The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)
news.colgate.edu
news.colgate.edu
Dr Kwak was a real person, and the letter contains historical facts linking it to him. His family says the letter is genuine. According to blind studies, the symptoms described in it are experienced by a small percentage of the population, but MSG is harmless to everyone else.
The article links to the This American Life podcast in question, here is the transcript:
"Dr Kwak" seems like an unfortunate typo for a doctor.
Here's the transcript: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/transcript
TLDR: it started as a bet/prank and became an accepted truth thanks to racism and people being simple.
EDIT: this article is literally based on the podcast. Just listen go it, it's a good one :)
The article was from Feb 6, 2019. The podcast was from Feb 15, 2019.
Does anybody know the conclusion? Was the part about a joke letter because of a bet real or not?
> So it seems like Howard didn't write the fake prank letter that caused decades of chaos. His prank was that he said he had written the letter. He was claiming credit for chaos he didn't create. It was complicated to even think about.
Too bad the linked article hasn't edited their story with this information. This will just create another myth and further spread false information.
I have a 1 pound bag of msg and I add it to all kinds of stuff but it only has recommendations for soup on the bag. On other things I just sprinkle it (I dedicated an old salt shaker to dispensing MSG instead hehe)
the result is naturally tasting food that got a little umami edge.
My grandma goes nuclear on it, usually in equal amounts of salt. That's usually too much in my opinion.
https://www.chick-fil-a.com/menu-items/chick-fil-a-deluxe-sa... (expand the "Ingredients" sub-item and search for "monosodium glutamate")
I say partly because we the consumers have been tricked into thinking fried chicken is somehow healthy because it has all of the buzz words associated with it ("organic", "free range")
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E3%83%98%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B7%...
So it finds entries of people who claim to present a healthy fried chicken recipe.
Now to claim "plenty of people think fried chicken is healthy", wouldn't we need to search for plain "healthy chicken" instrad and then find surprisingly many fried chicken items?
But saturated fat is legitimately bad for you. You should consult any introductory university biology course rather than blog posts (even if they are endorsed by decorated MDs or PhDs - science in consensus based).
Not all LDL is the same. VLDL and glycated LDL seem to be the problematic markers and aren't necessarily directly tied to saturated fat in the diet. HDL:TG as a ratio is a far better marker for overall health than HDL:LDL or cholesterol markers on their own by count. It's more about oxidative stress and inflammation more than it is about dietary cholesterol and saturated fat specifically.
Not to say you should eat an unnatural amount of either only in so much that you shouldn't avoid natural food sources in favor of say processed foods which are far worse in so many ways. I'm an advocate of mostly paleo, most of the time and that should include animal sources even if only fish and/or eggs.
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/18/asia/chinese-restaurant-s...
> More recently, studies have roundly debunked the idea that MSG is harmful. Multiple studies using placebos have shown no difference in effects on people eating food with or without MSG. In 1995, the Food and Drug Administration asked an independent scientific group, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, to study MSG’s safety. It found that only a small number of people experienced any side effects, and that was only after consuming six times the normal serving of MSG on an empty stomach.
We've pretty clear evidence of harm from certain doses of cyanide. We don't have it for MSG, despite a whole lot of trying.
Some people have a lower tolerance than "most people", for any given chemical, MSG included.
I don't think this sentence has any meaning. What is "the same order of magnitude"? By the normal definition (still not great, but at least it's well-defined), 6 times x is only in the same order of magnitude as x when x is in the range [0,1.7), and it's in the next order of magnitude up when x is in [1.7,10). Even if we adjust that to a log scale, 6x is in the same order of magnitude when x is in the interval [0,0.23] and in the next higher order of magnitude when x is in (0.23, 1).
This is not a solid foundation for the idea that "six times is in the same order of magnitude", even if we think the sentence is interpretable.
The underlying message that some restaurants might plausibly put 6x the MSG of the standard dose comes across just fine and it doesn’t need to be nitpicked to hell.
Still, the point stands - a 6x difference between normally-served dose and a harmful one is way too small to call it non-harmful. How do you even define a normally-served dose? This needs further clarification with better definitions.
We happily accept a 1.5-2x margin for Tylenol.
If you accidentally put 6x the normal amount of MSG in some fried rice, you’re gonna know about it.
Sadly, almonds that taste of something have become much harder to find.
Where did you hear that potatoes contained cyanide?
Heuristics are a mental shortcut, not evidence themselves.
> Multiple studies using placebos have shown no difference in effects on people eating food with or without MSG.
Do you realize how many non-celiacs claim glutten intolerance? The existence of a fad does not preclude the existence of a condition.
> randomized blinded studies found no effect at all.
1. MSG in a capsule is not how MSG in food is delivered. So perhaps the delivery mechanism has something to do with it. Perhaps the capsule allows the MSG to pass the tongue, or esophagous, or stomach, with far less reactivity than free MSG does. Maybe the interaction of MSG with other chemicals is necessary for the effects to manifest.
2. Maybe there exists a psycophysical element for some subjects? Such as the commonplace phenomenon of non-celiac "gluten intolerant" people. If those types of people self-select to take part in a study, no wonder no connection is found. And real sufferers would stay far away from a study that promises to expose them to a chemical that they know to be harmful to themselves.
3. There have been many studies which have found no connection between smoking and lung cancer. There have been many studies which have found no connection between fossil fuel usage and climate change. The existence of a study which finds no connection does not mean that such a connection does not exist. Especially when a huge industry depends upon no connection being found.
There have been studies which get self-selecting individuals to test their reaction, which would make #2 less likely. The best study, I think is https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/027869..., where none of the individuals tested knew what they were being tested for. Maybe all msg sensitive people opted out of any food challenge, but that's not always the case, given the 2000 study in the linked tweet.
I think #1 is the most likely explanation, fwiw.
> it could be the case that all the studies are simply right
"There’s no evidence to substantiate the claim that MSG causes ill effects in most people who consume it. A minority of people are hypersensitive to glutamate and MSG in food—added or natural—and in a study where MSG was given at 3 grams, in the absence of food, sensitive individuals had short-term, transient adverse reactions."
[0] https://peterattiamd.com/should-we-still-be-worried-about-ms...
Counter-tip -- if your children prefer to eat fast food, that may be due to the additives that make the fast food more enjoyable than home-cooked food. So learning how to incorporate some of their tricks into your own cooking can help your family enjoy the home-cooked foods more. In other words, learning how to enhance your cooking with MSG (Accent) can lead to more (healthy) meals consumed at home (assuming you are otherwise preparing healthy meals).
As for proportions -- I've used 1/4 teaspoon per pound of meet, or per 6 servings of stew/soups/vegetable dishes, etc.
There's another store brand called "Accent" that's good, too.
It's an amusing tale, but rather unsettling how easily fooled we can be. I remember (growing up as late as the '80s) people legitimately wondering whether an MSG allergy was responsible for their loaginess and fatigue. A number of tv news programs like 20/20 ran cover stories about it. To hear it was all bunk is a sobering reminder to take what we read with a grain of salt. Even much of the hysteria surrounding coronavirus and the like.
I don't have an answer to this, but these publications take a serious long term credibility hit with stories like these. And rightfully so.
And I think that's ultimately the culprit for this hoax.
Just because a reporter at a NYTimes lacks the most basic scientific knowledge to understand that this "letter to the editor" was merely a joke, doesn't mean that it's the fault of the scientific/medical journal -- with a very specific audience, mind you -- for taking a comedy minute.
