Ethnic vs. not being Ethnic (stereotype)
"The word ethnic has this complex history of both trying to reflect changing relationships and understandings of culture and trying to avoid more taboo terms. It came into play mostly in the 1950s, and is most commonly used in the world of food to mark a certain kind of difference — difference of taste, difference of culture."
".....some people are beginning to get the sense that the word ethnic is this weird catch-all category that isn't useful anymore, that we should be talking more about Indian food or Thai food or Pakistani food, or maybe even further specifying. Maybe saying Indian food doesn't even make sense. Maybe what makes most sense is talking about regional cuisines."
Hierarchy of interest:
"French cuisine has never been defined as ethnic. Japanese cuisine is not considered ethnic today. Those are examples of cuisines that are both foreign and prestigious. There is no inferiority associated with them."
"....naturally you begin with archetypes and stereotypes, but the question is whether you are willing to pay as much attention to it as you did to the other cuisines, as you did to, say, French food."
"....if you move up in the cultural ladder, so will your food."
"Our treatment of Japanese food, on the other hand, has changed, largely, I think, because of the nature of the people migrating to the United States from Japan."
"If we know more about certain cuisines, we develop a palate for them and can see the various registers and complexities. But if we look at cuisines from a distance, as we do so many here, it's impossible to understand them."
"It's important to point out that this is all probably part of the natural ethnocentricity of a people. The more we know about a culture, the more we can understand about its nuance. That's why you'll hear people couple together Indian food and Thai food, and then say something like, 'Boy, Italian is so great and diverse.'"
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