Stop Thinking And Just Eat By Ashlie Stevens

684 Words2 Pages

In “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ‘ethnic’” (The Guardian, 2015), Lavanya Ramanathan deplores about how ethnicity is associated with food adventuring. In “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes cultures” (The Washington Post, 2015), Ashlie Stevens puts her audience to perspective with an alternate view on how food exploring does not necessarily lead to cultural imperialism but rather cultural evolution. Ramanathan’s audience comprises Americans in general, where xenophobia and racism is very prominent in their media. Stevens’s audience comprises of the British, known to be less emotional. Although both articles have rightfully addressed that a booming form of cultural appropriation is food adventuring, …show more content…

Ramanathan is critical and acerbic in her tone throughout her article to incite defensive behaviour in her audience while Stevens uses the most basic emotional approach and connection—grandmother’s chicken soup [para. 5] Ramanathan shows revulsions when ‘ethnic’ is associated with ‘exotic’ food. She urges her audience to cease using ‘ethnic’ because of its inherently negative connotation— expressing subtle hints of racism and inferiority. Ramanathan uses forceful words like ‘low-rent digs’, ‘health-code violations’ and ‘brownest skin’ [para. 3&7] to emphasise the racism. She makes a travesty of professors at revered universities who compare ‘ethnic food’ to social class and nouvelle cuisines. [para. 12&13] Ramanathan’s blistering criticism consists mainly of her own personal anecdotes and lacks credible sources to justify her …show more content…

Ramanathan's idea that food adventuring is sort of racist does not hold because her paragraphs are constantly very critical which makes it a challenge even for open-minded readers to accept her views. It is only a very niche portion of them who actually describes their food as ‘ethnic’. For Stevens, she rationalizes her argument in a more positive light, that they should not see food as a chase for the most phenomenal experiences, but to recognise that this is a subset of someone’s culture that one is enjoying which appeals more towards her

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