What's next? We're not allowed to talk in our professional roles and circles using the long established terms for technical concepts, just because the jargon could be misinterpreted by people unfamiliar with the field and the subject matter? Oh... Nevermind...
I'm being a little snotty about this, but the problem is that things often don't have "clean" stories behind them.
Excess salt has been one of the "heart health" bugaboos for years. Yet the evidence that it is unhealthy is quite thin on the ground.
"Nutrition science" is often anything but.
Ajinomoto is the powdered form that makes MSG easy. Traditionally umami is extracted through fermentation (as it is in soy sauce) or through konbu (seaweed) or fish (vietnamese fish sauce, katsuo dashi).
The only potential issue, as with any food, is with allergies. Growing up in Japan, there was a rumor that Ajinomoto may contribute to atopic dermatitis (atopy). Still doesn't appear to be any evidence of it [1].Of course, peanuts, milk, soy, wheat, fish, and eggs are the most common culprits, so it's not bad company to be in even if it were true.
[1] https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(06)03525-1/ful...
But why are Americans suprised? Anti-vax. Anti-5G. Anti-round Earth. Anti-2020-Election. MSG is the least of your worries.
N.B.: I recommend Knorr's Caldo de Tomate. It's an MSG-based seasoning that will up your Spanish Rice game by 3-5x.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21372742/ (first paper SERPs returned for me) suggests that MSG increases BP over the order of years. Not sure the "it's entirely healthy" claims pan out?
But the thing is MSG is like drugs, you seemingly need ever more of it. That's why I don't really like modern Chinese eateries, they might taste fantastic, but I know they are constantly search for the next MSG-derivative that can "wow" people(in fact MSG is realy outdated, it's mowhere to been seen in China now, there are countless stronger synthetic flavor "essence" in the market.)
I actively avoid it myself, dishes just taste fake, only add it when like I'm doing a seaweed soup.
I’m almost positive Koreans think they are better than Chinese, and the Chinese think they are better than Koreans, and they both low key hate Japan’s uppityness (Of course the Japanese consider them ‘less than’, we can certainly throw in some historical advantage taking to add flame to this). This is like a age old tale in almost any region (think Pakistan/India/Bangladesh).
So ya, I can bet you there’s a level of passive aggressive racism to this day, like everywhere else on planet earth.
Similar to Karens in America, we don’t have outright segregation, we have a diluted form of it, which of course is a far cry from what it was.
The water is not totally filtered yet, need a few more pass throughs (few more generations).
As to why I think it’s way higher, it’s simply because the West has strong shallow racism. But the East actually knows the nuances of their region and still find ways to be prejudiced. That just simply takes more bigotry imho, where as in the West they only need pure ignorance.
In China during the Rape of Nanking Japanese also did horrible atrocities, like cut open pregnant women and gamble on the sex of the fetus. Really horrible things but in America is only sounds like only white people commit racism, which is not true.
The most modern incidents of genocide happen in Asia. Cambodia in the 1970s and even Myanmar committing genocide in the last few years against Rohingya, lead by former Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
In Korea, many half-Korean Half-black children from American army were born and until recently they were openly spat on by Koreans in public. Until Hines Ward who is half Korean half Black won MVP for NFL Super Bowl, then it raised awareness in Korea over this.
So please don’t think racism is only in the US. What blacks experience today is much better than what they experience in other countries where there is true hate, not just stereotyping.
I know of the historical factors but that's like saying Germans are still racist because they have a history of being Nazis - I was more interested in what kind of experiences of racism between Asia are happening in modern times which I've seen you've written so thanks for that. I was also curious whether there were any parallels in one of the bigger issues like police brutality of minorities in Asia.
There is a whole other discussion when talking about true hate vs. stereotyping.
I mean, if you think Koreans' fear of MSG is somehow related to our prejudice against Chinese/Japanese cuisine, then clearly you haven't seen many Korean dishes.
(But of course, only when it's added as factory-made "chemical" - if it's from dried anchovies and seaweed, that's natural, so of course that's totally OK, either in Korean, Chinese, or any other cuisine.)
There’s a lot of anger across Asia for Mainland Chinese these days. Practically all countries look down on Mainland Chinese, even those in Hong Kong does too. They think Mainland Chinese are dirty and loud and obnoxious because as tourists they are very obnoxious.
Koreans have general hate towards Japanese because of the war, but prefer Japanese to Chinese and all other Asians are looked down on, like Vietnamese, Philippines, etc.
Definitely some ingrained racism between all these different Asian ethnic groups.
This practice has successfully crossed from Korea to China. :/
Invoking racism and gender discrimination when it’s not the reason, causes more racism and it gives more than ample opportunity to actual racists within us to exploit it for their own nefarious needs.
And now you’re saying that people who call this racism for what is is are the ones responsible for the racism. You’ve got to be kidding.
> MSG sensitivity has never been shown to be true in a replicable clinical environment in humans.
> The few studies that have shown this to cause symptoms use extremely large doses of MSG that aren't used in food (for one thing, the dosages involved would be unpalatable even for those without the symptoms;
In any case, yes, you are correct here. As per the fine article, the dose at which symptoms become common is six times the normal dose. Do you find it utterly impossible that some people could be sensitive at one-sixth the dose that "most people" become sensitive at?
No, some studies have shown that high doses or unusual methods of introduction (e.g., IV) of MSG can cause symptoms; no properly controlled studies have shown sensitivity (i.e., a trait in which people are prone to symptoms at lower thresholds that are typical, such that they might experience symptoms with doses that might actual be encountered outside of deliberate mass ingestion.)
> Do you find it utterly impossible that some people could be sensitive at one-sixth the dose that "most people" become sensitive at?
“It’s not utterly impossible” is not the same thing as “clinical studies have provided evidence for it”.
If that's the most recent example, I'd call it an "ancient history of racism", not a "long history of racism".
> Exclusion was repealed by the Magnuson Act on December 17, 1943, which allowed 105 Chinese to enter per year. Chinese immigration later increased [to 2000/year from the "Asiatic barred zone"] with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which abolished direct racial barriers, and later by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished the National Origins Formula.
Everyone involved in setting these barriers are dead.
It still has significant impact.
Sort of sounds like the same thing as "the more you test for COVID the more cases there will be"
I've read your sentence like 10 times and it makes no sense to me. How would one exploit someone calling out (false by your definition) racism to cause more racism?
Will this cause more racism? Inadvertently, yes. Racism occurs due to bigotry and ignorance, one which needs to be systematically exposed and the other requiring remedial education (what you think you know is not right). If the problem requires intellectual engagement and discussion, and the intellectual battlefield is a Vietnam helicopter drop off where your average time of survival is 7 minutes before you die, lots of people will be dodging that draft.
So the war never gets fought.
Hence people don't take it seriously... Racism fatigue.
Kinda like quarantine fatigue when particular mitigations don't make scientific sense.
Edit: take my own advice and change "you" to "one."
--------
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
So, wait, you're saying if someone who's not a racist gets called a racist that's going to be enough to turn him in to a racist?
If that's all it took they were probably racist to begin with.
From that premise we can proceed to the idea that "racists" act on those impulses, while people who are "not racist" resist them. However, these impulses can be extremely subtle, and no matter how we struggle, I don't believe that that any human being lives a life avoiding racist acts entirely.
