Honestly, I read the first 8 or so and found most to be appropriate social backlash when taking full context into account.
1. White cafeteria workers serving Kool Aid and watermelon-flavored water for Black History Month, while lying to a student who took offense, saying "black people put this menu together."
2. A yoga studio who was already in the red going under after many of their teachers quit and protested due to workplace complaints.
3. I couldn't find the original source video for this, but feeling obligated to publicly post a video mentioning "overall crime rates of black Americans compared with white Americans" in an attempt to discredit BLM can get you fired. I don't see that as cancel culture, but an employer using their discretion on who they want interfacing with the public.
4. This one I find the most compassion for. If we were to hold everyone and their parents accountable for the things they or their children said when they were 14, we'd be in a lot of trouble. NPR did a good article about this story: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/07/28/891829285...
5. This was a private school, not a public school, published by the National Post without any details about the individual who was fired, and uncorroborated by other, less biased news sources.
6. Two white women admit tactlessly that they were stealing recipes from Mexican taco ladies. People didn't like that, and decided not to support their business.
I could go on, but I don't see what there is to be outraged about here.
"Stealing" recipes from taco ladies? Come now, the recipe for a burrito is not intellectual property. You can learn traditional Mexican cooking on Youtube if you understand a little Spanish. Burritos arguably aren't even Mexican, for crying out loud! Go a hundred miles south of the US border and there's nothing that even vaguely resembles what Americans call a burrito. It's a border region phenomenon.
As if only brown people are allowed to use tortillas? The act of accusing someone of "cultural appropriation" is segregation, pure and simple.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Make a burrito (or taco, or nasi goreng, or pad thai, or whatever) and enjoy it guilt-free.
I completely agree with a lot of your points here. I've been making enchiladas for years, and I've incorporated a lot of recipes into my approach. I suspect that very, very few people would take issue with me enjoying the food of another culture.
But I think this misses a very big point of discussion, which is what are the conditions that makes capitalization of another person's and culture's effort ethical? A big part of what made people feel uncomfortable with the taco truck story was, I suspect, that these recipes were not freely shared. Instead they were reverse-engineered.
> "I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever," Connelly tells Willamette about a trip the pair took to Puerto Nuevo, Mexico. "They wouldn't tell us too much about technique, but we were peeking into the windows of every kitchen . . ."
If these women were just finding out how to make the best taco possible for their own enjoyment, that would be one thing. But given American's history of white folks making money off of the efforts of People of Color, I don't find it particularly unusual that people are taking issue here. One article[1] fairly notes that "it's unclear whether the Mexican women who handed over their recipes ever got anything in return."
I don't think the lines of what does and does not constitute cultural appropriation in food are well defined. I do think that it exists though.
> A big part of what made people feel uncomfortable with the taco truck story was, I suspect, that these recipes were not freely shared. Instead they were reverse-engineered.
Just as a thought experiment. If they went to Italy and did the same thing to learn how to make pasta, then opened their own Italian restaurant, would anyone care? If they went to France and spied on pastry shops to learn how to make the perfect croissant, would anyone care?
If two Mexican ladies went to North Carolina and stole the secrets of BBQ and opened their own BBQ joint in Guadalajara, would anyone care? Would we be questioning their ethics?
If you read the original profile[1] it's a pretty standard foodie piece about people who really enjoyed a food, learned how to make it themselves, and wanted to bring it back to where they're from.
The parasitic clickbait mic.com article pulls a few quotes out of context, then Russell Conjugates[2] the narrative to cast the pair as evil villains who exploit helpless minorities. Note how they're not just telling the story of what inspired them to start a taco truck, now they are bragging about stealing recipes. This is a hit piece that is engineered to direct online vitriol towards them, for the crime of being white people selling tacos.
Free speech, of course. People can write whatever they want. But I think it's important to ask ourselves, who is this helping? What is being accomplished here? Were these two ladies really such evil villains that deserved everything that comes with being the target of an online mob? (harassment, death threats, loss of livelihood, lifelong fear of anyone ever Googling your name...) Is this a great victory against systemic racism? Was the life of a single person of color, or anyone, improved by this? I mean, I guess it improved the bottom line of the publishers of Mic, but it's hard to see what else.
