[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.

[wpietri]

Your notion seems to be that one couldn't possibly connect the elements of white culture that led to anti-black violence and structural discrimination with the cultural elements that drove those same white people to perform a lot of anti-Asian violence and structural discrimination. I think that's bunk. If you don't, you're welcome to try to prove it. But don't prove it to me. Prove it to the many academics who study this topic. If you convince them, I'll definitely read your book.

Is that related to a broad human tendency to xenophobia? Sure. But that xenophobia is channeled through and reinforced by cultural elements. Many societies demonstrate racism, but none of them demonstrate it exactly equally to everybody else. Like it or not, there's a history and a structure here, and I think it's worth studying.

I understand that a lot of people have the hobby of pretending racism is a much smaller problem, or perhaps no problem at all. But since those people have been consistently wrong in the US for the last couple hundred years, I don't aim to devote a lot of energy to taking them seriously.