Thoughts on production, alienation, and ideology
These are posts on race from the blog Base and Superstructure. Race is one of the most important issues of political and social power. Topics include the relationship between race and class, racism in the United States and the rest of the world, and the relationship between race and political movements.
So, here’s the thing. I find the intersection of food and politics compelling. Often very compelling. Know what I don’t find compelling? The writing people do at the intersection of food and politics. But then I found out about this book: The Ethnic Restaurateur.
And it sounded promising! Krishnendu Ray comfortably crosses the worlds of food and theory, and I think he gives us plenty worthwhile in The Ethnic Restaurateur.
‘Prison abolition’ doesn’t sound complicated. It’s abolishing prison. Done. Put that shit through a spell check, clock out early, and fly a kite. But it is complicated. Go figure.
I recently saw a Twitter thread on the term ‘prison abolition’. Here’s the background. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote some tweets explaining and defending limits on the prison system, using ‘prison abolition’ as a hook. Carissa Byrne Hessick, a criminal law professor and director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project, responded.
Hessick largely agreed with AOC, but she objected to AOC’s use of ‘prison abolition’. She thought AOC misused the term. Why? Well, AOC doesn’t advocate abolishing all forms of imprisonment or confinement under a judicial system. Rather, she wants to close most prisons and release many prisoners. Since ‘prison abolition’, according to Hessick, means to eliminate all of those things, AOC misused the term. Perhaps in a politically motivated way?
Is Hessick right? I’ll argue she’s not. Or, at least, I think we can build a coherent concept of ‘prison abolition’ that doesn’t abolish all forms of confinement. Whether AOC’s on board with this is a separate issue.
I recently saw the film Blinded by the Light. There’s a lot here: a young man’s love for The Boss, the struggles of South Asian immigrants to the UK, and a musical with a ton of Bruce Springsteen songs. Stayin’ alive, right? It’s a genuine story of stayin’ alive. But more than anything, it reminded me of a book called Stayin’ Alive. Jefferson Cowie wrote the book, and he also wrote a history of RCA called Capital Moves.
People talk about ‘authentic food’ or ‘authenticity’ during discussions of cultural appropriation. That’s a frequent site of disagreement. But I think it’s worth talking about those phrases in their own right. Not that I don’t have any thoughts on cultural appropriation. Maybe I’ll write about that later. For now, check out Briahna Joy Gray’s article in Current Affairs as a starting point.
‘Authenticity’, in general, and ‘authentic food’, in particular, raise their own issues.
The fact is, ‘authentic food’ is all the rage. Diners and reviewers alike demand it. When you turn on Food Network, you see celebrity chef Aarón Sánchez judging Chopped contestants on it. And when the show goes to commercial break, you listen to him tell you to ‘go auténtico’.
And it’s not only reviewers and diners. There’s a broad consensus on this. Plenty of left-leaning critics of cultural appropriation, particularly ones found on social media, also uphold the virtues of authentic food. Along with it, they extol the virtues of broader notions of authenticity.
What should we make of all this? A few leading questions: What do people mean when they talk about ‘authentic food’? The same thing? What kind of a word is ‘authentic’? Where do broader cultural practices enter the picture?
Source: Philip Cohen (https://www.flickr.com/photos/philipcohen/38444249116)
The concept of white privilege is central to contemporary social justice movements. And though there are disagreements, there’s a broad consensus on what white privilege amounts to. Roughly, white privilege is a set of benefits one gets merely in virtue of being white. Society confers these benefits not due to wealth, effort, or any other feature, but merely from whiteness. These benefits might be economic, political (e.g., citizenship status), or something much less tangible.
But this idea that white privilege is a benefit to whites was not always central to the concept. There’s an older concept of white privilege complicating this picture. On that older concept, white privilege often had short term benefits for whites. But those came at the expense of long term harm to working-class organizing that hits both whites and non-whites.
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