why I love to hate big corporate food factories, always trying to improve my shopping experience.
As a bonus rant, what is up with club cards??? If it’s on sale make it on sale for everyone!
Is this ironic? I get very confused reading this thread.
Lol, which part? It was not meant to be ironic but sometimes my thoughts come faster than I can type.
I’m going to make a point I’m a bit concerned about making, because it veers very close to “it’s OK if group 1 does it, but it’s not OK if group 2 does it” territory. Namely, it’s very important to know the historical context of the ethnic group being discussed in the culture in which the remark was made.
For example: blacks, gays, Latinos and Native Americans (among other groups) have all been subject to discrimination and prejudice in US history, certainly until very recently, quite arguably up to and including the present. So any statement anyone makes that’s a stereotyping statement about any of those groups is going to be heard through a filter of “hmm, this guy might actually be prejudiced, I mean, I just heard some truly prejudiced statements a few days ago…”. On the other hand, jokes about white men, Christians, or English tourists do not have that baggage. If you’re English and I make some tea-sipping joke, it’s very unlikely that I grew up in an environment where my parents offhandedly imbued a general disdain for English people as being (insert meaningfully negative stereotypes here). So even if you yourself are totally and 100% absolutely positively not prejudiced against Latinos, the statements are still being heard, interpreted and processed in a context in which such prejudice is very real.
An interesting case, then, is Italian-, Irish- and Polish-Americans, all of whom were the objects of intense discrimination in the US within the past 150 or so years (quite possibly much more recently), but have generally been accepted as totally mainstream “white” Americans in almost all contexts for at least a couple of generations. Does anyone reading this thread truly not see the difference between someone commenting after Obama’s inauguration about how they’re suddenly eating lots of fried chicken and watermelon at the white house vs. someone commenting after a hypothetical Italian-American president’s inauguration about how they’re suddenly eating lots of pasta at the white house? (I mean, if properly phrased or gussied up with other details, either of those could potentially be funny, but the level of offense is vastly different.)
One final comment: It’s important to note that while there are a fair number of people (including myself) who are at least vaguely on the side of “a comment like this about food can in fact be offensive, even though the stereotype is not in and of itself a denigrating one”; I don’t think anyone in this thread actually thinks this particular incident is a very big deal. This is not Michael Richards using the n word. This is not Tracy Morgan talking about gays. So, just because a fairly large number of presumably-liberal posters are devoting a whole bunch of virtual ink to discussing this issue, don’t think that somehow this is something we like to get outraged about. It’s really not a very big deal. And given the actual context of the actual quote (mentioning specific individuals who he’d specifically discussed food taste with), it’s even LESS of a big deal. No one is losing sleep over it. We’re (for the most part) just discussing the theory behind the issue of why such a comment might or might not be offensive.
Assuming you meant it nonironically, I think the key is something like this:
-having an Asian foods aisle and a Hispanic foods aisle… not offensive
-an Asian-looking person coming up to an employee, asking a question, and the employee interrupting the question and directing the Asian-looking person to the Asian foods aisle… offensive
See the difference?
Deleted double post - Miller
I am calling you out for asking for a clarification that I do not believe you actually want.
So what? You titled the thread “Why is it offensive to connect a type of food to an ethnicity?” not “Persuade me that it is offensive to connect a type of food to an ethnicity.” It isn’t necessary for you to agree with other people’s opinions to understand them.
You seem to be returning to the “rice and beans” example at least as often as anyone else, and you haven’t offered much in the way of other examples of people taking offense at a remark associating people of a particular ethnicity with a particular item of food. You have made blanket claims about how “ANY connection between an ethnicity and a food automatic grounds for the PC police to come out with guns a-blazin”, but have done little to back this up. It certainly isn’t consistent with my own experience.
For instance, I used to live in Japan and when people here in the US hear this they often ask me questions about sushi: which kinds are best for someone who’s never tried it, what is the proper way to eat it, etc. I assure you that I have never responded by pulling out a gun and screaming “HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT THE JAPANESE EAT SUSHI, YOU RACIST!” I have never known *anyone *to do such a thing. While there are offensive remarks one could make about the Japanese and their cuisine (to invent an example: “Oh, you’re bringing your friend Mariko? I guess I’d better go MURDER FLIPPER so she’ll have something to eat!”), an innocent question or comment about Japanese food is unlikely to cause offense. It would, however, be rude or annoying to assume that a Japanese individual must enjoy a particular dish just because it is traditional in Japan. I occasionally ran into this sort of thing myself when I was in Japan – people would assume that since I’m an American I must like coffee. In fact I hate coffee and never drink it. It was sometimes impossible to politely convey the message that I really, truly did not want any coffee. I know that the people who forced coffee on me meant well, but it got real old real fast.
Those are all words I would use to describe someone who says he is interested in hearing other people’s opinions, then proceeds to argue with them and say some fairly insulting things about them (“Seems to me the only people who would be offended by a casual and innocent connection between heritage and food would be people who have some sort of shame of their culture”) when they do offer their opinions.
I really think you’d be better off dropping the subject altogether.
Er, sorry about the weird double post – looks like I accidentally posted a draft, and didn’t see it until after the edit period had expired. I’m going to ask a Mod to remove it if possible.
So I can’t talk about this or ask questions be cause you’ve made some assumption about my intentions? Why do you think I really don’t want clarification? I honestly wasn’t understanding what he was getting at.
Again, I apologize for putting this in the wrong forum originally, but I don’t see how my discussing this here warrants you telling me what I “better” do.