Would you still argue that I'm a racist perpetuating a false claim as an excuse for my own racism? I mean, I accept that I'm prejudiced and every once in a while racist despite my best efforts, so that part is true in a sense. I'm don't think I'm trying to excuse myself, though.
> enough to turn him in to a racist
If I were to call you a sexist for your choice of pronouns (and throw in "self hate is the worst kind" if your pronouns happen to be he/him), and you were to see several other likely unwarranted accusations being thrown around against you and others, you'd be less likely to take notice when real sexism is called out. Fewer people taking notice of real actionable cases of sexism would likely result in more sexism over time.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-msg-got-a-bad-rap-f...
And funny enough there's another comment saying
> If the only food they know to contain MSG is Chinese food then it’s a stretch to call that racism.
and that's exactly where this hoax started
after all, it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots when the vernacular for msg problems is "chinese restaurant syndrome"
The diagnoses that have succeeded it do not only apply to women, and they also have more specific requirements.
Given that in the west it was also dubbed "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" I would think some form of prejudice played a part.
you'd think the name would give it away, but people are so quick to dismiss racism that this blaring red flag is just glossed over
Pretty much the same reason why Americans think it's bad for health. It has a scary-sounding name (it's also called "MSG" in Korea), it sounds like a "chemical", and you can find it in ingredient lists of all popular junk foods - most notably instant ramen, which is basically an MSG+salt solution masquerading as noodles.
Give something in food an exotic name, and people will invent reason to fear it, like all those people demanding gluten-free bread.
Besides, if "racism" is the explanation behind it, how are you going to explain the immense popularity of Chinese food everywhere in America?
Probably in the same way that one could explain how the existence of Taco Bell does not preclude racism towards Mexicans.
American Chinese food is a lot sweeter, thicker, and more soy sauce based.
Your equivalent statement about Mexican food would be that you assume Taco Bell is what most Americans are eating as Mexican food. That doesn’t seem a valid assumption at all - maybe for a certain demographic (e.g. young) that’s true, but I’m very skeptical that such a claim would stand up to scrutiny.
Similarly, you cannot group the corner store (nominally) Chinese restaurant owned by a Chinese (or as likely in much of US, Korean) family as being in the class of highly processed, pre-made food as Taco Bell. Sorry but no.
In China, 味精, "essence of flavor".
Non-instant ramen is also essentially salt + oil + glutamate flavoring + noodles.
If you like you can take instant ramen and add a soft-boiled egg, some vegetables, and some fatty pork, or whatever other set of toppings you prefer.
Not sure what noodles to source, tho.
And for slightly more goodness, Asian marts will generally carry ready made broths and alkaline noodles. And one can whip up a broth from box stock if one wants something better.
However, my local Hippy Organic Community Grocery Store has all sorts of products proudly claiming the absence of MSG.
I wonder if they label tomatoes with that? if so they are falsely advertising as it naturally occurs in tomato.
My friend and I had a competition to point out the most ridiculous gluten free indicated packaging. I won with sand.
There were certainly other factors in play (and in this case, nobody needs to avoid msg) but once you sees the thought in people’s mind that something should be avoided, they’ll come up with all sorts of reasons on their own.
Given that 60 years ago the only place anyone in the US would run into manufactured MAG was in a Chinese restaurant, calling it that doesn’t seem the least bit related to race.
And given that I’ve grown up in Canada and the US, eat Chinese food regularly, and have never heard this term before today, it seems incredibly overblown.
At least the Swiss own their MSG addiction and are listing Aromat as part of their "culinary heritage": https://www.patrimoineculinaire.ch/Produits#449
The first time I heard something about avoiding MSG foods was from upper middle class fresh transplants from HK. Others of less means never mentioned it. So it’s news to me that someone would apply a blanket accusation as to where the myth comes from.
"... a disturbing undercurrent of racism that seemed to blame the unsavoriness of Chinese food"
You can't be racist towards food. Chinese people aren't the only people capable of cooking food originally consumed and prepared in China. If you don't like Chinese food and find it unsavoury, no normal person would think you're a racist. This whole "red under the bed" approach to racism is getting out of hand.
Is it possible that:
* the MSG mythology in some Western nation was proposed by those with some degree of bias against foreign things or chinese cuisine or people specifically
* it caught on and was repeated by people who were enthusiastic about it because of some degree of that bias
* MSG was attended to in some food but not in others because of some degree of that bias
* as this reached critical mass in western culture the idea became common wisdom even among those with no particular bias and exported anywhere that western culture has reach
People sometimes refer to this kind of construction as "systemic" racism. The majority of people subscribing to the myth might be entirely innocent of any kind of identifiable racial stereotyping or discrimination and yet inputs from people who are might be enough to tip the system that way.
Maybe there's other equally credible explanations, but this one is hardly incredible.
While I have very little doubt that xenophobia was a large factor in the hysteria over MSG in the United States, there's definitely no need for a "Maybe" here. Just look at the "pink goop" claims about McNuggets that range from two decades out of date to completely falsified - people are willing to believe all kinds of nonsense that fits their preconceived notions.
I propose the following question: are people who eat at Chik-fil-A anti-LGBT (specifically gay) rights because they financially support a business through continued purchases that support anti-LGBTQ activities? Probably not (some are, a lot of people... just like their chicken sandwiches). I'm LGBTQ and I occasionally eat one of their chicken sandwiches. Customers may be indirectly supporting systemic opposition of LGBTQ rights, but I think most average people aren't looking at these n-th degree removed effects, nor could anyone be asked to all the time (I think consumers are being a bit too negligent on this front but that's another story).
From a few studies I've read, it's actually harmful to give small sums of money to homeless panhandlers because it perpetuates their situation where higher volumes of money and support services are needed to actually help them. Does that mean people who donate money to homeless people are trying to keep them homeless or cause harm, if that's exactly what handing a panhandler a $20 bill does? Probably not.
We don't have words for these types of biases (systemic or not), but if we did, I don't think it's reasonable to claim anyone who has any n-th order contribution that sways a bias one way or another happens to be anti-whatever to the degree racists are against the basically fictional concept of "race." Every action you take likely helps someone and hurts someone else and the same could be said about inaction.
Motive and intent are quite important IMHO. Both are incredibly difficult (if not impossible) to prove undeniably but the advantage of many racists is that they're actually proud to be racist and tell you their intent.
> I think you do, otherwise this opens the door to anyone and everyone being a "racist" by some secondary, tertiary, or nth order effect.
Surely there's something in-between. Say, perhaps, black people make you uncomfortable, such that you're inclined against hiring them and you preferentially hire whites instead. Then, you wouldn't knowingly possess a racist motive but would be definitely acting racist and perpetuating racism.
Everyone has, from their own point of view, good motives and intentions.
That seems pretty clearly to be a racist motive. "Black people make you uncomfortable" is literally traditional racism, and action taken based on that motive is racist. Doing something like that without thinking through your intentions too hard doesn't make the act unintentional, because the intent is there whether you consciously evaluate it or not, and it doesn't change the motive. That person wants to be racist, and then directly is.
Someone who buys a chicken sandwich only because they want a chicken sandwich has no such motive or intent.
Good, you caught what I was saying.
> Doing something like that without thinking through your intentions too hard doesn't make the act unintentional, because the intent is there whether you consciously evaluate it or not, and it doesn't change the motive.
