What on earth is General Tso's chicken?

[sqbr]

I keep meaning to post about cultural appropriation since I think it's a really important and interesting issue, but since I'm still figuring it out my ideas never quite coalesce. But in the meantime White American culture is General Tso’s Chicken and Chop Suey.

The video (by Jennifer 8. Lee) is definitely worth watching, about the way that "chinese american" food is as american as beer and pizza and the history of it's invention and misrepresentation.
It's interesting as someone from a different non-chinese country, with it's own different "chinese" food. It took me years to figure out what "egg rolls" and "pot stickers" were :)

The article (by Restructure) is more interested in why this is bad.

Something Restructure brings up in the comments which really pinged for me is that people go on about "authenticity" and it gets this social cache (ie "authentically exotic" food/clothes/music etc as a sign of being cosmopolitan) when what we should worry about is if something is representative.

My thoughts, disclaimer 3b applies. The many Authentic Chinese People on my flist are welcome to thwap me for spouting crap :)

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with people outside China eating "Chinese" food which has little similarity to anything eaten in China. As long as people are aware that it's not "Chinese food", it's a new cuisine which owes as much to the country it's made in as the country it's "from" (like tex-mex compared to actual mexican food, a distinction which in my experience gets lost outside america)

I'm still figuring out what we as (white) individuals can do about this though, beyond just becoming aware of and admitting our own ignorance. Also our own subjectivity: chinese food as eaten in China may seem odd and unappetising to western palettes, but that doesn't make it bad, it just makes us products of a different culture with its own tastes. EDIT: and as both the video and stephiepenguin point out, being aware of the specific racist history behind a lot of this stuff. It's not just benign cultural exchange.

Some people might argue that we should try to only eat representative/"authentic" food, but I'm not sure that's helpful or even possible. Cultures don't divide up neatly like that(*), and if white people eat chinese food we're always going to tend to support business which cater to more western tastes, and if we don't then we're costing chinese restauranteurs business.
EDIT (thanks to commenters): Also there is no one "authentic" way of cooking anything: cultures are complicated and blurry and have lots of subtle subdivisions, and within that you have all the individual cooks who have their own tastes and restrictions. I think the idea of "authenticity" ties into the tendency for people to homogenise the "Other". This is particularly bad when done to "chinese", an adjective which applies to a huge range of subcultures and peoples both inside China and out.

I don't know. I always feel a bit overwhelmed when I consider these situations where the individual actions of rich/white/western people, all made from rational matters of taste/self interest(**), add up to negative social patterns. Because usually it's the case that simplistically moving in the opposite direction causes a different problem, like gentrification vs segregation or white flight. I think I need to gain some levels in anti-racist thinking before I can get my head around it :)

I have such a craving for "chinese" food now...

(*)Note the way that much "chinese" food in Australia is not only chinese-australian food, but chinese-malaysian-australian etc. And why should asian chefs be forced to stick with "authentic" dishes if they want to create something different?
(**)Plus a hefty dose of racism in many cases. But even if not, the racist/classist etc culture they're made in twists the effects

Comments

[sanguinity]

Semi-random thoughts (should I invoke disclaimer 3b, too?): One of the problems I have with "authenticity" is that it's outsiders deciding that other people are or are not authentic. It reminds me a lot of the classism you discussed in your stuff white people like post. The reason White People complain about lower-class white people wearing "too much" make-up (to use an American example of classism), is because the lower-class people are being "inauthentic." Same with making desserts from mixing together cake mix and jello mix: "inauthentic." (Unless you're talking about red velvet cake, in which case it's authentic again.)

See rydra_wong's review of Cooking Like Mummyji: "authenticity," as a system imposed by privileged people, is a mechanism that writes others out of their own lives and cultures.

On the other hand, "authenticity" has at least some of its roots in trying to protect people from being written out of their own lives and cultures: a way to keep privileged outsiders from coming in and using their privilege to take over the shaman business, or anime business, or Chinese cooking business. (I don't think that's the main source of its roots; just one of the roots, which happens to be a good one.)

Which is where the segregation/gentrification analogy comes in: the root cause of the problem is deeper than the solutions being proposed, so all the "fixes" are actually only temporary harm-reduction measures. There's an unaddressed difference in power, and as long as that power-difference persists, the temporary "fix" for an immediate harm is going to tend to lay the path for a different kind of harm.

Such as it is, harm reduction isn't too bad of a short-term option, I think. But it helps a LOT to try not to be too ignorant, to stay aware of the potential bad effects of what you're doing. And it helps even more to realize that it's a kludgy, short-term patch that doesn't address the root of the problem.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes. It is vitally important that the boundaries of a given culture/ethnicity etc aren't completely ignored or eroded, but they cannot be defined or defended by outsiders/the dominant group. I know lots of people who've been told they're not "really" chinese/australian/gay/bi/straight etc.

Which is where the segregation/gentrification analogy comes in: the root cause of the problem is deeper than the solutions being proposed, so all the "fixes" are actually only temporary harm-reduction measures. There's an unaddressed difference in power, and as long as that power-difference persists, the temporary "fix" for an immediate harm is going to tend to lay the path for a different kind of harm.

Yes, the Kyriarchy is very sneaky, and pretty much every action you take in a prejudiced society ends up reinforcing one aspect of it or another. The trick is to try to have a net anti-prejudice effect I guess.