"I don't like Chinese food" Often Equals Racism

It does sound like a leap, but bear with this reasoning.

In an article the other day, an actor who was filming in Hong Kong over the summer vehemently declared he "hated Chinese food." He was there for three months, had nothing to say about traveling, the culture, different as it is from China since it was a colony for 150 years and is inexorably changed, and nothing to say about the experience. Just that he hated Chinese food.

Hmm. What happened to all the other aspects of Hong Kong that are interesting? I know, for the sanitized white tourist, it's far too difficult to embrace.

Imagine that same white tourist, this one from Boston where the actor was from, in, say, India. Suddenly things change, don't they? Because India was a colony for over 300 years, white people who find it far too intimidating to travel to China or even Hong Kong will travel to India. Why? Because int he popular imaginary, there is nothing threatening about India. The people, most obviously, have been subdued for centuries. That they finaly threw off the shackles of colonialism happened only in the recent past. Look how long it's been trying to overcome the long-lasting effects of centuries of slavery and you'll understand that fifty years means nothing compared to hundreds of years. India was a colony for over 300.

So people know that the Indians will speak English. They feel that they ar a non-threatening peole. They aren't violent. They've adopted an originally British Indianized dish of Chicken Tiki Masala, just for the Western palate, even. And theydon't do violent things. They are, in short, nonthreatening.

Imagine China, now. People do't speak the language. The government has never been touched by a Western hand. And the Communism? It wasn't as Marx envisioned. It was never an economic system in China, just another form of imperial control, under a different name. The peole have never been cowed. They do things so differently. There isn't a lot of history about China that has not aready been sanitized by hundreds of years of Western scholars. There are, in short, unknown. Hence threatening. And the likelihood that a Westerner traveling to China knows the language? Right.

So when someone says, I don't like Chinese food, what they are saying is Chinese food is a proxy for a culture and a people they find different, threatening, scary and unable to e cowed. By Western values of "democracy" or "humanity"--yes, that's why we criminalize same-sex marriage, here, homosexuality, colored people, single mothers--yes, we are humane, here, incarcerating old men over fifty years in the South because once, a black man sold some pot. Gee. And what happens to Robert Downey, Jr.? A few months? Hmm. But we are humane. Yes, we are. We value human rights. We don't incarcerate, criminalkize or otherwise discriminate. Unless somehow those groups deserve it.

And imagine if someone said, I hate hot dogs and baseball. What would be the reaction? You mean you hate America?