This seems to require a tortured interpretation of "intentional". Especially as it can be subtle and difficult to tease out the reasons we do things and make snap judgments. When your mind tells you "he just didn't seem like 'an engineer'" or "I don't think he was a culture-fit" or "I got a bad vibe about how he'd treat the rental property" --- we don't necessarily see the chain to [because he's black and not able in this instant to look 3x more professional than would be required of an equivalent white candidate for a positive impression]. There's no intention there, even if the outcome is racist. And in this scenario, it's not impossible for the black person to get hired, but the bar is unconsciously higher. That's one reason why this is all so insidious and so hard.
> Someone who buys a chicken sandwich only because they want a chicken sandwich has no such motive or intent.
Someone might have a hell of a lot more idea why they want a chicken sandwich than why they are making subtly biased decisions against disadvantaged people.
The point I was making is that labeling a racist, IMO, should require a conscious action linked to a bias along racial groupings, just like sexism and ageism do as well because it implies so many very negative characteristics that should only be linked to someone making a conscious decision that they hate some race, sex, age, or whatever. I guess I'm arguing how we should go about addressing the underlying problem and I don't agree that classifying someone racist and crucifying them, in the systemic context, is the way to go about making positive change.
I don't think labeling people purely ignorant of these side effects in a directly negative and confrontational way is productive at all, it might instead insight resentment and further entrench these stereotypes.
When you observe an example that was stated above where a hiring person said they "don't look like an engineer" or something to that effect, you may instead ask them to clarify what they mean--force them (politely) to ponder what are those attributes that make someone look like an engineer? What is the stereotyped biased picture they hold in their mind.
Chances are that person just picked up or borrowed a pattern they saw and have nothing consciously against black people or some other race. By pushing someone to consciously identify and quantify those characteristics you bring their biases to light and hopefully a connection quickly clicks and that person now realizes "holy crap, was I stereotyping against that person and not trying to look at it objectively? Did I just unknowingly discriminate against that person based on purely on race?" I've seen this happen many time when people are made aware of their biases and I've seen people genuinely try to change as a result.
Some people may require a bit more directed questioning to make these observations and surfacing the stereotype alone won't get you all the way there.
This is how you stamp out these biases: you make people consciously aware of their biases. Once they're aware of the bias, it becomes a conscious act of deciding if they want to reject that bias or continue to adopt it. If they reject the bias, they're probably not what I would call a racist. If they accept the bias, then that's a racist. We're all surrounded by bias and I'd argue there are biases deeply embedded in humans previously used as survival shortcuts that no longer apply or run counter to modern cultures and rules of societies. What matters is how we consciously identify such biases and how we then act on those observations and work to improve ourselves to become less biased, especially when the bias harms others for no good reason.
And you will almost always make more progress by addressing those sincere motives than you will by labeling them racist.
Without the systematically bad outcome for a group of disadvantaged people, there is no big problem, after all.
So call it what it is. If the intentions look good, go about it in a gentle way.
Not getting a job because the hiring manager is outwardly racist and not getting a job because the hiring manager worries you're a poor "culture fit" or that your HBCU degree isn't prestigious enough has the same effect on the job applicant.
When you make a claim that a statement someone makes displays racism, that usually implies indirectly that the speaker is actively/knowingly/intentionally being racist. Being a racist voluntarily implies a lot of negative baggage. It often implies not only ignorance but more consequently, unjustified: bigotry, hatred, willingness to commit violent acts against another on this bias, and so forth.
When you promote an idea that happens to prop up or create institutional racism, the vast majority share only one feature: ignorance. We're all ignorant of somethings to different degrees so I wouldn't put a scarlet letter like "racist" on someone due to ignorance. Unfortunately, this also sets the stage for sociopaths to push academic dishonesty, to essentially truly be racist in the traditional sense and promote/support features of institutional racism while feigning ignorance, so you'll get some false negatives, but I think it seems reasonable.
I'm not exactly sure what the term, phrase, or linguistics should be but I think something new and distinct from "racist" and "racism" needs to be developed, otherwise the terms become wild cards for any and every type of bias that may arise, even if the bias has no real intent of being racist, directly or indirectly. The more you throw "racism" and "racist" around outside the well established context, the less power it carries in language. Right now it carries a lot of weight still and I don't want to see that language lose its power.
But I wish there was another word for it, or that racism were not used interchangeably with systemic racism.
There's a hell of a difference between "you're racist" and "you're spreading misinformation that only exists because your grandparents were racist".
The latter will get a reaction from the vast majority of people like "oh shit, I had no idea, that's awful". The former will cause anger, frustration, defensiveness and denial.
If the idea is to get everyone on board with the idea that the deck is still stacked against minorities even in the absence of conscious contemporary racism (which I believe to be true), telling people they're racist is probably the worst way to go about that.
Chinese Americans have higher incomes than white people on average. In terms of income mobility: Vietnamese Americans who came here in the 1970s as refugees went from being among the poorest groups in the country, to parity with white Americans today. Asian Americans are richer, have higher income mobility, and live longer than white Americans. Once you adjust for age and citizenship status, they’re also pretty close to evenly represented among billionaires and Fortune 500 board members.
That is not to say they don’t face unpleasant racism, xenophobia, and stereotypes. But saying “the deck is stacked against them” is a much stronger statement. It implies a structural racism that impairs prosperity. While some minority groups do face such structural racism, specifically, Black and indigenous people, others do not: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/135/2/711/5687353.
https://reason.com/2020/11/16/equity-report-north-thurston-a...
Under a policy proposal by the Evanston, IL superintendent, white and Asian students would be held behind doing remote learning while other students were prioritized for return to in-class education. When people opposed the policy, they were called racists. The condemnation was worse for Asians who objected to their kids being given a worse educational experience on account of their race—they were called, in essence, traitors to non-white solidarity.
Critical theory has some really f—ked up premises about Asians. The classical liberal, even left-liberal view, doesn’t require an explanation for Asian economic success. Asians don’t face the legacy of say Jim Crow, and the American system is otherwise basically fair, so Asians have been able to prosper even if roadblocks have hampered other groups.
Under critical theory, however, the country and its institutions are considered systematically racist and white supremacist. That creates a dilemma with respect to Asians. How can they have prospered in a system of white supremacy? The solution is to suppose that whites “allowed Asians to succeed” to “serve as a wedge with other non-whites.” Asians are thus stripped of agency—their success isn’t their own, but instead the byproduct of a ploy by whites.
Therefore, when an Asian complains when his child must continue distance learning while other students return to in-person education, they’re not merely being self-centered. They’re not merely failing to acknowledge that other kids suffer from disadvantages that their own children don’t. That would be the typical liberal view. In the critical theory view, they are collaborators. They owe their status due to white supremacy and they’re complicit in white supremacy unless they act in solidarity with other non-whites. Even if that means suffering disadvantageous treatment in schools, etc.
I guess, but this viewpoint fails pretty badly at explaining why Asians prosper so much more than whites do.
> Asians are thus stripped of agency—their success isn’t their own, but instead the byproduct of a ploy by whites.
To be fair, critical theory says exactly the same thing about blacks -- their lack of success isn't their own, it's the product of a ploy by whites. I don't see why we'd expect a different analysis for Asians.
More to the point - I agree with the comment above about how the term "racist" (and "white supremacist") makes people have fairly strong emotional reactions, and we'd probably have better discussions if we somehow avoided those words. But I hope we can move past them and analyze what this theory is saying to see if it's true. As a wise man once said: "If a statement is false, that's the worst thing you can say about it. You don't need to say that it's heretical. And if it isn't false, it shouldn't be suppressed."
