I stumbled upon an intriguing June 7 post by Tamara K. Nopper, Ph.D., Adjunct Assistant Professor, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. She discusses the racial dynamics of the popular reality TV show Top Chef on the cable network Bravo. How the entertainment industry deals with race is an element of our communications strategy here at EJS. We developed a focus on this knowing that popular culture has a powerful impact on Americans; and the way that TV shows, movies and other entertainment platforms frame race is an area that we must continue to engage in. Her blog post is re-posted here from the Everyday Sociology blog with Dr. Nopper’s permission.
“Top Chef and the Black/Non-Black Divide”
I love the show Top Chef. I watch it religiously and regularly chat about it with fellow fan and friend Kevin Eddington. Although more of a foodie than me—he actually knows what sous videmeans—we share concerns about the show’s racial dynamics, some of which I want to discuss here. Specifically, I want to explore how Asian Americans and African Americans are represented on Top Chef and in the process, draw from approaches emphasizing the Black/non-Black divide.
The Black/non-Black framework is proposed by George Yancey in his book Who is White?: Latinos, Asians, and the New Black/Nonblack Divide. According to Yancey, this framework is more helpful for analyzing racism than a white/non-white paradigm because Blacks experience a unique degree of social isolation, as evidenced by how whites, Latinos, and Asian Americans reject them as potential neighbors and marriage partners yet remain open to each other. Yancey’s conclusion bears out on the show.
Asian Americans are present as contestants, chefs, judges, and of course, hosts, and Hung Huynh won the title on season three. Yet Asian Americans face particular racial expectations: they’re encouraged to talk about their ethnicities or immigration histories, badmouthed for cooking too many Asian-influenced dishes, or expected to cook Asian food regardless of training. For example, Huynh was told that despite his skill and “technique,” his food lacked “soul.”
White head judge Tom Colicchio, reminding Huynh of Huynh’s Vietnamese background,said he didn’t “see” him in his food. Such comments reinforce the model minority myth, which celebrates “Asian” work ethic and mechanical productivity while denying us unconditional subjectivity, sociability, and authority automatically afforded whites.
Ultimately Huynh incorporated Asian-influenced flavors into his final meal in hopes of revealing his “authentic” (ethnic) self to the judges. As Huynh tried to express “soul,” his (aired) image shifted from a technically efficient, ultra-competitive, and unlikable Asian to a more humbled Asian eager to take advantage of American opportunities available to him and other immigrants, making one blogger conclude, “he seemed to…acquire social skills in front of my eyes.”
Whereas Asian Americans are racialized in ways that whites aren’t— white contestants aren’t expected to cook foods of their ethnicities so that judges “know” them—African Americans, for the most part, are physically absent from the show. Yet as Frank B. Wilderson, III explains in the anthology Biko Lives!, even when physically present, Blacks remain absent. Despite the popularity and skills of Tre Wilcox and Carla Hall, they exemplify what Wilderson describes as “the absence of a subjective presence.” Unlike Asian Americans, who could explicitly reference their ethnic backgrounds, they could not. They couldn’t talk about Black marginalization in the culinary industry, but were forced to adopt de-racialized tropes of gender and class marginalization used by whites, particularly women and those who are not classically trained.
Black participants also lacked what Wilderson describes as “political presence” in that they were denied cultural and institutional authority. Although Blacks don’t automatically cook (or eat) “soul food,” they are often relegated to doing so regardless of training. While “ghettoizing,” such gestures, as my friend Kevin points out, also imply that soul food has little value to the non-Black culinary world.
Indeed, no chefs were expected to know foods that are culturally associated with Black people, with the exception of the final competitions held in New Orleans on season five. Yet at both dinners, all of the judges were white except for Asian host and judge Padma Lakshmi. Because Bravo TV, which airs Top Chef, doesn’t have all five seasons archived on its website, I can’t say for certain, but I only remember one Black person, chef Govind Armstrong, ever sitting at the judges’ table during deliberations. I only remember four other Black people—and only one of them a chef—serving as guest diners: chef Marcus Samuelsson (whom my friend Kevin points out was not born or raised in the United States), actress and comic Aisha Tyler, sociologist Mary Patillo (who was never introduced to viewers but who I recognized from being in the same profession), and musician Branford Marsalis—who was the lone Black guest at the final New Orleans dinner.
