When I first saw this story I thought it was satire. But sadly it’s not. Daniela Galarza, a writer for WaPo’s Food Section found herself getting triggered by some of her readers. Galarza took offense that some of her readers dared to call her recipe for ramen and the ingredients exotic. The readers seemed pretty clear that they called the ingredient exotic as they were not common to grocery stores. So the word was used as it should be. But Galarza took offense and decided to go on a rant explaining why she felt the word “e” word is so toxic…
“The first problem with the word is that, probably within the past two decades, it has lost its essential meaning. The second, more crucial problem is that its use, particularly as applied to food, indirectly lengthens the metaphysical distance between one group of humans and another, and, in so doing, reinforces xenophobia and racism.
“I have never heard the word exotic used in reference to something that is White,” says Chandra D. L. Waring, professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. “You know that exotic means ‘other’ or ‘different’ from a dominant-White perspective because no one ever says, ‘I’m going to go on an exotic vacation, I’m going to Lowell, Mass.’ No one ever says, ‘Let’s go to that exotic new restaurant, let’s go to McDonald’s.’” I can’t imagine anyone calling a Big Mac an exotic sandwich, even if, when it was first introduced to countries outside North America, it may have been viewed with skepticism.”
“It’s completely tied to the history of colonialism and slavery,” says Serena J. Rivera, assistant professor of Portuguese and Spanish at the University of Pittsburgh. “If you are exotic, if you’re automatically an ‘other,’ you’re not one of us.” But for someone to make such a judgment, they would need to be in a position of power.
“Calling a food exotic puts the onus of the puzzle on the people who make the food to define it, to rationalize, explain, or whitewash it until it’s palatable to the dominant culture,” Rivera says.”
Give me a break… At this rate, we are going to lose the words odd and different too. There is nothing remotely wrong with calling a food exotic. It’s not offensive. This is America, not Asia. Ramen to some could be exotic. Galarza and the professor are just looking for a reason to be triggered. The WaPo writer is angry that her readers are not worldly enough with their taste buds, so she wants to cancel the word used to describe foreign foods… Maybe instead of getting offended, she could have suggested locations you could buy the ingredients. But no, instead she is trying to cancel a reasonable, neutral word, just so that her readers don’t say any of her other recipes are exotic.