I came here to ask for opinions, and genuinely and honestly wanted to debate it. People were arguing an opinion based on what I felt was implied intent and incorrect context, and I said as much. Isn’t that how people discuss things, especially when there’s disagreement? Point: counterpoint:clarification:counter clarification:etc:etc:etc. But thanks for making assumptions about *my *intent and telling me what I should and shouldn’t talk about.
If you want to discuss my intent or whatever, please take it out of this thread where I am honest to goodness not trying to be disengenuous or an asshole, but rather trying to discuss the topic at hand. Why is it suddenly verboten to express an opinion, or argue/debate here? I’ve asked a mod to move this to GD, btw. So maybe it’ll be in a forum a little more appropriate for debating a topic.
Because your responses to other people in this thread did not indicate that you enjoyed hearing their opinions on this subject, but rather than you enjoyed telling people that they only hold opinions that differ from your own because there is something wrong with them – they’re ashamed of their own culture, they’re feigning offense to score points with others, they’re projecting, they’ve drunk the PC Kool-aid, or they are just plain illogical.
That is not what I said. I said you would be better off (as in it would be to your own benefit) letting this subject drop. Of course you are free to do as you like, I just don’t think it’s going to do you any good to keep this thread going.
Okay to assume you mis-read my original post? What you posted isn’t even close to what I said, which is:
**A sign (on the aisle) that says Hispanic Foods, and another that says Asian Foods. My thought was how ludicrous and rude to classify food that way! Insulting, too. **
**It’s just one step short of pointing people with presumed Hispanic or Asian heritage to “their” aisle. **
There is no difference… both are offensive. In sum, labeling [whatever] food as belonging to a certain group [ethnic or otherwise] is offensive. Like visiting a country other than the US and finding an aisle labeled American Food that stocks hot dogs and cheetos and rice krispies.
No, of course not. This is what I perceive as being disingenuous. Obviously I’m referring to the next sentence:
[QUOTE=guizot]
It’s all about context, and it’s patronizing to reference things that aren’t relevant simply to point out someone’s “difference” from the “norm.”
[/quote]
It’s not about whatever food was mentioned, and it’s not that he was connecting that particular food with any ethnic group. It’s that he was even talking about food at all–that he felt a need to point out that they were not “regular” baseball players. The particular reference he used to illustrate this need to point this out–in and of itself–was just the tool he used, not the core issue, yet over and over again you return to that, engaging in pointless tit-for-tat comparisons with Polish food, which could only be either rather naive (which I hope is the case) or disingenuous, because other posters in this thread have also explained it. It behooves you to read every post in a thread which you yourself start.
As I asked before, and which you didn’t really answer:
[QUOTE=guizot]
When was the last time you heard a sportscaster, for no reason, without any provocation or previous reference–just out of the blue–randomly start talking about the diet of the players simply because they were white?
[/quote]
Or for any reason at all, for that matter? You throw out hypothetical examples of comments or ideas about what one could say about other groups of people and the foods they eat, completely ignoring that there is no reason in the first place to mention this in a sports broadcast other than to point out these players are “different.” That they are not “normal.”
The presumption is as I said way back in post #9, a point that you haven’t addressed as far as I can tell:
[QUOTE=guizot]
In some contexts, that kind of discourse reduces people to something trivial, defining them by otherness. It… presumes that anglo is by nature the [only] norm, from which all other things are perceived by their difference. Kind of like talking about the earth as though it were the center of the solar system…
[/quote]
The specifics about the food, etc. are completely beside the point.
No–you’ve just been stuck on the food issue in general, and can’t seem to see beyond it.
People can say racist things without racist intent–it happens all the time. This is an important concept which you need to grasp. I have no idea what the personal intention of the sportscaster was, and it’s not really that important. (And actually, I don’t find what he said to be particularly egregious compared to the subtext of what people like the birthers say.) This kind of public discourse is something that extends beyond the personal. You’re asking a question in the OP, but you’re limiting the scope of the discussion to a question of whether the assertion of, or allusion to, a stereotype makes the sportscaster a “bad” person or not–but that’s not really the problem.
If you honestly want to get an answer to your question you need to broaden your view of the cultural, political and social discourse in which the language took place. When people focus their concern only on this sophistry of “white people have stereotypes too,” it just becomes self-centered, because their only concern is what others think about them–whether they’re individcually racist (i.e, “bad”) or not–and not what the language means in the larger context, beyond the speaker’s individual intentions. Racism isn’t about whether one individual is “bad” or not. It’s larger than that.
Huh? You really don’t think grocery stores can have special sections that feature the food of certain countries? Tortillas, salsa, rice, beans for Mexican food? Chickpeas, tahini, pita and olive oil for Middle Eastern cuisine? You really find it offensive to put those foods in sections and label them accordingly? I love Middle Eastern food, love cooking it, and I find it totally handy to have those things all in one area when I go to the store. So do, I imagine, the thousands of Arabs in the area. I think they also like the Middle Eastern markets that sell Middle Eastern food, as do I. Same with the Mexican markets that sell Mexican food in Mexicantown.
Obviously that also depends on context. If race is the organic topic of discussion, of course not. But you need to imagine how race–in and of itself–would be the organic topic of discussion during play-by-play.
As a thoroughly white American of rural descent I’d like to point out that not only did my grandparents eat fried chicken and collard greens, they raised the chickens and grew the greens themselves. And there’s a recipe for macaroni and cheese in a 14th Century English cookbook. In the upper Midwest it’s called Hot Dish.