Marsalis even drew attention to his lack of political presence: after listening to others discuss how dishes tasted good but didn’t “pop,” he remarked that chefs talk just like musicians. Although the others tittered, Marsalis, perhaps inadvertently, alluded to the absurdity of his physical presence as a musician at a food competition where all of the other guests were esteemed members of the culinary world—and all non-Black.
Consistent with Yancey’s and Wilderson’s arguments, then, Asian Americans are more present in multiple ways compared to African Americans on Top Chef. Asian Americans compete, host, sample, and judge. We’re recognized as having an identifiable culture and permitted narratives of “Asian Americanness.” Intrusive, limiting, and racist, these narratives nevertheless serve to endear us to non-Asians because they affirm our presumed ethnic “exoticness” while simultaneously re-institutionalizing “universal” ideas related to the white immigrant experience that emphasize outsider status (but not social inequality). And, Asian cuisine is treated as a legitimate cuisine with history, culture, and place as demonstrated by whites citing it as their specialty, talking about taking classes in Asian cooking, or traveling to Asian countries to learn flavors and techniques. Finally, Asian cuisine is racialized as simultaneously traditional and global and therefore marketable to non-Asians.
Enjoyable to watch, Top Chef is, like many pleasures experienced in a racist society, an opportunity for sociological reflection. When the soon to be launched Top Chef Masters airs, I am sure my friend Kevin and I’ll have lots to dish about. And I am certain that the Black/non-Black divide framework will still be useful for understanding the show’s dynamics. The program’s website already tells me as much. Announcing the competition of “24 world-renowned chefs,” its pictures do indeed speak a thousand words. As images of participants reveal, a few Asian Americans will be featured as competitors and host/judge; but this time around, there are literally no Blacks on the show.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded the Equal Justice Society (EJS) a $1 million, three-year grant to support the organization’s ongoing efforts to address structural racial inequities, restore equal protection jurisprudence and help build a public platform - a “Grand Alliance” - for the racial justice advocacy movement.
EJS is a national strategy group heightening consciousness on race in the law and popular discourse. Employing strategies including law and public policy advocacy, cross-disciplinary convenings and strategic public communications, EJS seeks to restore race equity issues to the national consciousness, strengthen progressive alliances, and advance the discourse on the positive role of government.
The Kellogg Foundation grant will enhance EJS’s capacity in two key areas: improving the understanding and consideration of race in the law to minimize or remove barriers to equal opportunity; and fostering a “Grand Alliance” that encompasses a wide range of individuals, organizations and movements working together to achieve common goals and a collective vision.
“We are deeply grateful for the Kellogg Foundation’s generosity and its recognition of our work to move us closer to a society where race is no longer a barrier to opportunity,” said Eva Paterson, EJS co-founder and president. “EJS can now more aggressively pursue initiatives that have a long-term impact on the progressive and racial justice movements.”
EJS is one of the few institutions with an explicit focus on overturning barriers to implementing the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and antidiscrimination legislation. We are dedicated to redefining the “Equal Protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in order to redress and prevent present-day forms of bias and discrimination.
Our legal strategy aims to broaden conceptions of present-day discrimination by redefining the legal understanding of discrimination and how it operates. Our theory of changing the law relies upon real-life experiences of race and racial discrimination, and is supported by scientific evidence regarding the process and operation of discrimination at multiple levels, including the individual, institutional and structural. Because contemporary discrimination is frequently structural in nature, unconscious, or hidden beneath alternative excuses for a decision maker’s behavior (despite the fact that a tangible harm has resulted from their actions), the showing of “intent,” as required under current Equal Protection doctrine, becomes a near impossible burden to meet.
Moreover, the notion of proving “intent” has started to bleed into areas of law outside equal protection jurisprudence. In recent years, courts have demanded that plaintiffs prove “intent” in education, employment, criminal law and environmental discrimination cases. Thus, protection against any form of discrimination is under attack as long as the “intent” doctrine remains in place.
In developing a progressive vision of the law and of justice, we must acknowledge the interconnectedness between various issues, struggles and constituencies. This philosophy is the basis of EJS’s efforts to build a national “Grand Alliance.”
A Grand Alliance will create a culture of, and infrastructure for, engaging in cross-silo organizing and strategizing, educating our allies and ourselves - and supporting each other during difficult periods. Today’s civil rights movement must coalesce diverse communities and achieve a broad-based advocacy agenda inclusive of issues such as equal opportunity, marriage equality, and progressive immigration reform.
