Food, Racism, Capitalism

UPDATE (2007-08-08): See more on the subject from Upside-Down Adoption, Wampum, and Vox ex Machina.

Fear and fetishization of freaky food is among the most common expressions in the USA of anti-Asian racism. Schoolyard taunts about eating dogs, cats, and rats are as familiar to Asian American ears as "ching chong", "flied lice", and high-pitched kung-fu-movie noises (usually inexplicably accompanied by stiff flat hands which appear terribly ill-prepared for action). What I find rather amazing is that so many non-Asians continue to find these moronic clichés funny and/or fascinating, to the point that lurid stories about tainted Chinese food have been at or near the top of corporate fake-news for weeks.

I suppose part of it is that eating is among our most primeval physical activities, along with having sex; so it's easy for lizard-brained racists to focus their disgust and derision on those two basic areas: both emasculating and hypersexualizing our bodies, both grossed out and intrigued by our food, repulsed yet attracted by our exoticized ways. I think Tony Bourdain was on the money when he connected fear of dirty food with fear of dirty people. In the same way that some white folks at cash registers recoil slightly from a person of color's hand when passing change, some apparently feel that melanin sheds from our skin as we cook and infects the food we prepare with cooties of color, especially given our unhygienic habits.

This is especially ironic considering that people of color have been cooking and cleaning for white folks for centuries. Many whites have developed a clever way to deal with this: they simply don't think about it. In the old South, food was usually passed from the kitchen prep area to the dining room through either a small counter-top revolving wooden door or a dumb waiter, so that white diners would not be forced to see black skin, which would be distasteful while eating. These days, people of color still do the majority of cooking and cleaning for white America in restaurants and hotels and office buildings; but for the most part they are kept shuffling quietly in the background while white celebrity chefs are fêted on TV.

I must say that it strikes me as a little surreal that the modern corporate culture that gave the world the Big Mac is actually talking gastronomical smack about the ancient culture that gave us noodles and dumplings and culinary contributions far too numerous to get into here. Is catfish from China really more of a threat to our national nutritional regimen than, say, hormone-pumped antibiotic-injected water-added nitrite-preserved meat-product accompanied by high-fructose corn-syrup, insecticide-sprayed artificially-colored produce and genetically-modified starch? Or could the ban on catfish from China — initiated in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana before being backed nationally by the FDA — be somehow related to the fact that Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana are the three biggest US producers of farm-raised catfish?

Now I'm not condoning lax food inspections at all. On the contrary, I'd like to see far stricter standards applied across the board in both the US and China. I'd like to see a crackdown on the inhumane treatment of farm animals and an ambitious clean-up of international agribusiness, from eco-sustainability to social justice in food distribution, from reforming mega-farms and processing plants to school cafeterias and fast food chains.

But the corporate media doesn't generally want to discuss these broader dimensions of the food industry, managed trade, and public health. They want melodramatic hidden-camera exposés of steamed buns made with cardboard filling. They want oriental communist nastiness and celebrity filth. They want a continuation of 150 years of racism, xenophobia, and stereotype-laden disinformation designed by white mainstream media to stoke popular fear and division, and to serve capitalist greed.

From Jeff Yang in The Washington Post:

Of course, serious problems exist in China's massive food-export complex, which is the source of the vast bulk of additives such as xanthan gum and ascorbic acid, as well as 12 percent of the world's fruit and vegetables and about half of the global supply of farm-raised fish. But many of these problems have stemmed from China's embrace of capitalist ethics, unrestrained by the government oversight present in more established industrial economies.

...Food and Drug Administration records show that China isn't even the leading source of contaminated imports to the United States. India and Mexico have exceeded China in "refused food shipments" over the past year, and the leader in rejected candy imports was a country with an otherwise antiseptic image: Denmark. Domestic food sources also aren't exempt from scandal: Remember the California spinach scare last year? And last month, another California-based company recalled more than 75,000 pounds of hamburger distributed in the western United States, the latest in a lengthy series of tainted-meat incidents -- all from American suppliers.

