China Food Scare Harming Asian Americans?
Recently there has been a bit of press about products such as food or medicines or toothpaste or whatever coming out of China that are anywhere from unsafe to lethal. An article on ABC News’ web site (Click here to read) writes how some fear that it could affect the restaurant business or the perceptions of Asian Americans. It is the latter I feel is more realistic.
The article touches upon the fact that there is a view that a lot Chinese restaurants or food are considered dirty, but I don’t think we’ll see any massive boycotts of Chinese food especially since many don’t rely on food imported from China. Besides, love of Chinese food is quite pervasive across many cultures. As for Chinese restaurants being dirty, some of them are and some of them are not similar to any other cuisine.
As for a negative perception of Asian Americans building up, this is something that I would hate to see, and it really makes no sense. Virtually none of us have anything to do with importing food from China. A few greedy (seems like a universal trait no matter the race) people have tainted perceptions. But experience will tell you that discrimination usually has no rationale or intelligence driving it. It seems America loves having enemies. It’s quite focused on Middle East, but with the growing power in China, I feel like it could shift easily.
This is not the first time food has been recalled, and the blame goes across many different nationalities and countries including the US as the article points out in the end.
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