19
votes
Reclaiming Indian food from the white gaze
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- Title
- White People Gentrified Indian Food. I'm Trying to Take it Back.
- Authors
- Nayantara Dutta
- Published
- Jun 30 2020
- Word count
- 1794 words
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I'm ashamed of how we responded to this writing. So once again I will out myself as a trying to reform racist. I'm going to go back in time to words I said related to places. Writing from that point of view.
Walking into a lobby motel to get a room:
"The smell, OMG it's so gross" <giggle>. "WTF is this?"
Brown person walks out from their home attached to lobby, smiling.
Me: "Do all your rooms smell like this?" <looks at boyfriend with a wrinkled nose>
Brown person loses smile and (pretends to not understand?) says, "Can I help you?"
Me: "I said," <slows my words down because obviously they need that> "do. all. your. rooms. smell. like. this."
Brown person: "Oh you want a room!"
Me: <rolls eyes> "yeah, how much?"
Walking down a hall in an apartment building
Me: <loudly exclaiming> "WTF is that smell?!"
Friend: All middle easterners smell that way. I hate it.
Me: "OMG right," <Loudly tells story of smell coming from brown people>
Oh, and Polacks and their cabbagy disgusting smells wafting through apartment dwellings. Who the heck eats that shit.
<Joanne Zawoski has me for a sleep over, conversation with my "real" friends afterwards> "Her parents tried to feed me poison. You know what I mean? I almost puked at dinner."
Did any child who wanted to belong hear my words? I don't know. Did I give a shit? No. I did not.
Thanks for relating that - it's hard to acknowledge when you may have done harm to people.
Just a footnote - my best friend is Korean, and she loves to cook. But when we were at work together, she'd never reheat her food or eat her lunch indoors, regardless of weather, because people made awful comments about the smell. She'd bring me gifts of homemade kimchi (OMG yum) and caution me not to unwrap the multiple layers of plastic until I got home.
H1B Indian contractors at that same office went through hell about food smells. They were already resented for lowering wage standards among the salaried employees they were slowly replacing. If they dared to leave a food container in the 'fridge or microwave, they'd return to find it in the trash, container and all. At least one probably got sick from dish soap added to their food (and thus cameras added to the dining area, and a little more employee resentment - lather, rinse, repeat).
I get this, but there's a certain amount of office etiquette when it comes to food smells in general. Like, there have been a few times that people at my office nuked fish (or the one time somebody microwaved a whole bag of unpeeled shrimp) and they caught crap for it. I don't think we ought to make people feel inferior or bad about their culture, but we've all got to work together too, and most folks don't want to smell everybody's food.
There's probably something to be said here about how employers probably ought to put more thought into how their workplaces are designed to minimize some of these issues.
Racism is weird. I don't ever remember that my intent was to cause harm, instead it was to belong or being ignorant, or being thoughtless. It did not occur to me that my words and actions were part of "death by a thousand cuts." I can't take back anything I have said or done, but I can continue to learn. I really appreciate people like the author of this piece for shedding light about how that happens, so maybe we as society can reflect and be more mindful.
Whatever else you want to say about this article:
Is demonstrably true. I have been making quite a bit of Indian food during the quarantine, and in my experience the hard part is not making the food, but finding a recipe worth a damn. The situation becomes even worse because of the language barrier (have found the same for Thai as well). It becomes very difficult even searching for new (reasonably authentic) dishes to try, because they are drowned out by .... well, a lot of what the author describes in this piece. My only successful strategy thus far has been to find one or two sites that I trust, and stick to them.
For instance, my partner and I have been making Chana Masala for years now (e.g., as discussed here), but I have never heard of Chole Bhature. There are a world of Chole's out there, and I have little to no idea what they are... and it takes pretty dedicated searching to find them (e.g., I found a mint and coriander Chole the other week, and it was amazing!)
I would buy the shit out of her book.
If we want to talk about cultural appropriation: it's chá, not "chai". And your not supposed to put milk or sweeteners in it. Time to reclaim tea from the brown gaze I guess...
/s, obviously
Cultures adapt products from other cultures to match their preferences. This is completely natural, literally every culture does this. It's not "gentrification" or "colonialism" or whatever.
This is a willfully obtuse misreading. Nobody is talking about using or adapting ingredients. The point is people profiting from the cultural products of people while denigrating the people who produced the cultural product in the first place. Again:
How do you read all that and walk away thinking the author's point is that "nobody should use curry" rather than "if you like curry so much why are you so unwilling to accept the people who made it?"
