Today’s lesson is about “cultural appropriation.”
This phenomenon takes place, according to Wikipedia, when people from one culture copy or adopt something from another — and some folks regard it as disrespectful or even illegitimate.
Such was the case for two women in Portland, Ore.
These two women, Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly, returned from a vacation in Mexico with the dream of duplicating some delicious breakfast burritos they had encountered there.
“I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever,” confessed Connelly, “and they showed me a little of what they did.”
Back in Portland, their idea quickly turned into “Kooks Burrito” food cart — until a hue and cry over “cultural appropriation” shut the place down.
And not a minute too soon, if you ask me!
Shame on these women, falling in love with a food that was not their own (whatever that is), and trying to master it.
Where would we be if people could adopt the foods and trappings of other people’s cultures?
No! We must each stay “in our own lane.”
We must insist: only Mexican people can sell Mexican food.
If they want to throw in an empanada or two, they may — but only if they hire an Argentinian for their kitchen.
Only a Chinese person can sell Chinese food. And from now on, let the word go forth: Only Jewish people can serve bagels, or matzo ball soup.
Let’s not stop there.
Only authentic Aztec worshippers of the great god Quetzalcoatl can sell chocolate, and then only the original bitter brew, without sweetener of any kind.
I predict a severely reduced market, all of a sudden — and a life distinctly less worth living — but it’s got to be done.
Only Italians may work in a pizzeria, or serve spaghetti with tomato sauce.
But wait a minute!
Tomatoes came from Central America, so now Italians can’t use them at all. And wait another minute — spaghetti?
That’s just a copy of Chinese lo mein that Marco Polo brought back from China in the 13th century, so they can’t have that either.
What’s left?!
Of course, culture theft isn’t limited to food.
Some critics think it’s cultural appropriation just to write about a character from a group that is not your own.
But if you follow the logic of that argument, then Shakespeare could never have written about Romeo and Juliet, the star-crossed lovers in Verona, Italy — or about Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or even about MacBeth, King of Scotland (which at the time was a separate nation from Shakespeare’s England). And we would all be the poorer for it.
If people can only write about their own ethnic group, then Harriet Beecher Stowe — a white woman and preacher’s wife in New England — could never have written “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a novel that created so much sympathy for the anti-slavery cause that when Abraham Lincoln met its author, he is rumored to have said, “So this is the little lady who started this great war.”
And if creative people cannot cross the boundaries of their own little group, then we certainly cannot allow macho men like Ernest Hemingway to ever put words in a female character’s mouth!
Speaking of men, perhaps we should not allow them to sculpt or paint depictions of the opposite sex, either.
No portraits of women by men! That will take care of everything from James “Whistler’s Mother” to the “Mona Lisa.”
And especially: no nudes! Gadzooks, the very idea!
So: no reclining chubbies by Titian, with their draperies falling off; no reclining “Olympia” by Edouard Manet…. Good grief! The only thing left in the museums would be a few self-portraits, and whatever Picasso was doing, because who can tell what those were?
If we tried to live by rules like this, I can’t even think of all we’d be missing.
Instead, we should remember that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; and if someone wants to copy a burrito she tasted in Mexico, the only judgment we should make is whether her creation is tasty, or not.
Besides: speaking for myself, learning about other cultures through their food may be the only way I learn anything at all.
So whether it’s respect for the saintly amount of patience it takes to stir a good risotto, or the amount of elbow grease that goes into one batch of croissants, it’s all good.
And not a bad way to learn some tolerance, while we’re at it.
