I’ve made back bean brownies. Not bad. (Oberlin has a recipe in there for brownies made with avocado, too.) And I had to look up fermented beet, but it looks pretty interesting; it’s more about “preserving” than molding. I just think the school should re-name, for the nervous sorts.
There’s an oven fried sesame chicken- guess some will insist that’s usurping some cultural tradition, too.
Matter of fact, I might try some of the Oberlin recipes.
“You are stereotyping the people of one of the world’s most populous countries based on something some people you know told you. It’s tiresome.”
If cobrat can be an expert on everything because of what his friends allegedly discuss with him, then I am proclaiming myself an expert on Oberlin, because a) my H visited and applied there, 35 years ago; b) I used to manage a guy who went to Oberlin; c) I know at least a half dozen other people who went to Oberlin; and d) I spent my Saturday night chatting with my girlfriend whose daughter currently goes there. Ergo and in conclusion, I am an expert on Oberlin.
Might Hawaiians feel spam on white bread as a representation of the all American hot dog is a micro-aggression? or is the use of spam in Hawaii a colonial aggression?
Thanks a lot, @labegg. Now I am craving spam. I’m not Hawaiian but I have been there a bunch of times. Is that okay?
My ethnographies had to do more with sanitary practices.
So maybe the students of Indian descent at Oberlin should complain that they are forced into Western culture by having to use throne-style toilets instead of squatting over a hole, and the cultural expectation that they use toilet paper is a microaggression.
And the students of Japanese descent should complain that they don’t have the washlets they do in Japan.
In fact, every college should be forced to mimic everyone’s homeland traditions because we wouldn’t ever want a situation where someone is exposed to something that they haven’t seen, used, tasted, or thought about before.
This is turning into an “oh yeah? Well I…” Kind of tit for tat. Neither will convince the other.
I must say, yucky food on campus is a rite of passage. Yes, the Bahn whatever didn’t have coleslaw, but then the meatballs probably don’t contain meat either.
I think when they offer these items, it is just a menu choice. They are not trying to offer appropriately prepared dishes to each culture attending. Just some variety. If it is not made properly, so what? It is a cafeteria for heaven’s sake!
Ill prepared and inauthentic food are things to complain about, not microagressions or worthy of starting a SJW revolution. Get the student govt involved in discussions with facilities mgt and move on.
Now stuff said on yik yak, some of that IS worthy of it. When you are ready to go to war over every little thing, no one takes you seriously. Where do you think the phrase “pick your battles” comes from?
My D just got home from Oberlin for Christmas break. She had no clue that this food thing was going on and no one she knows has even mentioned it. She did know about the “demands” from the black student union but only because there are posters everywhere in support of it (she was wondering what the heck it was all about). No talk about that either.
To put it mildly, these things are a much bigger issue to people on blogs and forums than to the vast majority of students at Oberlin.
“Let’s just imagine–and there is some support for this idea–that you have been complaining for several years about Oberlin’s unsatisfactory efforts to make ethnic food available in the dining hall, and you haven’t gotten any response, and the food hasn’t improved. You’re paying a lot of money for that food. What do you do? How do you escalate your complaints so they get some attention? What sort of complaints seem to get attention and action at other colleges?”
Isn’t that what Student Government’s are for?
One of the changes my alma mater made 10 years or so ago was to put the chefs on the front line, serving students. That way they got to see exactly what kids chose and got direct feedback from them. I think schools with food service companies (my alma mater does not have one) have a much harder time making changes because they may have to convince the food service co. to change how they do things for all the schools they service. My guess is that the quickest response would simply be to take the offending items off the menu for that particular school.
Schools are also trying to serve healthier meals with locally sourced ingredients. I think this is a good thing but I think it may result in Banh Mi made with cole slaw or General Tso’s made with baked chicken instead of fried.
@cobrat : I’m a little surprised to see you adopting the openly intolerant, xenophobic rhetoric of the BJP so slavishly.
India is majority Hindu, but not remotely exclusively Hindu. The overall population is about 80% Hindu, but the non-Hindu population of India is about the same size as the white population of the United States. There are plenty of areas where Hindus are not the majority or are not such a large majority, and people eat food in all of those areas and in all communities. Is it not “Indian food” when they do? When Indian Muslims slaughter cows to celebrate Eid, is that not Indian?
Also, I believe there Hindu population is not monolithic in the least in its dietary practices. Some view eating eggs as religiously forbidden; others (who still consider themselves Hindu) eat all kinds of meat besides beef; and some (obviously not so observant) will eat beef as well. To a significant extent, dietary practices may also be tied to caste status, with the “higher” castes of Hindus generally being more picky about their diets than others.
Gee, just like what my post-doc friend said and what most other students at every other university that makes the news say.
People off campus care about these things WAYY more than those on campus.
It’s not about the BJP which I detest as strongly as most of my Indian friends…including the very devoutly observant Hindus among them. Rather, it’s a matter of basic human respect and decency.