But the media's obsessive focus on China is an easy one -- as easy as the old playground singsong slur that starts "Me Chinese, me make joke" and ends with a tainted Coke. Pointing the finger at Asian imports was the default PR strategy for U.S. auto manufacturers in the 1970s because it was easier to blame faceless, nameless hordes of foreigners than to address the industry's real problems. Asian Americans have already seen the fruit that grows from such toxic soil: Twenty-five years ago last month, Vincent Chin, a young Chinese American man in Detroit, was killed by two disgruntled autoworkers who accused him of being part of a conspiracy to "take away American jobs" before beating him with a baseball bat. Bitter fruit indeed, and a dish we'd rather not see served up again.

From China Matters:

In the United States, the FDA bans a certain class of antibiotics — fluoroqinolones — because widespread use quickly results in the emergence of nasty, resistant strains of bacteria.

If fluoroquinolones ring a bell it’s because one of the varieties — one used as a veterinary product, as a matter of fact — is ciprofloxacin a.k.a. Cipro a.k.a. the anthrax-killer that Americans hysterically stockpiled in the aftermath of 9/11.

Three states — Mississippi, Alabama, and Lousiana — banned Chinese catfish when it tested positive for fluorquinolones. An Alabama congressman, Artur Davis, made it a national issue, Chuck Schumer pontificates, and bingo there’s an FDA import alert, not just against certain importers but the whole country.

Even though the director of the Mississippi Poison Control Center stated (h/t to Left in Alabama) that you’d have to eat 220,000 pounds of Chinese catfish before getting sick...

...and the potential advantages of ingesting huge quantities of Cipro-laced Chinese catfish as an anthrax prophylactic have been inexplicably unaddressed.

Well, maybe not so inexplicably.

Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana may not be at the forefront of food safety, but they are the leading producers of farm-raised catfish and shrimp, the very products threatened by Chinese imports.

The Mississippi Delta, home of the blues, is also heart of the U.S. catfish industry. Big farms in places like Tupelo — Elvis’s home town — and the euphoniously-named Belzoni produce catfish, votes, and political clout.

This clout was displayed in 2005, when the same three states sounded the fluoroquinolone alarm against Vietnam, and Vietnam banned use of the antibiotic in response (the Mises Institute provides the protectionist backstory and waxes indignant here).

This year, I guess because it’s China, the FDA decided to pile on, dinging China for traces of carcinogenic anti-microbial e.g. anti-fungus agents malachite green, gentian violet, and nitrofuran in its aquaculture exports as well as fluoroquinolones.

You have to wonder how bad gentian violet can be, considering it’s used on tampons and to treat thrush in infants. [...]

You get the feeling there’s a lot of things in the U.S. food supply that’s going to kill us a lot quicker than Chinese dace, basa, eels, shrimp, and catfish.

And that the FDA, by issuing an import alert against the entire country of the PRC, is making some kind of political statement instead of a public health move.

After fluoroquinolones were detected in Vietnamese catfish in 2005, the FDA response was kinda different:

Under FDA regulations, when an outlawed chemical is found in a product imported into the US, the importer is placed on a black list, and five more shipments from that importer would be tested before the import ban would be lifted.

Nevertheless, it’s not a bad idea to bring the Chinese feed and food industry in line with higher U.S. standards, so it’s easy to forgive the FDA for a piece of enforcement that’s a teeny bit politically motivated and selective. [...]

If we want to turn food and product quality into an anti-China club, China has signaled it’s going to hit back.

Obliquely harassing China through a campaign of trade-related enforcement actions may seems to be a good match for the tactical impotence of the Bush administration and the passive-aggressive tendencies of the Democrats in negotiating with China.

However, the same unilateralism, tactical expediency, and political opportunism that make these enforcement actions cheap and easy to apply also signal the dearth of political will and international consensus backing them...

...and will encourage the targeted party to escalate instead of compromise if it believes it holds the stronger hand.

Time will tell if the Bush administration's targeted application of anti-dumping, anti-subsidy, and inspection measures against China will yield anything more than rancor and stalemate.

In our moderate-intensity trade war with China, the benefits to the United States, its businesses, and its consumers may be nugatory.

Perhaps the Chinese consumer protection movement will emerge as the real victor instead.

Comments

[Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez]

Great article, Kai.

Yeah, I've noticed the "subtle" onslaught of anti-china propaganda in the last few months. it's really fucking annoying to me, too. as if i do'nt know i'm having smoke blown over me by the big white fog machine.

Thanks for the time and energy and info.

[Sylvia]

Thank you for this excellent write-up, Kai. You tied in all the racist, historical, cultural, corporate/financial, and xenophobic elements seamlessly.

