It bears recording in this space – since other news outlets have largely ignored it – that diet-based slurs have long been a go-to wea-pon insecure, xenophobic folks have used to marginalize and justify discrimination against immigrant minorities…
To their credit, the vast majority of those who have responded online
to Trump’s assertions about Haitian immigrants have chosen
to shame him back mercilessly for his outrageous lies…
In the US, it goes all the back to the dawn of slavery. At that time, people of colour didn’t even qualify as ‘people’ under prevailing European-based standards…
Differences
The people we now refer to as African Americans looked different, spoke differently, lived differently and believed differently than the Eurasian-descended Americans. And that made it easy for the oppressors to justify putting and keeping their slaves down.
One particular aspect of this classic discrimination profile was criticising the preferred diet of the African Americans who came to the New World. They brought with them such now-staple foods as rice, okra, black-eyed peas, cassava, yams, kidney and lima beans, peanuts, millet, sorghum, guinea melon, liquorice, watermelon, and sesame.
In addition, they were drawn from tribal backgrounds, cultures that included hunting and gathering the local fauna and flora for food.
Most Americans had no trouble declaring the Africans sub-human. And, therefore had no qualms about treating them as such.
‘Loathsome’ dietary practices
Americans specifically pointed to Africans’ tendencies to eat things ‘civilized people’ wouldn’t touch. Squirrels, possums and catfish among them. Given other choices, I doubt the Africans would have resorted to those species, or others available to them ‘in the wild’.
In time, it became common practice for the ‘masters’ to give the slaves the parts of cows, pigs and sheep they wouldn’t eat themselves. Thank the oppressors for that. Combined with the African and Caribbean traditions of spit and grill cooking, it’s why we now have the ‘all-American’ tradition of barbecuing. Remember that next time you pop a rack of ribs, a pork shoulder or a brisket on the fire…
Not confined to Africans
More recently, food-related slurs were routinely slung at new Asian arrivals. They came to North America in waves during the last half of the 19th century, many to work on the transcontinental railroad. Once here, many settled on the West Coast to take up their former occupations as farmers and fisherfolk.
And the reason we have Asian (‘Chinese’) restaurants in so many small towns across the midwest, plains and the far west? Asian railway workers dropped off the navvy gangs to set up their own businesses and settle in amenable locations.
It’s speculated that the ubiquity of Asian eateries, and the (once again) obvious ‘differences’ between the Asians and majority ‘White European’ Americans, played a significant role in fueling discrimin-ation against the newcomers.
Echoes of Trump’s Haitian slurs
Even when I was a kid, there were persistent, nasty suggestions as to, “why you never any cats roam-ing around neighbourhoods where there’s a Chinese restaurant.” It wasn’t true, of course. There were lots of cats. But insecure folks still used such old wive’s tales to bolster their fear of the ‘different’ and unknown.
So it’s been with Latin Americans and Mediterranean types who came in large numbers to North America. Some White folks still refer to Mexicans as ‘beaners’, and Italians ‘greasers’.
Echoes of those racial slurs resound in Republican President Candidate Donald Trump’s recent claims that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbours’ cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. And, presum-ably, elsewhere, too.
‘Poor folks’ food’
In general, Americans have always disparaged newcomers for their choice of foods. Pizza and pasta were long brushed off as ‘poor folks’ food’. Just as Asian specialties were before them.
But now, many aspects of those cuisines have been adopted by the ‘American mainstream’. And their star dishes have emerged as haute delicacies. Even, at extremes, with an emphasis on their ‘auth-enticity’.
My take
Though ‘mainstream North America’ has deigned to embrace ‘foreign’ cuisines, it has still, largely resisted embracing the people and cultures behind them.
Sadly, it appears some undesirable aspects of human nature – those rooted in the primal fear and loathing of the different and unknown – will always be with us…
~ Maggie J.