Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, mom, & well not so fast. Hot dogs cause global warming, baseball means people gather outdoors and that means they might catch covid, mom is now a birthing person, and apple pie? Oh, haven't you heard?
Raj Patel whines in The Guardian:
Resting on gingham cloth, a sugar-crusted apple pie cools on the window sill of a midwestern farmhouse. Nothing could be more American. Officially American. The Department of Defense once featured the pie in an online collection of American symbols, alongside Uncle Sam and cowboys.
Not that apples are particularly American. Apples were first domesticated in central Asia, making the journey along the Silk Road to the Mediterranean four thousand years ago. Apples traveled to the western hemisphere with Spanish colonists in the 1500s in what used to be called the Columbian Exchange, but is now better understood as a vast and ongoing genocide of Indigenous people.
Not that the recipe for apple pie is uniquely American. It’s a variant on an English pumpkin recipe. By the time the English colonized the new world, apple trees had become markers of civilization, which is to say property. In Virginia, apple trees were used to demonstrate to the state that land had been improved. John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, took these markers of colonized property to the frontiers of US expansion where his trees stood as symbols that Indigenous communities had been extirpated.
Not that the sugar on the crust is uniquely American. Sugar cane was first brought to the US by Jesuits in 1751, but most US sugar remained an import until the Haitian revolution. When enslaved workers seized the French colony in 1791, European capitalists sought new sugar cane fields and workers. French merchants of sugar and slavery landed in Louisiana in the late 1700s. Within 50 years, the US produced a quarter of the world’s sugar cane, and New Orleans had become a concomitant hub of the slave trade. After emancipation, the economics of sugar shifted. The American civil war pushed the frontier of sugar westward. Hawaii’s sugar plantations grew during US Reconstruction. When the Philippines was a US colony between 1898 and 1946, Filipino workers were exempted from the “Asiatic barred zone”’ to work in the US sugar plantations in Hawaii, replacing more militant Japanese labourers.
Not that the gingham on which our apple pie rests is uniquely American. Columbus recorded cotton being used and worn during his first voyage by his Indigenous hosts. The gingham pattern likely originated in south-east Asia, the word deriving from the Malay genggang, a striped cloth that arrived in Europe as Europe colonized Asia. Cotton from India became central to the British East India Company, representing three-quarters of the corporation’s exports by 1766. As Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton tells, this war capitalism enslaved and committed acts of genocide against millions of Indigenous people in North America, and millions of Africans and their descendants through the transatlantic slave trade. In the process, cotton laid the basis of finance, police and government that made the United States.
Since this is quite a lot to acknowledge, it is easier to misremember. In the drama of nationalist culture, the bloody and international origins of the apple pie are subject to a collective amnesia. In the imagining of American community, the dish is transformed into a symbol of domesticity. By 1910, it’s possible for a theatre review to celebrate a wholesome play, “as American as apple pie”... Rest of essay.
I bet this sounded very profound to Mr. Patel as he read over his work.
35 comments:
The etymology of the term "dumb ass" doesn't originate with Mr. Patel. But he is more dumb ass than apple pie is American.
Why did you post this garbage?
There are some asinine people in this country. The author from The Guardian sounds one of the worst ones.
What you’re saying is that we are racist for enjoying apple pie. Only if you are a Caucasian.
Civilization and literacy comes with a price. Mr. Patel would be stuck in a crude, South Asian caste system but for the transformation introduced by the British.
As callous as it sounds, shit happens. One side of my family is descended mostly from immigrants from Ireland, you know that country where a million people starved to death while their country was a net exporter of food. Not often reported today is that the religious practices of the Aztecs were so barbaric they shocked even the Conquistadors, who (cultural relativism aside) immediately began dismantling this "religion" that was responsible for killing tens of thousands of indigenous people in ritual human sacrifices. Point being, it's going to be a rare region in this world where some sort of genocide hasn't occurred at one point or another in history, and that includes every continent except Antarctica, and that's just because nobody lived there. Humans just naturally excel at killing other humans, and it's not an exclusive talent to one race...they all have done it in the past.
Interesting read. There’s some good history there even if you don’t accept the author’s perspective on it. Not sure why that makes the author an idiot other than anyone who doesn’t share the your warped views has to be called names and belittled to attempt to shape a narrative. The right’s sudden crusade against free speech is concerning.
6:27. . .Didn't you know that being racist is unique to Caucasians? White people are racists. Other people of "color" oops, that's term is racist) can't be racists - only proud of their heritage that must be celebrated to the exclusion of the other races.
Fake News
8:38 said, "The right’s sudden crusade against free speech is concerning."
The level which the left will stoop to lie is stunning. Leftist Andrew Cuomo stated the "First Amendment should not apply to hate speech." Universities boot students for stating conservative opinions.