[EBW]

On my way to court yesterday NPR ran a story about a nuclear family which spent the past year not buying anything made in China. It was slightly enlightening to learn that most drip coffee makers and blenders sold in the US are made in China, we don't use either as we're off-grid, and her family's "adaptations" to avoid replacing each sounded odd, childish.

What could motivate such behavior?
Why would NPR give it air-time?

We avoid all food products which contain gluten, when shopping for Sam, and that provides us with a "unique multi-year consumer shopping story", and as gluten makes Sam ill, not a made up one. But the NPR story was a made up story. A "Nothing from China" preference isn't a personal necessity, and it isn't an academic necessity, as domestic human rights organizations, and domestic trade unions, have discovered issues with foreign trade, and have publications on specific issues, some of which involve China.

Thanks for the work, I'll link to this and try not to write anything for a day.

[Lloyd Webber]

"cooties of colour" Priceless. The fact that as an acronym it spells coc is just icing on the cake. Great post

[Nanette]

Peanut butter, spinach, lettuce, beef, chicken, and whatever else that has been sickening and killing USans over the past many months... and not a bit of it made in China.

I think they are not only working to deflect attention from the US food admin failures, but also it's apparent from the polls that most of the other 'be afraid!' staples aren't working well enough, so here is our old friend China to be the boogeyman of the hour.

Excellent pulling together of all this stuff, Kai.

[Eric Stoller]

"lizard-brained racists" - excellent!

Great post, well-written! I love your site!

[Robert]

I know a lot of people who don't like to buy stuff from China - I often avoid Chinese products as well. I don't like to support the business practices of many Chinese factories, nor do I like to support the country itself. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with a disdain for a communist country that harms the environment so much.

[Kai]

Robert, yes, swallow that xenophobic propaganda.

So you actually believe that China does more harm to the environment on a per capita basis than the USA?

I think it's hilarious how Americans, by far the world's most avaricious energy and resource consumers, get righteously indignant about pollution in developing countries. It's almost as if...there's an agenda! And of course it has nothing to do with race. Hehe...

CO2 Emissions
Electricity Consumption
Municipal Waste
Natural Gas Consumption
Oil Consumption

[P.Tane]

The author's use of invective does little to hide the shallowness of this post. The reason China has been in the news is because of the actual sale of tainted ingredients by Chinese companies. People have died because of it. Race has nothing to do with the US wanting to ensure the safety of America's food supply.

http://amazinglyenough.blogspot.com/2007/05/china-diethylene-glycol-and-your-safety.html

http://insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2007/may/13/reg02.htm

The culprit here seems to be robber-barron style capitalism. The Taixing Glycerine Factory re-labels diethyline glycol as glycerine to sell it at a much higher price. This is more like something out of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" than it is from "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

The Communist Chinese Government has long controlled it's economy. Deng XiaoPing allowed a market economy to grow and China's economy began to boom. The government is still developing the necessary tools to regulate this market economy. In the meantime, there are opportunities for unscrupulous companies to do things like re-label poison as glycol and make a ton of cash. The same thing is happening with the lead paint in children's toys. What's racist about preventing these products from being sold to American consumers?

As for the antibiotics in Chinese catfish, the China Matters article seems to dismiss this as hardly a big problem, almost nothing more than an excuse for American companies to seek protectionist legislation.

It's more than that. Certain antibiotics are banned in agricultural use because using them promotes drug resistant strains of bacteria to evolve faster than would otherwise happen.
I find it amazing that the article uses this example at all, mentioning Cipro by name as if to belittle the significance of the situation - after all, it won't hurt us, we take it ourselves as medicine...- Do we really want to take the chance of cutting the effectiveness of antibiotics so that Chines fish farms can raise larger fish cheaper? Of course American catfish farmers complain.

Why should we allow Chinese fish treated with antibiotics into our markets when our own producers are not allowed to use them? What's racist about that?

Actual examples of racism are not hard to find(that racalicious site linked to in the first paragraph). Why the author chose to twist product safety and fair trade into a racial issue is unclear to me.

[Kai]

P.Tane, good one, good one, ya got me. ;-)

[Nanette]

Aha, I thought I'd read this here. I was listening to one of the news shows this morning and was wondering what the backstory was on all the "FEAR CHINA! (but not too much)" items there seemed to be, today and over the past few weeks.

I need to read this more thoroughly.