Maybe it's not 'the point' of the article, but the subtext was there, and that was what really irked me and what I was reacting to.
So she's upset that:
which sounds a lot like "whites adopting things from other cultures and changing them to match their preferences". Which is fine, right?
Yes. It is often easy to make things sound like other things when you sever them from their context in a broader piece and read them with an eye towards finding things to get defensive about. The subtext isn't there. The subtext is one of valuing the work of others while shunning the people who made it.
Each of the things you're implying are frivolous are being presented as evidence of ignorance being propounded specifically to make the cultural products more accessible to people whose racism would have prevented them from trying it otherwise.
She's not upset about people eating ghee. She's pointing out that you needed to brand butter as a "superfood" to encourage people to try it. This is clear when she uses the term "indulgence." Ghee is actually unhealthy. It's not a "superfood." They just call it that to make people comfortable buying it.
She's not upset about people having trouble pronouncing mantra or namaste, she's pointing out that people who couldn't be bothered to pronounce a word properly are unlikely to have learned to actually understand the tradition behind it. Especially in light of the fact that yogic practice emphasizes the rhyme and meter of sounds and syllables and if you don't know that it's dubious how well you actually know yoga.
Imagine thinking it's weird to appropriate greetings and spiritual iconography and apply it in ways that are considered disrespectful in the culture they originate from.
She's not talking about people "participating in her religion" she's talking about hanging out as tourists without actually participating.
In these cases "changing them to match their preferences" involves "disassociating them as much as possible from the icky mud-people who created them." So no. It's not fine.
I wonder what the author means by "white gaze". I must have missed that somewhere in article. From my own sense of ethnic food, white people seem to frown upon what was unfamiliar to them. Shows like Anthony Bourdain's tv series seemed to at least convince white people that good food is good food, regardless of ethnic origin. At least in my experience it seemed that more people around that time seemed more open to trying out "ethnic" food. My best guess at what the author is getting at with "white gaze" is that it's the trendiness of it. As I was reading the article, I immediately thought of sriracha sauce which within the past 10-20 years has exploded into the American (white) markets. I even remember seeing even some fast food joints like McDonalds or Wendy's started incorporating into their meals. But I'm not sure that was entirely a negative thing.
All this isn't to say that I completely disagree with the author. I think there's a certain "colonial" attitude towards non-white cooks. Immediately after reading the article, I was reminded of the Dallas restaurateur who's now sueing a Vietnamese lady for pointing out a spelling mistake in a menu for his Vietnamese restaurant. I think there's a definitely sense of white chefs operating in that "ethnic" space that everything they do is better.
"White gaze" usually refers to the fact (or phenomena) of white people, by virtue of holding most of the cultural and social capital in western societies, often get to define what is "good" or "beautiful". That is, the way we view things as society (again, in Western nations, but because of globalism and a history of colonialism this often extends to other spheres) is almost always defined and imposed by white people. Beauty standards, the "correct" way of speaking, the "correct" way of comporting yourself in public, tasty food, "disgusting" food, etc. All of this gets defined by white people, and this can have a seriously detrimental effect on how non-white people living in these societies view and evaluate their own cultural products. Toni Morrison wrote and spoke a lot about this topic, particularly in her novel The Bluest Eye, as well as the importance of non-white authors removing themselves from this white gaze. This is a good article touching on a lot of this and highlighting the personal effects of living in such a society.
I want to expand on @gpl's comment, and add my take on "white gaze" -- I think "white gaze" refers to the cultural expectation, due to colonialism etc., that culture is made for white people -- that their gaze, or experience, is the important one, the one to consider. Compare this to the "male gaze," where women are often expected to make themselves presentable to the received male conception of beauty, to see themselves through a male's eyes. Men, and white people, do not have the obverse expectation -- they are free to ignore the gaze of other people.
I think I read about the male gaze in "Ways of Seeing" by John Berger, though I've heard about it elsewhere too. Now that I think about it, I'm extrapolating from my understanding of male gaze to what I think white gaze means, so I could be wrong.
This is what I thought of too. An excerpt:
You can watch the documentary online instead of reading it, the most relevant section is part 2:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lSSU3X_VBr8&list=PLr_OCmk7CcHRNn_61hGsFdPiLd830_HEW&index=2
Thanks for linking the documentary! I forgot it was around first, even :)
Eater is testing my liberal patience with some of their weird, highly political articles, lately. I expected to roll my eyes at this dramatic phrasing but it's IMO explained in the second paragraph:
I mean, that's kind of a mean thing to say.