So let me make an analogy. You and I both pay taxes to the US government (or so I assume), which on occasion does some pretty unethical things (cf. "We tortured some folks.") We also both benefit from living in a country that's so powerful that it can get away with unethical things; such a country also gives us all the opportunities in the world. We could object and refuse to be "collaborators," in one of several ways, whether by just arranging our work situation so we don't pay, or moving to another country, or whatever. But we don't - so we are choosing to be collaborators!
But no one really faults us for not doing so - while we all understand that if it weren't for the collective tax payments of all US taxpayers, the US military couldn't commit any war crimes, we are happy to say that the individual culpability of any tax payer is negligible.
And nobody really says that we're stripped of agency and our success isn't our own simply because we chose to e successful professionals in the US, even though if you dropped us into the median country, we'd certainly be less successful.
On the other hand, that doesn't mean that we don't care about not doing war crimes, or about the good of other countries! We, collectively, the taxpayers / voters, ought to hold our country and especially its military to a high moral standard, and ought to admit wrongdoing (and make restitution, where possible). If we fail to do that, it's a shame on our country. And we the taxpayers / voters need to ensure that the US is not what it is at the expense of other countries, and even above that, there is bipartisan support for foreign aid.
If we're comfortable with all of the above, and we don't think that anyone is making "f--ked up" claims about individual American taxpayers when they accuse the country of having committed war crimes or anyone is impugning the agency of individual American professionals when we call America the land of opportunity, I don't think we should shy away from analyses of the "model minority" that would say that collectively, across society, improvements could be made.
(And, as a child of Indian immigrants to a deeply segregated town in the South, I have seen first-hand that the rational thing for non-white non-black immigrants who care about their success and their children's success is to assimilate into the dominant culture. They have the choice, and it's an easy choice to make. The term "complicit in white supremacy" also provokes an emotional response, but it would be pretty hard to argue that such rational-acting parents who love their children are not, at least a little bit, comfortable with using the reality of race in America to improve their own standing by placing themselves in proximity to whiteness!)
The phrase “using the reality of race in America to improve their own standing” really gets to the heart of the issue. Consistent with critical theory, it implies that Asians benefit from the existence of white oppression of other non-whites. Critical theory posits that Asians “improve their own standing” by helping perpetuate white supremacy.
But consider the counter-factual. Say the US was just white and Asian people. Would Asians be as successful in that case? Under the traditional liberal view, the answer is yes. The existence or non-existence of oppressed groups doesn’t help or hurt Asians. Under the critical theory view, the answer is no. In a system of white supremacy, if Asians aren’t helping oppress other non-whites, there is no reason to “allow” them to succeed.
Empirically, we know the critical theory view is wrong. Countries like Canada and Australia don’t have the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and aren’t segregated. But Asians enjoy high economic mobility in those countries as well.
The basic error in your reasoning is assuming that the existence of segregation changes the incentives or the outcomes for Asians. To the contrary, it’s “rational” for Asian immigrants to assimilate into the dominant white culture whether or not segregation exists. Indeed, it’s rational for pretty much any immigrant in any country to assimilate into the dominant culture, regardless of whether there is also another, oppressed culture in the country.
Are multi generational pockets of poverty-stricken caucasians granted "of color" status by Thurston County?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_pay_gap_in_the_United_S...
This sounds like the difference is due to things like immigration status and citizenship, not race. Most Asians are immigrants, and many aren’t citizens. That limits opportunities quite a bit even within the realm of “comparable” jobs.
I encountered the "MSG is Harmful" trope in university in the 1980's ... it's literally been around for generations now.
Nowadays that aunt is racist, her whole family is racist, and it's the reason why everyone else can't get ahead in life.
I'm glad that society as a whole recognizes systemic "racism" and how unfair the world is for many. I'd love nothing more than for us as a world community to move toward a reality that is a true meritocracy and equal opportunity isn't just a buzz word. Who can honestly say they enjoy unfair advantage? No one.
That said, not everything is a product of your race/gender. We have a long way to go and I hope we don't eat each other before we get there. The cancel culture and reverse racism that I'm seeing is an unfortunate side effect of "progress".
The trouble is, because of the way pendulums work, the harder you push it in one direction, the harder it swings back the other way.
The level of polarization in the US right now is dangerous and cancel culture is playing with fire in a room full of gunpowder.
Cf. alien machinery: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism/
This is selection bias. The ratio of police shootings to arrests is not higher for black people. Police shootings of black persons are national news, police shootings of white persons are not.
Assuming that's true, all it says is that, once you're getting arrested, you're about even on the probability of being shot. What it doesn't address is the increased probability of Black me to be arrested to begin with.
Which is the thing the other poster had the false impression was not the case.
> What it doesn't address is the increased probability of Black me to be arrested to begin with.
But now you're talking about a totally different issue. And if black men commit more violent crimes as a result of historical and other factors, what do you propose that the police do about that?
> This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force –officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.
The systemic racism happens one step removed from that. Police are far more likely to engage into interactions with Black men, as a result of more aggressively policing Black neighborhoods, bias in engaging with someone in different circumstances, etc.
I think you're taking the accusation of racism as much stronger than it actually is. No one has claimed that this is uncommon, or "the end of the world", or "her whole family is racist", or "it's the reason everyone else can't get ahead in life". They've simply said it's racist, and that claim seems uncontroversial given the definitions.
For example, if it turned out someone gave 1 cents more on average to white vs non-white beggars (due to unconscious racial biases), that would clearly be racist, but it also wouldn't be the end of the world, and I don't think person would be a particularly bad person.
If something fits the definition of racism, it doesn't become not racism just because someone feels attacked by calling it racism.
Now, in common parlance, racism is a loaded word, so I don't think it's advisable to call someone racist over these issues, and I wouldn't do so. But that doesn't mean we should censor ourselves when discussing these topics in the abstract. Otherwise, we're basically practicing political correctness.
The spectrum that the word "racist" covers is simply too large.
That's why I've pointed out that it used to just be called "stereotyping" but there's been a concerted effort on the part of those pushing identity politics, to make this about power. It's to the point where they've redefined "racism" to mean "at a minimum, stereotyping another person from a position of power or authority".
The implications of that new definition are that many people who were previously guilty of stereotyping, are now racist. In fact, basically any white person who stereotypes, because they generally have privileges' and power in society, are now "racist".
I don't agree with the redefinition, and I think it's an example of a pendulum that has swung too far.
On the surface your suggestion of a different word seems reasonable but it’s not.
People are perfectly capable of choosing to seek understanding of nuanced use of words and phrases. The fact that they disengage rather than doing so is not the responsibility of the speaker.
Appropriating words to steal the emotional strength of them for your own, novel concept is silly. Not everyone will buy the new definition, and you'll end up with two groups yelling at each other, about different things, with no common understanding.
If you cannot read "racism isn't about intentions" and not laugh, you are doing yourself a disservice.
But I wish there was another word for it,
or that racism were not used interchangeably
with systemic racism.
Many people learned an overly simplistic definition of "racism" at some point. Essentially, "overt racism" or "active racism" -- using slurs, joining the KKK, refusing to hire people of a certain race, etc.
Anything less overt than this is not "racism" to them. Having generally steered clear of such actions in their lives, they are dismayed to consider the possibility that there are a lot of other institutions and individual actions that are racist.
