Oberlin College Students: Cafeteria Food Is Racist

Started by jimmy olsen, December 21, 2015, 09:12:02 PM

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jimmy olsen

Ethnic food is now appropriative! :rolleyes:

Better shut down every pizza parlor in America since they don't make it the authentic Italian way. :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/20/oberlin-students-cafeteria-food-is-racist.html

QuoteOberlin College Students: Cafeteria Food Is Racist

The noted liberal arts school explores new frontiers in getting offended.
University dining halls aren't exactly famous for serving gourmet dishes, but Oberlin students say their meals aren't merely bad—they are racially inauthentic, and thus, a form of microaggression.

It's one thing to quietly gripe about the quality of dorm food (students have likely been doing that for centuries). It's quite another to accuse the dining room staff of stealing from Asian culture because they didn't prepare the General Tso's chicken with the correct sauce.

And yet, here's what one Oberlin student had to say about the dining hall's sushi bar:

"When you're cooking a country's dish for other people, including ones who have never tried the original dish before, you're also representing the meaning of the dish as well as its culture," student Tomoyo Joshi told The Oberlin Review. "So if people not from that heritage take food, modify it and serve it as 'authentic,' it is appropriative."

Cultural appropriation, readers will recall, allegedly occurs when people borrow the traditions of another ethnic or religious group. Liberal students at a Canadian university, for example, recently shut down a free yoga class for disabled students because yoga has its origins in Hinduism, meaning it doesn't belong to white people and they shouldn't practice it. This kind of thinking is actually bafflingly illiberal—who's to say that culture itself belongs to anyone?—and yet it's usually left-leaning students waging weirdly nativist campaigns of forced isolation on foreign cuisines and customs.

The culinary critics at Oberlin, however, aren't just mad that the cafeteria has appropriated their culture—they're mad that it's been appropriated poorly.


"It was ridiculous," student Diep Nguyen told The Oberlin Review (the "it," in question was a banh mi sandwich with the wrong bun). "How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country's traditional food?"

For one thing, the banh mi sandwich is itself the product of the blurring of cultural boundaries: French and Vietnamese.

For another, there's something deliciously ironic about Oberlin students—some of the most privileged people in the world, as evidenced by the $50,000 they pay annually in tuition—whining about the bun-thickness of meals prepared by lowly paid cafeteria workers. As academic and writer Fredrik de Boer noted on Twitter, "When you're defending the cultural authenticity of GENERAL TSO'S CHICKEN, you're a living Portlandia sketch."

These students could certainly stand a bit of mockery. They could also stand to broaden their horizons. For some reason, too many otherwise liberal kids think cultural transformation is a kind of genocide—different societies have a right to stay exactly the way they are, untouched by modernity, they think.

But they are just plain wrong: Blending the best elements of different social traditions and creating something new (and possibly more fascinating) is praiseworthy and progressive. Maybe Oberlin's banh mi sandwich should be judged not by how closely it apes the original, but whether it tastes as good?

Unfortunately, the cafeteria is not the only place where Oberlin students want a kind of cultural-appropriation-free safe space. The desire to re-enforce traditional cultural boundaries also manifests itself in a new list of demands recently released by black students.

Among the 14-page document's most notable items is this: Black students want a "safe space for Africana identifying students" set up in each of various campus buildings. Given that white student allies of protesters were ejected from similar black safe spaces at the University of Missouri and other campuses, it seems fair to assume these Oberlin radicals are proposing something akin to segregated safe spaces.

Previous generations of activists fought for equal treatment and equal access to facilities for all students, regardless of color. They fought against racial segregation on campuses—including at Oberlin, which betrayed its legacy of fierce opposition to slavery by segregating its campus in the 1880s.

But it sound like separate facilities are exactly what today's radical students want. In addition to blacks-only safe spaces, they want to hire more professors, administrators, and psychologists of color—and they assert the right of black students (and only black students) to have the final say on the continued employment of these people. Consider this representative request:

"We DEMAND a written form that assures us of the institution's commitment to increase the number of black psychologists within the Counseling Center. Furthermore, we DEMAND that Black students be able to sit in on the interviews of these HIGHLY QUALIFIED candidates in order to ensure that these professionals cater to the needs of the Black students. We also DEMAND the hiring of Black healers/non western health practitioners because not everyone finds comfort and healing solely from a psychologist."

Activists also want black student leaders to be compensated $8.20 an hour for their organizing efforts. They want members of the Oberlin community who offended them banished. They want no fewer than four buildings renamed.

If all of their demands were met, two things would happen. First, since most of the items require separate and distinct services for black students, there would be a lot less racial intermixing. Second, because the cost of hiring all these new employees and providing so many services is prohibitive, tuition would skyrocket. Oberlin would become much less affordable for the very students most dissatisfied with the college; it would also become weirdly segregated.

Students have every right to make unreasonable demands—even if those demands are as ridiculous as racially-sensitive banh mi sandwhiches and racially-segregated safe spaces. But they deserve every drop of criticism they get in return.