I'm not sure where the parent comment or the source article made this assumption -- as a white American from the rural South I did not read that assumption in either text, but I might've missed something.
I think the problem with this kind of "relating" is that, when someone hears it all the time, it stops being funny or self-deprecating pretty quickly. It's also difficult to take as a joke when the same people who make this kind of self-deprecating humor also make fun of, or belittle, mock, jeer at, or even physically harm you just for aspects of yourself you can't change, like skin color or cultural background. The same is true with the examples you give for staining braces or setting off a fire alarm -- it's hard to separate the instance from the background of "your culture is [in some way] invalid."
I've heard some about Viet-Cajun food, though I haven't had any; I think that the outrage is missing because there is no attempt to erase the Cajun-ness of the food. It is a pure sharing expression of cultural melding, and that is beautiful.
The problem that I think the author is coming up against is how white people, because of the background of colonialism and neocolonialism that we*'re barely conscious of much of the time, because we're steeped in it and it benefits us, do tend to erase people of color's contributions to our own cuisine. An example is linked in the article, actually: The Stew (here's that recipe, which is pretty obviously a curry, though she calls it a stew).
I took the piece as one of frustration, that the author has felt this way for much of her life, through no fault of her own; and as a way to write about reclaiming heritage through cooking by embracing her own cuisine and showing it to others without apology.
Here's where we disagree. I think it's important, as a white man, part of a group that has historically battered and minimized other groups, to take a personal responsibility to try not to cause harm. It's like harassment at the workplace -- it doesn't matter what was intended, if harm was caused, it was caused -- and an apology, in my mind, is necessitated.
I don't think that's really what the focus of the article is though. I think the author wrote an article speaking to her own experiences as a woman of color navigating a largely-white space that othered her for her culture and her food, and how she was able to transcend that in some way, and claim her own heritage back, by putting together a quarantine cookbook. I don't know, it just seemed like a neat story, and I liked reading it.
As far as the rest of your comment goes, I really liked @rabbit and @NaraVara's replies and agree with them.
I've been scratching my head and wondering how I might respond to your comment. I figured I'd start here. In the past 20ish years, I feel like there's been an increase of people calling themselves foodies who are quite adventurous. I'll be honest when I say that it may have been inspired by people like Anthony Bourdain. Do I have hard evidence? No, that's literally just a guess I had.
I don't want to this to go into personal attacks, but you do have this:
This isn't a criminal investigation. We don't need evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to prove it did or didn't happen. In addition, what can happen though is you don't mean something hurtful, but it does end up hurting someone. I don't know why this seems to be questionable.
And to bring it back to your previous comment, it sounds like you're taking a lot of offense from me and the author of the article. So just a quick reminder:
And sorry to break it to you, but that matters. This piece, and many others, have gone into plenty of detail about why. Including the piece on Alison Roman linked to in this article.
Maybe the story here is that young people are often impressionable and will take comments far more seriously than they were intended? This can result in misconceptions that take some working out.
In particular, many older folks do have to be careful with their diets because anything unusual for them results in a bad experience, but this might get generalized to "my food isn't okay," particularly if such comments come from multiple sources.
But this also has commercial consequences for restaurants, because these fussy people might be potential customers. There is a thing that happens where people look for "authentic" experiences, not having any clear idea what that is, and some restaurants will open up making money giving them what they think is authentic but is actually adapted to their tastes. And the result is that what was supposed to be an educational experience about other peoples' cooking really isn't. Instead, your own misconceptions get reflected back at you, if you share them with the dominant group. (Such experiences can still be fun, though, if you're not looking for authenticity.)
These commercial pressures are there regardless of who's in the kitchen; an unusual experience needs a customer base that's going to support it. Sometimes that happens because of a trend, but it also helps when there are immigrants living close by who are actually looking for something specific.
The movie, Big Night does a good job of revealing how commercial concessions to taste and stereotypes cause divergence from authentic craft in cuisine, and the pain of living as members of an immigrant minority trying to become acculturated.
There's a really striking scene of that interaction, to the tune, "Mambo Italiano", which is its own creole of cultures clashing and mixing.