EJS has a proud tradition of reaching out to marginalized communities and advocating on behalf of social justice issues that have not always fallen under the civil rights umbrella.
EJS will continue supporting legal action to overturn California Proposition 8 and strengthen alliances between the African American and LGBT communities. We will also continue participating in strategic convenings on marriage equality, racial justice, and other intersecting issues. Likewise, EJS will continue supporting the immigrants’ rights movement by helping advance a progressive immigrant integration platform as well as strengthen support for immigrants’ rights from the civil rights, legal, and African American communities.
The Kellogg Foundation grant provides $200,000 to be applied in the first two years and $600,000 in the third and final year.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930. The organization supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. For further information, please visit the Foundation’s website at www.wkkf.org.
The election of President Obama shows how far America has progressed in overcoming the racial divides that for so long scarred this country. But while overt racism is less and less acceptable in America, unconscious racial bias still plays a large role in our politics and society, as a new project launched this week by the Institute for America’s Future seeks to explore.
EJS and our president, Eva Paterson, have been involved in the project, called “Americans for American Values,” (AmericansForAmericanValues.org) which will research the effects of unconscious racial bias on decision making and will develop strategies to support decision-making based on consciously held American values rather than on racial anxiety and stereotypes.
Technologist Mary Hodder discussed yesterday on the blog TechCrunch the ethical issues related to the Amazon ‘glitch’ that removed the rankings of gay content made me think about analogies between the technical causes of the glitch and how unconscious bias can fuel structural racism.
Background on the Amazon ‘glitch’ issue from Wikipedia (edited):
Users on Twitter generated a firestorm of criticism that some erotic, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, feminist and progressive books were being excluded from Amazon’s sales rankings.
Various books and media were flagged as “adult content” (including children’s books, self-help books, non-fiction, and non-explicit fiction), with the result that works by established authors like E. M. Forster, Gore Vidal, Jeanette Winterson and D. H. Lawrence were now unranked.
The change first received publicity on the blog of author Mark R. Probst, who reproduced an e-mail from Amazon customer service describing a policy of de-ranking “adult” material.
However, Amazon later said that there was no policy of de-ranking LGBT material, and blamed the change first on a “glitch” and then on “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” that had affected 57,310 books.
Here’s the meat of Mary Hodder’s TechCrunch post: Read more
Yesterday marked an important victory for advocates of school diversity and equal opportunity. A California Court of Appeals ruled that Berkeley Unified School District’s policy of taking neighborhood demographics into account when making school assignments is not discriminatory as alleged by challengers.
The Court concluded that the District’s plan “does not show partiality, prejudice or preference to any student on the basis of that student’s race,” and that “the particular policy challenged here…is not discriminatory.” Therefore, the plan does not violate Proposition 209, California’s anti-affirmative action initiative passed in 1996.
In arriving at its decision, the court invoked the continuing legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, and affirmed the ability of school districts to develop and implement affirmative policies that foster social diversity and inclusion in their schools.
The Coalition for Economic Equity (CEE) on Friday announced that after a nearly three-year hiatus, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is poised to reinstate race-conscious goals for federally funded transportation contracts in California.
CEE is an umbrella coalition of associations serving diverse minority- and women-owned businesses that was first formed in 1982 in response to an almost total exclusion of MBEs and WBEs from San Francisco’s public contracting system. In 1984, the Coalition succeeded in securing enactment of San Francisco’s first contracting equity ordinance introduced by Supervisors Doris M. Ward and Willie B. Kennedy. Since that time, the Coalition has worked to strengthen and defend contracting equity programs throughout the Bay Area, as well as at the state and federal levels.
CEE has confirmed with the Federal Highway Administration that the Caltrans’ Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program needs no further approvals to set goals for improving the awarding of these contracts.
Tammy Johnson on racewire.com talks about her concerns over the use of racially coded language in President Obama’s address to Congress earlier this week. Her post has additional comments in addition to the video.
It’s interesting to take Tammy’s analysis and compare it to George Lakoff’s pre-speech assessment of the “Obama Code,” his definition of how the President tends to “express his moral vision indirectly” - “connects with his audience using what cognitive scientists call the ‘cognitive unconscious,’ ” and utilizes “seven deep, insightful, and subtle intellectual moves.”