We could invent a new term for "systemic racism." But, ultimately, it's still racism. To the people experiencing it, it has the same net result as other forms of racism. If a white person in a predominantly white society doesn't hire you because you're non-white, there's no material difference to you whether that person did it for overt, conscious reasons or otherwise. That is why is it is useful to think of systemic racism as racism, rather than inventing a new word for it.
Here's an interesting thought experiment. Think of the people in your life who are vehemently opposed to the use of the term "racism" to include systemic racism. Suppose we actually did invent a new term for systemic racism so that they could feel more comfortable. How do we think these people would respond?
I think a significant number of them would complain about the new term just as much. I can hear them now in my mind. "First we have to worry about being 'racist', now we have to worry about $SOME_NEW_TERM!?!? What will 'they' think of next?!?"
Because it's not really about words for them. It's about a refusal to examine their own actions.
The recent distinction is between “prejudice” and “effect on racial equity.” Ibram Kendi distills the view quite clearly. He explains that the lower tax rate for capital gains is “racist.” He doesn’t say it’s motivated by racial prejudice (either overt or implicit), or deny that it’s nearly universal in the developed world, including in non-white countries. What he means is that the tax preference has the effect of delivering more benefits to white people because white people are more likely to own capital assets.
In the traditional view, by contrast, racism is a mental state—it’s an attitude that’s held by people, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Studies show that these attitudes, what’s now called “prejudice,” is probably overstated and isn’t the dominant driver of racial differences: https://www.chronicle.com/article/can-we-really-measure-impl....
The recent approach has been to reuse “racism” to refer to systems that create or perpetuate racial disparities whether or not they’re motivated by what’s now called prejudice.
An example of this usage is saying that “standardized testing is racist.” To people familiar with the traditional definition, this implies that test makers have racial prejudice and, consciously or unconsciously, designed tests to hinder minorities. Under the new definition, this just means that the practice of using standardized tests perpetuates racial disparities because it hurts students that have suffered disadvantages.
Of course we had words for this before. I studied what would now be called “environmental racism” in law school. We would say “minority communities suffer disproportionately negative effects from the siting of coal plants.” We don’t need to come up with a new term for this, as you speculate. That’s a concept I could easily explain to my Trump-voting in laws and they’d get it. But when you call that “racism” that implies (not only to my in laws, but to my Biden voting non-white dad) that people involved in the siting decisions were motivated by racial prejudice. They’d say, “no, they’re just putting the coal plant where the land is cheapest.” Under the traditional view, a decision like that based on purely objective, relevant, non-race factors can’t be “racist” because that concept refers to a state of mind (whether overt or implicit).
Now, there is a logic to academics and activists using the term “racism” for that. As you observe, the effect on the groups themselves is similar. Most important, by framing “racism” in terms of effects rather than mental state, it forces a consideration of racial equity impacts on otherwise race-neutral policies.
I mean that sincerely. I'm afraid it may read as sarcasm, but it is not.
Of course we had words for this before. I studied
what would now be called “environmental racism”
in law school. We would say “minority communities
suffer disproportionately negative effects from
the siting of coal plants.”
The recent approach has been to reuse “racism” to refer to
systems that create or perpetuate racial disparities whether
or not they’re motivated by what’s now called prejudice.
Whether the year is 1860 or 1960 or 2020, surely even the most fundamental understanding of racism has always required an understanding of both intent and effect.
When I was in school in the 1990s, we learned about the many "kindly" slaveowners who viewed themselves as benevolent caretakers of their slaves, whom they viewed as simple savages that would not prosper on their own. We learned how race-based humor could have innocent intent but negative consequences. And so on. The frequent dissonance between intent and effect was in my opinion vastly underemphasized, but this was not a new line of thought even 30 years ago.
[The coal plant thing] is a concept I could easily explain
to my Trump-voting in laws and they’d get it. But when you
call that “racism” that implies (not only to my in laws, but
to my Biden voting non-white dad) that people involved in the
siting decisions were motivated by racial prejudice. They’d
say, “no, they’re just putting the coal plant where the land
is cheapest.”
I would certainly agree that labeling such acts as racism precludes many people from understanding these concepts. We have been taught that racism is one of the greatest of transgressions and nobody wants to think of themselves as racist. I don't even think many members of white nationalist groups even consider themselves "racist."
Especially where in this case it's much more like systemic culturalism.
Suppose the same thing had happened, but rather than the initial dispute being between the vendors of British food and the vendors of Chinese food, it was between the vendors of British food and the vendors of Italian food. So you would have a lot of people believing that they're allergic to the gluten in pasta, when almost none of them really are, and also ignoring that plenty of British food contains gluten as well.
It would be pretty hard to argue that as racism unless you're using a definition of racism not characteristically used in America, but you can still imagine the same thing happening in the same way. So what does that tell you?
I see MSG as Japanese, since the purified process was invented there. I have no idea if Koreans in general consider it a Japanese invention?
Equally it could be the power of Hollywood. It changes culture.
But it's not "being misinformed". It's well know MSG is ok. MSG can also replace fat and sugar for taste, I'd consider this a worse public health issue than the anti-vaccine movement (outside of pandemics) for instance.
In particular, what you're indulging here is the naturalistic fallacy, or the is/ought fallacy. What's natural tells us nothing about what's good. Tooth decay is natural and your toothbrush is artificial. But I'd bet you're not going to stop brushing your teeth just to stay philosophically consistent.
Come to think of it, racism is like a social heuristic. Antivirus software uses heuristic analysis to quickly group certain classes of malware based on code similarity. In the same vein, humans do it to categorize people, based on slightly fuzzier logic.
Prejudice is probably a more accurate term than racism.
A couple of the books that turned me around here: Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning", a history of racist ideas. And Loewen's "Sundown Towns", a look at the wave of ethnic cleansing during the Nadir that happened across America. I had known about the Tulsa Massacre, but what I didn't know was how common smaller-scale events were for decades.
The majority of people have only leared on a superficial level of of the intertwined racism of America's past - often times mostly the light touches they learned in elementary school. And what's taught in elementary school is intentionally simplified to something deemed appropriate for children. Some summary of slavery is bad, MLK, Rosa Parks, sit-ins...
Most people don't actually learn anything about American's history and ties with racism at an adult level. So instead people think they know the history of it, and as a result think (based on what they've learned) it's overblown.
Anyone I know who has actually taken time as an adult to read about American history and its relationship with racism, comes away with a very different view point.
It's so intertwined it's incredible.
And it's no coincidence that I learned this in a suburban school with a student body that was 1% black. In a state that was 14% black. And that had a long history of racial exclusion and white flight.
I'm shocked now at how one-sided my initial education was on this. Shocked, but not surprised.
Note that when Kendi talks about “racism” he’s talking about anti-Black racism specifically. I think folks try to generalize his ideas in a way that goes beyond what he actually purports to address.
[1] My Bangladeshi mom had a tinge of skepticism upon first learning my girlfriend (now wife) was from Oregon, “because they eat snakes.”
Just from what I've read, I'd again recommend Loewen's Sundown Towns. He covers the post-Reconstruction past in the early chapters; latter chapters bring it to the present day. The combination of historical data with historical testimony was very convincing to me. The Atlantic has had a number of good articles on this over the last decade. E.g.: https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=atl...