Yet in 8:38's view, for a conservative to disagree with a liberal is to launch a crusade against free speech.
Anon. 8:38
Patel's piece is lamentable because benefits of Western/Christian civilizing effects are excluded.
11:16 am:
This 'garbage' from Patel is posted to demo a leftist perspective. One must know one's enemy to vanquish it.
@8:38 AM,
I don't think Mr. Patel is an idiot. I'm just wondering why he is wasting his time researching and writing about something that is so meaningless. If he thinks apple pie is un-American that's fine. Just don't eat it and put something else in your pie hole.
StarRider,
Well stated.
Our college campuses are full of nitwits who too much relish the term "intellectual". They cling to the idea that to be an 'intellectual" you must publish something no one else has thought about or at least published. So they come up with all kinds of bullshit which some inexperienced kids believe because it flies against their parent's values. It gets attention. They make the author an expert on his own bullshit. He gets famous. It produces nothing, it ultimately means nothing. But he gets famous. Critical theory. There is no end to it.
I went to the Farmers Market this morning and all I bought was the Apple pies this sweet couple were selling. And I got some of Andy’s free Ant Poison.
Patel is a dipshit.
With that said, the Bhagavad Gita is a more accurate depiction of the celestial war for control of the universe, and a more relevant religious text than the Christian Bible, The Torah, The Talmud, and The Quran.
There is a reason that JR Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita when they tested the Trinity Atom Bomb.
America really has no culture except for greed, consumption, ignorance and mental illness.
Even Mark Twain wrote about this fact.
If Kingfish will approve my comment then you will see evidence for the ignorance and mental illness.
I'm fairly sure that the only dishes that are truly North American are anything made with corn, turkeys, venison, bison, lobster and other fish. The native Americans ate them long before white or black people came here, bringing their cultural food preferences with them.
I'm glad he doesn't like apple pie, it leaves more for me.
Biotch please!
"America really has no culture except for greed, consumption, ignorance, and mental illness" said the leader of the pack.
I have the feeling not everyone commenting here has read the whole article (hint: the whole article is not posted on this page). Looks like many just got riled up about the apple pie.
Dang it boy, i just printed a picture, if y'all will excuse me target practice time.
@12:42 - I’d be surprised if most read past kingfish’s intro.
“ Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, mom, & well not so fast. Hot dogs cause global warming, baseball means people gather outdoors and that means they might catch covid, mom is now a birthing person, and apple pie? Oh, haven't you heard?”
I bet this sounded very profound to Mr. Kingfish as he read over his work.
Bedwetter alert. I thought we still allowed free speech? I guess if the right wing gets offended, then it shouldn’t be allowed. Good luck forcing what history our teachers can teach guys. Let me know how that turns out for you.
Always good to learn new things, but this is typical lefty whining. Hopefully one day they actually leave the country and see other countries that “culturally appropriate” us, which includes Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian American culture and possibly learn about world history instead of the half ass woke history where they pick and choose what they want to whine about to fit a narrative. But unfortunately they like to get their panties in a wad for whatever reason and cry about American culture/history.
@8:38, there is NO right wing war against free speech. We support the right to say whatever you want, we also support the right to get your teeth knocked the fuck out for it.
The real bedwetters are some of the posters here, not the author.
Why is it that people who despise the past don’t move their ass somewhere else. It’s just to easy to whine like a little bitch. History is full countries and people who did bad things to other people. And it’s not a secret. So make the place you live better or move to another country. Complaining about crap you can’t change because it happened hundreds of years ago pretty much shows an inability to forgive sins of the past and is racist! Live with it!!!
J.R. Oppenheimer also said, "Life is a farce."
What about Chevrolet? Remember Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet?
@2:27 - you must not follow the current news. The right is currently trying to make it illegal for teachers to teach about the racist parts of our country’s history. They certainly don’t think websites should be allowed to block content from conspiracy theorists and propaganda machines. So I ask you, should teachers only be allowed to teach certain parts of our history or face arrest? Should privately owned websites be allowed to determine which content they publish?
" don't think Mr. Patel is an idiot. I'm just wondering why he is wasting his time researching and writing about something that is so meaningless. If he thinks apple pie is un-American that's fine. "
Good lord 10:04.
Are you that naive?
Those Indian/Pakistani guys are more privileged than most Jackson Prep 7th graders (with Mom) at Mistletoe Marketplace.
And regarding apple pie, buy one of the homemade pies at the Natchez Market.
I don't think Mr. Patel realizes that the USA is comprised of people from all over the world. A fruit pie, contributed to by multiple ethnicities, is quintessentially American. He totally missed the boat on that one.
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