Oberlin students protest “cultural appropriation” in dining hall food

Oberlin students protest the shooting of Tamir Rice, an actual injustice.

Oberlin students protest the shooting of Tamir Rice, an actual injustice.

For a while now, I’ve been thinking about the slippery slope between objecting to cultural appropriation and demanding cultural segregation. It’s probably appropriation for Eminem to release two of the three top-selling rap albums of all time, but is it appropriation for white kids to listen to Outkast? It would be appropriation for me to write a play about slavery, but surely I can still eat soul food. Anyway, there’s no point in examining these questions now, because Oberlin students have obliterated the field of inquiry with genius satire. At least I hope it’s satire. Per the New York Times:

[An article] published by The Review in November, detailed what students said were instances of cultural appropriation carried out by [food service provider] Bon Appétit. The culinary culprits included a soggy, pulled-pork-and-coleslaw sandwich that tried to pass itself off as a traditional Vietnamese banh mi sandwich; a Chinese General Tso’s chicken dish made with steamed instead of fried poultry; and some poorly prepared Japanese sushi.

First of all, General Tso’s chicken is hardly authentic Chinese culture, and making sushi poorly isn’t appropriation. Would a just world only allow ethnically Japanese people to make sushi? That sounds structurally similar to old-school racism—a system that makes race a totalizing identity and rigidly enforces separation, just without the normative component that declares one race superior to another. But again, Oberlin students are way ahead of me:

Last week, Oberlin’s black student union issued a list of demands to campus administrators, which include the creation of segregated safe spaces for black students on campus, and an annual 4 percent increase in black student enrollment.

There you go. Finally, after decades of struggle, the civil rights movement might achieve a lunch counter for blacks only. Now is a good time to remember that these are well-intentioned young people whose concerns are probably not as ridiculous as news reports make them sound. But they are also students at a private college, and “justice” in their world is not too different from their own comfort. “The food in the dining hall sucks” has become “the food in the dining hall is immoral.”

Fredrik deBoer on “critique drift”

Mansplaining

Yesterday, Fredrik deBoer posted this long and thoughtful essay on a phenomenon he calls “critique drift.” I assume the internet hates him now. You should read the whole piece, but deBoer nicely summarizes his own argument in this passage:

Critique drift is the phenomenon in which a particular critical political lens that correctly identifies a problem gets generalized and used less and less specifically over time. This in turn blunts the force of the critique and ultimately fuels a backlash against it. Critique drift is a way that good political arguments go bad.

DeBoer cites three concepts from the rhetoric of social justice/intersectionality that reflect critique drift: mansplainingtone policing, and gaslighting. Note that he does not say these phenomena aren’t real—only that the lefty internet increasingly uses them in contexts where they don’t apply.

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Tough week for God

Now that kids in Texas can learn about evolution, this guy doesn't know what the fuck he's going to do.

No two ways about it, the God of all the heavens and the Earth is having a shitty week. First of all, you try working on Sunday when all your friends are going out to get tacos and eat them by the river. Second, one of the Lord’s best messengers—okay, one of the Lord’s loudest messengers—suffered a terrible setback in Texas. I know; that’s like Wade Boggs losing a beauty contest at Fenway, but it happened. You might remember Don McLeroy, the creationist, amateur historian and Texas Board of Education member who made it his mission to expunge evolution and the New Deal from his state’s public school curricula. Despite his assurances that “if you read the latest” on Joseph McCarthy, you’ll find that he was “basically vindicated,” the voters of Texas have turned on McLeroy, nominating lobbyist Thomas Ratliff for the seat McLeroy has held since 1999. Props to The Cure for the link. It’s important to note that Ratliff’s 50.4% to 49.6% victory came in the Republican primary, and he hasn’t won the office yet. It seems likely that he’ll do okay in the generals, though, since no Democratic candidate is even running for the board seat. In a district so tilted toward conservatism, at a time when the word “lobbyist” is slightly less politically advantageous than, say, “secessionist,” Ratliff’s victory can only be seen as a referendum. I’m not saying God is hurt by any of this, but I am saying it’s raining in Missoula right now.

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