There's a lot in the employment world. A study that was really eye-opening for me was this one: https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
I also found some manager-focused classes on implicit bias very helpful in seeing how subtle the problem gets. An online course might help you as well. And the Project Implicit tests from Harvard helped me see some of my own implicit biases, which were notably different than my conscious beliefs.
And lastly, I strongly recommend breaking one's personal filter bubble: https://medium.com/@bjmay/how-26-tweets-broke-my-filter-bubb...
That was especially valuable for me in turning academic knowledge of the past into conviction about the present. When I listen to the daily lived experience of other people, it eventually became obvious to me that the same forces were at work. Racism has been diminished, and most racists know they can't speak openly [1]. But the problems have never gone away. As Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Evolution_(1...
The Implicit Association Test at Age 21: No Evidence for Construct Validity [0]
> The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is 21 years old. Greenwald et al. (1998) proposed that the IAT measures individual differences in implicit social cognition. This claim requires evidence of construct validity. I review the evidence and show that there is insufficient evidence for this claim. Most important, I show that few studies were able to test discriminant validity of the IAT as a measure of implicit personality characteristics and that a single-construct model fits multi-method data as well or better than a dual-construct models. Thus, the IAT appears to be a measure of the same personality characteristics that are measured with explicit measures. I also show that the validity of the IAT varies across personality characteristics. It has low validity as a measure of self-esteem, moderate validity as a measure of racial bias, and high validity as a measure of political orientation. The existing evidence also suggests that the IAT measures stable characteristics rather than states and has low predictive validity of single behaviors. Based on these findings, it is important that users of the IAT clearly distinguish between implicit measures and implicit constructs. The IAT is an implicit measure, but there is no evidence that it measures implicit constructs.
The Creators of the Implicit Association Test Should Get Their Story Straight [1]
> The problem, as I showed in a lengthy rundown of the many, many problems with the test published this past January, is that there’s very little evidence to support that claim that the IAT meaningfully predicts anything. In fact, the test is riddled with statistical problems — problems severe enough that it’s fair to ask whether it is effectively “misdiagnosing” the millions of people who have taken it, the vast majority of whom are likely unaware of its very serious shortcomings. There’s now solid research published in a top journal strongly suggesting the test cannot even meaningfully predict individual behavior. And if the test can’t predict individual behavior, it’s unclear exactly what it does do or why it should be the center of so many conversations and programs geared at fighting racism.
Psychology’s Favorite Tool for Measuring Racism Isn’t Up to the Job [2]
[0] https://replicationindex.com/2019/02/15/iat21
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/iat-behavior-problem...
[2] https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/psychologys-racism-measuring-...
What I said is that it was helpful to me personally. Which it was, in that it helped me recognize my own implicit anti-black bias. Unless you'd like to prove that the whole concept of unexamined biases is 100% unreal, please move along and let people have a discussion untainted with irrelevant interruptions.
It is also true that people are skeptical of different foods period. But more than one thing can be be happening at once.
Skepticism of foreigners and the food they eat is universal to human societies. Enslavement of a distinct minority group, amounting to 1/8 of the population, for hundreds of years, and the social and economic consequences that remain when slavery ends and the groups must subsequently live alongside each other, is sui generis. It's not analytically useful to look at both things through the same lens. The causes, consequences, dynamics, and solutions are more or less completely different.
Skepticism of Chinese food ingredients is much better understood through the lens of the experience of prior generations of immigrants: Germans, Irish, Italians, etc. Anti-German antagonism in World War II accelerated uptake of English in German-speaking communities in the midwest and caused people to change their names; JFK's candidacy was met with charges of Popery; and people were actually quite skeptical of Italian food and unfamiliar ingredients like garlic.
That you keep building straw men out of what I say makes me think this is not a great use of my time.
That is not in fact my basic premise.
My basic premise, is, as I said: "it's worth asking both questions: Is racism really at play? And given America's lasting, endemic racism, is there reason to think something makes it absent in a given case?"
If America's history of racism were somehow only limited to Black people, then perhaps we could dismiss out of hand the notion that said racism could have something to do with a fact-free hysteria about "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome". But that's demonstrably not true.
Note that I've never said the two things are necessarily linked. I'm just saying that we can't presume a priori that racism isn't involved. We shouldn't assume that it is, but we mustn't assume that it isn't.
Yes, and this premise is flawed. You’re thinking of “racism” as one phenomenon weaving together the enslavement of Black people and skepticism about Chinese food. My point is that this is not a useful way to understand what’s happening.
Look at it this way. In Bangladesh, where I’m from, we also have many negative stereotypes of Chinese food. My impression is that such sentiments are common across the sub-continent. But obviously we don’t share what you’re calling “America’s lasting, endemic racism.” What you’re calling anti-Chinese racism is an expression of the xenophobia that exists in nearly every human society.
Anti-Black racism in America is completely different. It didn’t cause slavery. It was constructed to justify slavery and colonization: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/europe.... There is a superficial similarity, insofar both involves in-group versus out-group antagonism. But anti-Black racism isn’t just one expression of the ordinary out-group antagonism that exists all over the world. It’s something quite distinct.
Is that related to a broad human tendency to xenophobia? Sure. But that xenophobia is channeled through and reinforced by cultural elements. Many societies demonstrate racism, but none of them demonstrate it exactly equally to everybody else. Like it or not, there's a history and a structure here, and I think it's worth studying.
I understand that a lot of people have the hobby of pretending racism is a much smaller problem, or perhaps no problem at all. But since those people have been consistently wrong in the US for the last couple hundred years, I don't aim to devote a lot of energy to taking them seriously.
It is justified with following reasoning. If:
1. I trust that my body will enjoy the taste of well-prepared food from healthy fresh ingredients, and will inform me when I ate enough.
2. MSG makes anything taste better.
It follows that:
3. With MSG added, my body can be fooled into eating unhealthy food and it can be fooled into wanting more food than it needs.
4. All else equal, I will assume that a chef who does not use MSG is more skilful than a chef who does.
This logic may well be faulty, superstitious, misinformed, etc., but what it is not is racist.
(Addendum: “Chinese restaurant syndrome” is a different thing though, and unlike basic distaste for MSG it does give off an antagonistic vibe. It’s interesting that it happens in the US of all places—I bet many people around the world associate MSG first and foremost with snacks from American brands like Pringles.)
Koreans hold it for non-racist reasons do not prove the rest hold it for the same reasons
2. East Asian can also be racist against other East Asians.
Not saying that discrimination against MSG is racist, but your argument falls way short.
Here's popular chef (and half-Japanese) J Kenji Lopez-Alt discussing how he experiences "MSG Symptom Complex" rarely, and that his Japanese grandmother was intimately familiar with the idea that msg overconsumption could those symptoms
https://twitter.com/kenjilopezalt/status/1291880511577546753
https://twitter.com/kenjilopezalt/status/1291882403506475008
The racism angle totally takes over people's minds and this has quickly become a "taboo" subject where any questioning of the new order makes you a villainous racist, even though the science very clearly does not rule out msg causing these symptoms and concludes "more research is needed".
Is what it is, I'm pretty left-leaning in most ways, marched with BLM, and aggressively vote for racial equality: but I guess I'm a racist for not believing that this is settled science. And, as you mention, many east asians must also apparently be racist against themselves.
The twisted MSG belief system is just a less overtly racist version of "Chinese restaurants serve cat and dog". i.e. This ethnic food is not trustworthy and worthy of derision, as are the people by extension.
