[rayiner]

I’m really not sure there is a sound conclusion to be drawn from comparing the Tulsa Massacre to people being skeptical of food from a different culture. The former is something that’s a unique and very ugly aspect of American history. The latter is pretty much universal.[1] You can squint and lump both things under the umbrella of “racism” but they’re so different as to be two completely different kind of things. And I don’t think it’s particularly useful to analyze both through the same lens.

Note that when Kendi talks about “racism” he’s talking about anti-Black racism specifically. I think folks try to generalize his ideas in a way that goes beyond what he actually purports to address.

[1] My Bangladeshi mom had a tinge of skepticism upon first learning my girlfriend (now wife) was from Oregon, “because they eat snakes.”

[chanakya]

I'd go even further and say that just because America has a history of racism and racist ideas does not mean that racism continues to be a major factor today. I've read Kendi, and he offers scant evidence that it is.

[wpietri]

Why would you expect a scholarly 500-year history of racist ideas to offer evidence of racism's existence today?

[chanakya]

I didn't mean his books on history. In the last 15 months or so, he's also published 3(!) books on racism in contemporary society.

[wpietri]

Ok? None of them look like books whose goal is to prove that racism exists. With a book title like, "How to be an Antiracist", I would think anybody would understand that the target audience is people who are well past questioning whether racism is still a thing. It's like expecting a cookbook to open with studies on why meals are a good idea.

[chanakya]

ok. Perhaps that's what he's trying to do. If someone wants more evidence that current racism is a significant force in determining outcomes in society, where should they look for references? What convinced you to move past questioning?

[wpietri]

I'm not an expert here, so I can't say for sure, and the evidence you personally need will depend a lot on you. Perhaps take an online African-American Studies course and go from there?

Just from what I've read, I'd again recommend Loewen's Sundown Towns. He covers the post-Reconstruction past in the early chapters; latter chapters bring it to the present day. The combination of historical data with historical testimony was very convincing to me. The Atlantic has had a number of good articles on this over the last decade. E.g.: https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=atl...

There's a lot in the employment world. A study that was really eye-opening for me was this one: https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873

I also found some manager-focused classes on implicit bias very helpful in seeing how subtle the problem gets. An online course might help you as well. And the Project Implicit tests from Harvard helped me see some of my own implicit biases, which were notably different than my conscious beliefs.

And lastly, I strongly recommend breaking one's personal filter bubble: https://medium.com/@bjmay/how-26-tweets-broke-my-filter-bubb...

That was especially valuable for me in turning academic knowledge of the past into conviction about the present. When I listen to the daily lived experience of other people, it eventually became obvious to me that the same forces were at work. Racism has been diminished, and most racists know they can't speak openly [1]. But the problems have never gone away. As Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_(1...

[wpietri]

Good thing that's not what I said, then. I pointed you at an endemic, centuries-long pattern of widespread American racism. You reduced it to one landmark event and then dismissed it.

It is also true that people are skeptical of different foods period. But more than one thing can be be happening at once.

[rayiner]

You pointed to a book that focuses on racism arising out of the enslavement of Black people in America and subsequent events over 500 years, in an article addressing the MSG myth. My point is that whatever inferences you can draw from that aren't usefully generalized to Americans being skeptical of what Chinese restaurants put in their food.

Skepticism of foreigners and the food they eat is universal to human societies. Enslavement of a distinct minority group, amounting to 1/8 of the population, for hundreds of years, and the social and economic consequences that remain when slavery ends and the groups must subsequently live alongside each other, is sui generis. It's not analytically useful to look at both things through the same lens. The causes, consequences, dynamics, and solutions are more or less completely different.

Skepticism of Chinese food ingredients is much better understood through the lens of the experience of prior generations of immigrants: Germans, Irish, Italians, etc. Anti-German antagonism in World War II accelerated uptake of English in German-speaking communities in the midwest and caused people to change their names; JFK's candidacy was met with charges of Popery; and people were actually quite skeptical of Italian food and unfamiliar ingredients like garlic.

[wpietri]

I pointed to two books that helped me understand a pervasive phenomenon in America. I agree I can't generalize two books to all of everything. But then, I didn't do that. There's an ocean of scholarship on this.

That you keep building straw men out of what I say makes me think this is not a great use of my time.

[rayiner]

I'm not criticizing your generalization because you're basing it on two books. I'm criticizing your generalization from books that are mainly about one context (the legacy of the enslavement of Black people) to a different context (American skepticism of foreign food). I disagree with your basic premise that the two things arise from the same "phenomenon"--generalized "racism."

[wpietri]

Ok. I'll give it one more go, just in case you are sincere but struggling.

That is not in fact my basic premise.

My basic premise, is, as I said: "it's worth asking both questions: Is racism really at play? And given America's lasting, endemic racism, is there reason to think something makes it absent in a given case?"

If America's history of racism were somehow only limited to Black people, then perhaps we could dismiss out of hand the notion that said racism could have something to do with a fact-free hysteria about "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome". But that's demonstrably not true.

Note that I've never said the two things are necessarily linked. I'm just saying that we can't presume a priori that racism isn't involved. We shouldn't assume that it is, but we mustn't assume that it isn't.

[rayiner]

> My basic premise, is, as I said: "it's worth asking both questions: Is racism really at play? And given America's lasting, endemic racism, is there reason to think something makes it absent in a given case?"

Yes, and this premise is flawed. You’re thinking of “racism” as one phenomenon weaving together the enslavement of Black people and skepticism about Chinese food. My point is that this is not a useful way to understand what’s happening.

Look at it this way. In Bangladesh, where I’m from, we also have many negative stereotypes of Chinese food. My impression is that such sentiments are common across the sub-continent. But obviously we don’t share what you’re calling “America’s lasting, endemic racism.” What you’re calling anti-Chinese racism is an expression of the xenophobia that exists in nearly every human society.

Anti-Black racism in America is completely different. It didn’t cause slavery. It was constructed to justify slavery and colonization: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/europe.... There is a superficial similarity, insofar both involves in-group versus out-group antagonism. But anti-Black racism isn’t just one expression of the ordinary out-group antagonism that exists all over the world. It’s something quite distinct.

[Frondo]

Before you edited your comment, you said something about Americans being very willing to embrace foods from cultures around the world. For some reason, that remark reminded me of one of the talking points of the 2016 election, the specter of "taco trucks on every corner," and how the Republican campaign that year suggested that that'd be a bad thing.

[rayiner]

Trump throws a lot of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. That one didn’t even register with his own base. I remember having lunch one day in central Illinois—a rural county that went for Trump by 20 points this year. The most popular restaurant in town was a Mexican place. Even Breitbart likes taco trucks: https://www.breitbart.com/health/2020/09/17/video-daughter-h...