Um no. Implying that another culture's food must necessarily get you sick is pretty directly claiming that "those people" are dirty and can't adhere to basic hygiene standards. It's not just othering, ethnic restaurants routinely get rated lower (both by restaurant reviewers and travel guides as well as by health inspectors) because of these unconscious biases despite usually being less likely to cause upset stomachs. In fact, it's usually diners that cause it, but nobody remembers their eggs and bacon as notable enough to ascribe causation to.
No, food is meant to be eaten. People like to share it as part of a culture of hospitality. But you can't ignore the power dynamics that come into play with a relationship like that.
It's pretty direct in the beginning:
You also have to account for the fact that Indian food uses lots of acidic flavors and spices that can upset people's digestive systems. Coming from relatively bland diets that most white people are used to their body just isn't used to it. The idea that Indian food can cause stomach troubles for people not used to it isn't some subconscious racism, it's a matter of science.
At least you're not lactose intolerant!
I think the author might be living in New York or somewhere else with a strong regional culture. Some of the things they talk about don't seem to actually have much of an effect for most of the country. For instance, she talks about how Goop is recommending Indian food; I don't know a single person who takes Goop seriously. Likewise, I don't know anyone who judges food by the color of the chef's skin.
In most cases when I go into a restaurant, I don't even know the color of the chef's skin. Who are these people who check the kitchen to know this? (There are some cultures where it's customary to check the kitchen to see what the conditions are like, but that certainly isn't the US culture.)
This author is talking about making a career in the food and restaurant business. It does have an effect in terms of who gets favorable coverage in the news, who gets glossy magazine features, who gets deals to publish cookbooks, whose blog or TV show takes off and who doesn't. . .
You need to start talking to black people.
https://www.gq.com/story/what-happens-when-a-brown-chef-cooks-white-food
I'm not saying that it doesn't happen. By no means do I want to discredit anything of what the author of OP's article is saying. I'm just saying that it's nothing I have ever experienced. Both yours and OP's articles are about New York. I live all the way on the other side of the country and it's far more likely that the entire foodservice crew is going to be Latinx or Asian.
I get what you mean, but considering that the whole idea of whiteness in the US has long been predicated on exclusion, and that the kind of exposures you're talking about that you would get in urban centers are relatively very recent at scale, it's a hard notion to shake. White Americans by and large are not savvy about non-white people, culture, food, etc. Yes, there is a range of experiences, and I think urban vs. rural has a lot more to do with it than is often given credit for, but still, up to a few years ago 40% of white Americans had no friends of another race and 91% of white Americans' social networks were also white. You can't develop meaningful understanding of anyone in that kind of isolation.
So this is something I don't understand. I often hear people say that one way white people can help people of color is to patronize their businesses. Give them your money. But when we try, suddenly we're gentrifying.
I have no patience for it. I'll eat what I like regardless of where it's from, where it's made or by whom.
Hmmm... I don't think anyone is saying that a white person eating at an Indian restaurant owned by an Indian person and/or with an Indian chef is gentrifying. The gentrification that the article talks about is referring to wealthy white chefs and restaurateurs making "Indian" food for white consumers.
If she perceived them they are, by definition, not imperceptible. You're centering your own rubric for what's a valid level of offense and dismissing her's.
Aren't you doing the exact same thing to them? Just because you can't perceive the minor level of offense that comes from being judged for being white doesn't mean it's not there.
Does it matter? I don't care about anyone's hurt feelings. I care about the macro-effects these things add up to. In the author's case, the macro-effect is a systematic privileging of White voices at the expense of everyone else. In this case the macro-effect is a few individuals' feelings are hurt while they get to maintain all the cultural cachet and societal privilege in spite of it.
I'm of the opinion that you need to treat everyone equally on a personal level, and then eventually those small changes bubble their way up to the macro level. You need to address the cause, not the symptom.
Those people whose feelings you may hurt (even for a just cause) only turn away from the conversation and don't learn from it. No individual should be prejudged for the actions of their groups, doing so only increases the tensions between them.
Some people will interpret any criticism as an attack because they're so accustomed to living in a world that caters to them that any pushback feels like hostility. There will be no growth without tension and discomfort and White people need to come to terms with that.
Understand that when you say this you are consistently putting the work and responsibility of teaching in one groups' lap and the privilege of learning and being catered to in another's. Seeing this arrangement as being value-neutral or not tension-causing reflects a centering and valuing of one group's growth and comfort over the others.
If that's the case here, then that's fine. But I have had people I know make these contradictory arguments and it's frustrating.