I'm not going to litigate every example, suffice to say I don't think that's a fair characterization of any of those, except for 4. And in that case, you don't find it outrageous that a family's livelihood was destroyed, along with that of all of their employees for what is essentially some teenage edgelord posturing? You find that to be a perfectly fine and fair thing to happen? Nothing to be outraged about?
1. Whatever it is, it’s not depriving dozens of people of a livelihood.
2. I’m a thinking person with the capacity to form opinions and am as entitled as anyone to decide what I consider appropriate? What sort of answer are you looking for here? I’m saying what I think and giving reasons why, instead of refuting those reasons your response is to assert that I’m not allowed to think about certain things? What gives you the right to determine what people are allowed to have opinions about?
Actions have consequences in society, and public actions moreso. That's part of the cost of being in one. I don't think it's particularly outrageous to expect that people who say and do hurtful things, either intentionally or out of ignorance, should pay consequences.
> What gives you the right to determine what people are allowed to have opinions about?
What indeed? It seems on one hand you're expressing outrage against other people's expression of their own opinion, while preventing yourself from similar scrutiny. You can't have it both ways.
I appreciate this conversation, for what it's worth. It's echoed one that I've had to myself for a while. At the end of the day, I think we mainly disagree on whether or not these are proportional responses to the level of harm caused. Personally, I think the vast majority of these dozens are either justified, or they're outliers.
Literally everything is a consequence. If you cut someone off in traffic, one consequence might be that they hunt you down and kill you. If you pass counterfeit money in a convenience store and then fight with the cops, one consequence might be that you get choked to death while being restrained. Hey! It’s just consequences! What’s the problem? People who do something wrong should pay consequences, right?
Just because something is a consequence doesn’t mean that it’s good or appropriate or that it creates a successful and thriving society if we allow that particular consequence for that particular infraction.
Yes, we definitely disagree on what is an appropriate response. If you think that someone being ignorant or momentarily insensitive means they should be destitute for the rest of their life, then, yes, I very much disagree.
> It seems on one hand you're expressing outrage against other people's expression of their own opinion, while preventing yourself from similar scrutiny. You can't have it both ways.
Getting someone fired or starting a public campaign to destroy their business is not “expressing an opinion”. And how exactly am I preventing myself from similar scrutiny? I’m literally posting on a public forum where anyone is free to respond directly to me. That is the exact opposite of preventing scrutiny.
> I don't think it's particularly outrageous to expect that people who say and do hurtful things, either intentionally or out of ignorance, should pay consequences.
I think that it outrageous that you not only completely neglect the motivation and give a pass to anyone that feels hurt. It isn't hard to see the problem of course, not only in cases of miscommunication or any kind of conflict. This would cause problems, solve nothing and would immediately create toxic relations.
With your quick acceptance of condemnation, you are just helping real racists.
You have a low threshold for outrage, then. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I'm making quick judgments or somehow neglecting people's motivations, but all I can say is that you're wrong.
And who exactly is going to determine who the "real racists" are, exactly? Why does everything have to exist in black or white where there are "real racists" and everyone else. Does that give someone a free pass to be ignorant, because they meant well? Sorry, no.
I think it would be much more reasonable to have conversations about the _degree_ of punishment that occurs when people make mistakes. But instead I have to argue with folks like you who want to pretend like an offense never happened. That's not productive, and frankly it'll be a further waste of my time to continue this.
1. White cafeteria workers serving Kool Aid and watermelon-flavored water for Black History Month, while lying to a student who took offense, saying "black people put this menu together."
2. A yoga studio who was already in the red going under after many of their teachers quit and protested due to workplace complaints.
3. I couldn't find the original source video for this, but feeling obligated to publicly post a video mentioning "overall crime rates of black Americans compared with white Americans" in an attempt to discredit BLM can get you fired. I don't see that as cancel culture, but an employer using their discretion on who they want interfacing with the public.
4. This one I find the most compassion for. If we were to hold everyone and their parents accountable for the things they or their children said when they were 14, we'd be in a lot of trouble. NPR did a good article about this story: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/07/28/891829285...
5. This was a private school, not a public school, published by the National Post without any details about the individual who was fired, and uncorroborated by other, less biased news sources.
6. Two white women admit tactlessly that they were stealing recipes from Mexican taco ladies. People didn't like that, and decided not to support their business.
I could go on, but I don't see what there is to be outraged about here.