It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
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1 Karma Chameleon point

11B4V

"there's a long tradition of insulting people we disagree with here, and I'll be damned if I listen to your entreaties otherwise."-OVB

"Obviously not a Berkut-commanded armored column.  They're not all brewing."- CdM

"We've reached one of our phase lines after the firefight and it smells bad—meaning it's a little bit suspicious... Could be an amb—".

garbon

It was a bit much when we had Turkish food on the day to commemorate the Armenian genocide or the time that mammies appeared with watermelon and fried chicken on  a night themed African American Heritage.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

mongers

Quote from: 11B4V on December 21, 2015, 09:14:28 PM
They wonder why so many school shootings.

Come on, just because he posts a few too many threads a times doesn't warrant that comparison.  :mad:
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

Admiral Yi

Quote from: mongers on December 21, 2015, 09:31:16 PM
Come on, just because he posts a few too many threads a times doesn't warrant that comparison.  :mad:

You're the one who bitches when he doesn't post some story you noticed.

Eddie Teach

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 21, 2015, 09:32:59 PM
Quote from: mongers on December 21, 2015, 09:31:16 PM
Come on, just because he posts a few too many threads a times doesn't warrant that comparison.  :mad:

You're the one who bitches when he doesn't post some story you noticed.

If Tim was crazy enough to be let out of the army, he wouldn't be asking.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

jimmy olsen

Quote from: garbon on December 21, 2015, 09:30:14 PM
It was a bit much when we had Turkish food on the day to commemorate the Armenian genocide or the time that mammies appeared with watermelon and fried chicken on  a night themed African American Heritage.

There's no way that happened :lol:
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
1 Karma Chameleon point

Ed Anger

Thankfully, Oberlin only has around 3000 students. Hopefully, they will eventually fade like Antioch did in Yellow Springs.
Stay Alive...Let the Man Drive

Valmy

Quote from: garbon on December 21, 2015, 09:30:14 PM
It was a bit much when we had Turkish food on the day to commemorate the Armenian genocide or the time that mammies appeared with watermelon and fried chicken on  a night themed African American Heritage.

Stanford man. I am glad I stayed in more enlightened Texas.

Man I always wanted to say that.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

garbon

Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 21, 2015, 09:47:14 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 21, 2015, 09:30:14 PM
It was a bit much when we had Turkish food on the day to commemorate the Armenian genocide or the time that mammies appeared with watermelon and fried chicken on  a night themed African American Heritage.

There's no way that happened :lol:

They both did. The first was definitely down to lack of awareness as the food manager was mortified when she found out. The latter also happened and I know as I was pushed by the other black students to boycott dinner. I was very hungry that night. -_-
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Valmy

Quote from: garbon on December 21, 2015, 11:48:24 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 21, 2015, 09:47:14 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 21, 2015, 09:30:14 PM
It was a bit much when we had Turkish food on the day to commemorate the Armenian genocide or the time that mammies appeared with watermelon and fried chicken on  a night themed African American Heritage.

There's no way that happened :lol:

They both did. The first was definitely down to lack of awareness as the food manager was mortified when she found out. The latter also happened and I know as I was pushed by the other black students to boycott dinner. I was very hungry that night. -_-

Ah well the first was an honest mistake. I can only assume the second was because the guy running the food facilities that night got drunk.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

garbon

They put up a Pan-African flag for good measure too. :hmm:
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Admiral Yi

Quote from: garbon on December 21, 2015, 11:48:24 PM
They both did. The first was definitely down to lack of awareness as the food manager was mortified when she found out. The latter also happened and I know as I was pushed by the other black students to boycott dinner. I was very hungry that night. -_-

Where did they find the mammies?

jimmy olsen

Quote from: Valmy on December 21, 2015, 11:52:51 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 21, 2015, 11:48:24 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 21, 2015, 09:47:14 PM
Quote from: garbon on December 21, 2015, 09:30:14 PM
It was a bit much when we had Turkish food on the day to commemorate the Armenian genocide or the time that mammies appeared with watermelon and fried chicken on  a night themed African American Heritage.

There's no way that happened :lol:

They both did. The first was definitely down to lack of awareness as the food manager was mortified when she found out. The latter also happened and I know as I was pushed by the other black students to boycott dinner. I was very hungry that night. -_-

Ah well the first was an honest mistake. I can only assume the second was because the guy running the food facilities that night got drunk.

Probably a foreign chef that looked up African American food on google the week before.
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
1 Karma Chameleon point

alfred russel

My company had a similar incident. It announced we had signed endorsement deals with several rappers on the day we celebrated black history month, and gave out free chicken wings to everyone for lunch (on such occasions everyone gets free lunch, but this is the first time the lunch was chicken wings).
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

There's a fine line between salvation and drinking poison in the jungle.

I'm embarrassed. I've been making the mistake of associating with you. It won't happen again. :)
-garbon, February 23, 2014