The point I’ve been trying to make and that folks like PG seem to be ignoring because they either don’t understand or don’t care is that for some folks who follow religions with restrictive dietary laws…being served a restricted food item supposedly labeled as food from their home culture can be highly offensive and provoke fears of accidentally ingesting the restricted food item due to ignorance of the food service company/servers and/or due to possible fears some jerks would feel it’s fun to sneak in some beef into their food as a way to have fun at their expense.
Fears which aren’t invalid considering Hindu Indian workers recount how “real Murikans” at their undergrad colleges or past workplaces pulled that very stunt on them and the fears and feelings which come from finding out they’ve violated the dietary laws of their religion along with suspicions about ■■■■■■■ Americans who pull stunts like these. Heck, I’ve lost count of how many times “real murikans” among some colleagues in past workplaces and in news forums talked about sneaking in pork in the meals taken by Muslim colleagues/classmates just to get a good laugh.
Maybe it’s a big joke to folks like PG and those of her ilk, but it certainly wasn’t funny with those colleagues or any of the observant Hindus I’ve known growing up in NYC and attending schools where Indian students made up a decent portion of the student body.
And word of this does spread around back to their relatives and neighbors in India which is one reason why the Oberlin Indian students and Hindu activist organizations in the US felt the need to express their protest at the Oberlin dining hall’s choice to serve beef in Tandoori dishes. Basically, unlike past generations of passively accepting this asinine behavior, they’re not going to continue to sit down and take it anymore.
I’m looking forward to asking my current Oberlin student SJW nephew about this at the Christmas dinner we’re hosting as we serve our foreign born/domestic, vegetarian/carnivorous, Republican/Democrat, religious/atheist and white/non-white guests.
The above is serious.
According to my S, who is hanging out with his cousin over vacation, nephew’s FB reposting of the demand letter caused some discussion among his friends at home, with even some of his very liberal friends felling the letter had gone too far. S walked out on one debate with this cousin. I haven’t heard anything about the food issue, which makes me believe Troyus and romanigypsyeyes are right about this not really being a hot button issue on campus right now. I don’t remember any mention of the Oberlin food being bad when we were at a post-Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of his local Oberlin classmates, but maybe it just didn’t come up.
"PG seem to be ignoring because they either don’t understand or don’t care is that for some folks who follow religions with restrictive dietary laws…being served a restricted food item supposedly labeled as food from their home culture can be highly offensive "
I don’t know why you keep saying I “don’t understand or don’t care” when I EXPLICITLY said that I agree it’s a problem if the food were labeled as vegetarian and it really wasn’t vegetarian. But it is not inherently “offensive” for a place to serve beef kheema labeled as such, when you can find that in India and India is NOT 100% not-beef-eating as you seem to think it is.
And your point about your Orthodox Jewish classmate screaming at a non-Jew who put ham on matzoh is really irrelevant to anything. Jews don’t believe the laws of kosher are binding on non-Jews, so they have NO OPINION on what non-Jews eat and don’t eat. Gosh, growing up in New York, you’d think you’d know that.
We absolutely get that some cultures have restrictive dietary laws. We aren’t ignorant. But to expect every situation out there to adhere to what one expects ‘at home’ is impractical. Smart college students should be savvy to this. Every person I know with allergies is careful to double-check.
We aren’t going to be informed by more anecdotes, cobrat. Or snarky comments about “real Murikans” or some assumption “stunts” are rampant. That’s not the sensitivity you claim your relatives and co-workers have impressed upon you.
I suggest any of us with friends who delight in some of the pranks you keep telling us about be more cautious about whom they associate with.
@cobrat, please reference the post number where PizzaGirl ever said that it would be funny to sneak beef into a vegetarian’s plate.
Or did you just make that up because you like to take personal pot shots at her?
They were colleagues at work, not friends. Beyond having to be with them at work, I had nothing to do with them outside work…thankfully.
I never said it was 100% not-beef eating. I made that clear when I mentioned the exceptions of areas where Hindus aren’t the dominant majority or in urban upper/upper-middle class/western expat/tourist enclaves.
However, Hindus do make up 80% of India according to India’s government statistics I linked to in an earlier post and despite outrage about the increasing troubling trend of Hindu extremist nationalist rhetoric and violence against non-Hindus by many observant Hindus…the BJP is unfortunately popular enough in enough regions and nationally to get themselves elected to the point the Congress party has effectively been relegated to the political sidelines atm.
So what? That doesn’t mean that it’s “insulting” or “offensive” for the cafeteria at Oberlin to serve beef kheema (or beef whatever). If it’s “insulting” or “offensive,” then every Indian restaurant in my area that offers beef options is “insulting” or “offensive” and the Oberlin-ites need to go protest it, too.
It WOULD be wrong if they were to label a dish as vegetarian when it was beef – but that wouldn’t be specific to Hindus / Indians - it would be because, well, people wish to avoid certain foods for a variety of reasons, whether it’s religious, health, or social consciousness and it would be sloppy and careless not to be accurate about what is in there. But that’s not a “microaggression.”
BTW are you going to answer Nrdsb’s question about why you claimed that I thought it would be funny-ha-ha to sneak beef into a vegetarian’s diet?