Author Topic: Media decolonization  (Read 3562 times)

90sRetroFan

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Re: Media decolonization
« Reply #30 on: May 20, 2022, 09:01:58 pm »
Finally more people are noticing the absurdity of the term "Asian":

https://www.yahoo.com/news/stop-calling-asian-salad-104509924.html

Quote
Stop Calling It Asian Salad
...
“I just picked up some Asian salad,” he said. Having not seen said salad, I asked him what made it Asian. “Not mayonnaise,” he said with a shrug.

What came out of the box was a cabbage and lettuce salad with flecks of carrot, scallions, and almond slivers, underseasoned with soy sauce and sesame oil. Over the course of the party, at least three others asked the same question: What makes an Asian salad Asian? We joked about it, but the truth is, this salad hit a nerve. It felt weird being cowed by cold, soggy vegetables, but the longer I sat with it, the more pissed I became.
...
When and why did the Chinese in the name get swapped out for Asian?

I don't know when, but it is because of Eurocentrism.

Quote
Dishes can be inspired and fused together, nothing is truly ever authentic, and I grew up eating and enjoying diasporic cooking. It’s the Asian descriptor that irks me.
...
“Asian salad is my biggest pet peeve in American food media, food blogs, and restaurant menus,” says Pailin Chongchitnant, chef and creator of Hot Thai Kitchen and author of “Demystifying Thai Cuisine with Authentic Recipes to Make at Home” (at Amazon and Walmart). “To me, it represents how Asian people have been treated in North America—as a monolith, as walking stereotypes, and without respect.”
...
“When you’re calling something Asian, what are you really saying?” asks Preeti Mistry, chef and co-author of “Juhu Beach Club Cookbook” (at Amazon). “Calling something Asian doesn’t describe anything and it requires a lot of assumptions because most people would be surprised if they ordered an Asian salad and got something that was full of Indian spices or Filipino flavors, even though those cultures are in Asia. It’s collapsing so many diverse cultures into one word.”
...
In the book, “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning” (at Amazon), the author Cathy Park Hong gets at the existential core of what being constantly gaslit by the mainstream public can do to a person. The experiences aren’t new. But speaking up about them kind of is. The number of Asian Americans born and raised in the U.S. is larger than ever but many of us grew up constantly pounded by microaggressions that we were supposed to just quietly take. But we’re all grown up now, and some of us are kind of pissed.
...
“Asian salad as a concept highlights the potentially harmful ways people can digest cultures different from their own,” says Divya Gadangi, a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist. “They’re experiencing something flattened and distorted expressly for their consumption, and a lot of the time it’s for some white dude’s gain.”

“The Asian salad aimed to appease the white gaze,” says Gadangi.
...
If you haven’t caught on by now, this article isn’t really about salad, it’s about words and how they matter.

The only historically accurate Asian salad would be a salad from the historically accurate Asia:



such as:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piyaz

Again, this is Xinjiang:



Imagine how bad Sinocentrism would be in an alternate universe where this:



was called a "full Xinjiang breakfast" (and the guy in the background was labelled as being from West Xinjiang). Now you know how bad Eurocentrism is in the universe we actually live in.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2022, 09:04:18 pm by 90sRetroFan »