I know many Asian Chinese; they tend to really like saying "long time no see" because they find the saying so intuitive.
I mean, it wouldn't be at all surprising for Koreans to be racist against Chinese, unless you take a specific American perspective in which Koreans and Chinese are the same thing.
I'm not taking a position on whether "MSG is bad" is purely due to racism, but I can't really buy "I'm Korean and I don't like MSG" as evidence against that claim.
Who knows whether it's MSG - I definitely don't experience that lethargy eating Japanese food. But I'm also unconvinced that MSG and konbu/katsuo dashi are the same thing. The viewpoint "chemical x is chemical x in all its delivery mechanisms" is remarkably naive. The chemistry of digestion is really quite complex and the purified salt of something rather than in-aqua extraction to direct consumption REALLY is not the same thing. You ignore all kinds of subtle interactions that could be going on and is wholly unnuanced. Anyone who has spent any time in a chem/biochem lab knows all too well the strange and weird world of solvation and impurity and its effects on reactions, not to mention enzyme chemistry is insanely sensitive.
It's not the same but just compare smooth vs pulpy orange juice vs eating a raw orange. The nutrition profiles of that already are different even if you are par for #oranges consumed.
The UK, for example, isn’t just 90% white. It’s 80% white British. Same thing for Germany and France. They’re borderline ethnostates. The US isn’t more than 15% of any ethnic group (with German Americans being the largest group).
> The UK, for example, isn’t just 90% white. It’s 80% white British.
In 2011 roughly 35% of the population of London was born outside the UK. In terms of population the biggest groups are from India, Poland, the Republic of Ireland, Bangladesh and Nigeria (in that order).
Our last census was 2011 so the data is pretty close to as out of date as it could possibly be. We'll have another in 2021 (I say we although I'll be out of the country for that one).
I also went to Birmingham and it’s much different. I talked to taxi cab driver and he said he ever left his city even though it’s very small. So maybe less mixing in smaller places in UK.
More than likely, as a tourist, she saw mostly other tourists and the largely immigrant dominated low-paying service industry jobs. I was also recently in Iceland and while in pure 'tourist mode' saw few native Icelanders due to so few working in the tourist and service industry. When we ventured out to the neighborhood store areas, boutique shops, non-tourist bars, higher-end restaurants, etc it was almost 100% white.
>tourists.
You may want to remind her that when she's in traffic, she's also traffic. Of course its full of tourists, she's there isn't she? Its beautiful and historic and should be full of tourists - the same way Athens, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, etc are full of tourists. This is a feature, not a bug.
Yeah the MSG thing is clearly racism. But to be fair pretty much every Chinese takeout places uses white rice by default and charges an extra dollar for brown rice, which makes the food taste better at the cost of the health of their customers.
The prejudice comes in when people then assume all Chinese restaurants are therefore dishonest, discounting that restaurants everywhere are capable of being a bit dishonest ... Kangaroo meat in burgers, selling pork as veal... Frozen food sold as fresh. Just watch a Gordon Ramsey show.
When I was younger, I would sometimes discover that certain foods contain MSG by identifying what I had eaten before the onset of symptoms. Now I've learned to check everything beforehand. And the one time that the mother-in-law used her neighbour's soup mix instead of the soup mix that I bought her, I was able to know by the symptoms. Now my teenagers avoid MSG, but not because they are sensitive. The older of them is a vegetarian, but not because she lacks incisors or canines.
I've wondered this myself over the years. My current operating theory is that it's not necessarily the MSG but perhaps the Mushroom powder...
If this were true, it'd explain why other glutamate-rich foods don't have the same reputation. It might suggest that we shouldn't buy doritos from a vending machine when we need a snack, though.
Studies where respondents can't taste the MSG don't show an effect, so maybe it's the taste, and not the chemical, that causes the problem. Also it seems unlikely that the MSG could actually get to the brain.
I'd love to see an experiment where self-identifying sensitive individuals either eat miso soup or gargle it without swallowing and see if there's a difference in reactions.
I'd also like to know more about common knowledge about MSG in Japan and China.
(I think the racist myth could cause a psychosomatic effect for people who aren't sensitive)
> Dave proposes, “do you think racism plays a part?”
That's not his argument. He argues that it doesn't exist based on the fact that people who claim to be allergic don't suffer ill effects from other MSG-containing products. The comment about racism is secondary, it's not the basis of his claim that the allergy isn't real.
> He argues that it doesn't exist based on the fact
> that people who claim to be allergic don't suffer
> ill effects from other MSG-containing products.
Why do so many people allow political correctness make them insane? Is it racist against Italians any time someone says eating pizza made them feel sick? Chinese food is just as Americanized as pizza, anyhow.
So it's likely not the MSG, but maybe the chinese restaurants these people go to have a reputation for not being the freshest? This can raise histamine levels in the food and cause the same symptoms as an allergic reaction (which it basically is).
Whatever it is, there is no reason to assume the food intolerance itself is a lie..
But it's a weak argument...
I wonder how much is from blood sugar spikes from white rice and everyone's favorite Americanized sugar glazed Chinese dishes combined with the MSG nocebo effect.
Small, independent, "Ma & Pa" type restaurants vary much more in quality than established chains. When your only options for Asian food are those kinds of restaurants - and a limited selection at that - it's not surprising for bad quality to sometimes be associated with the cuisine.
I still have to drive far out of my way to find good Indian food, despite living in a metropolitan area. Which is a shame, because I really enjoy it.
Looks to me we just wanted to find racism whatever the cost was.
A lot of people believe in myriads of myths about food. MSG is one of the strongest ones, which I've heard about from people living in Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia... and probably is popular in Africa too, my sample there is not great. But in the US people are now obsessed with finding "racism" so that must be it.
There's also a lot of people who claim gluten allergy without actually having one. Are those racist too? Or maybe we could stop reducing the infinite variety of human behavior - and infinite capacity of humans to delude themselves and others - to one specific reason that is in fashion in the US this season?
There's that common joke "Di-hydrogenoxide, a little will kill you can and it's in nearly everything. Babies die from it. Why isn't the government doing something about it!" etc and it's always generally easy to convince some people because of the scary sounding name.
No racism required
No, but probably some mild bits of cultural stereotypes, and frankly - there are good ones and bad ones.
As an example of 'positive' cultural stereotypes and possibly racism is 'Traditional Chinese Medicine' - the majority of the practice (all of it?) has zero scientific foundation and is essentially a sham, yet zillions of Westerners pay zillions of dollars for all sort of 'Ancient Chinese Knowledge' which is just quackery.
Finally, if there were a significant campaign to demonize 'Doritos' as 'plastic food' much in the same way some people feel about margarine, or hydrogenated fats ... and if we felt 'Chinese food' were 'always natural' then the opposite prejudices might occur.
The technical argument for 'racism' could be made but it would just be needlessly aggravating.
https://biomedgrid.com/fulltext/volume5/fried-rice-syndrome-....
For a comparison - search Amazon reviews of knock-off bulk "Creatine" supplement powder for 'headache'.
Why is that not "overt racism"?
All in all, I am inclined to believe that MSG does actually have negative effects. However, I think one can build a tolerance to it, because I regularly eat it at restaurants and I haven't had any problems with it since that time as a kid.
It is much more likely that:
1. You haven't had any problems with MSG ever, including that time as a kid, just as every experiment ever done on MSG would suggest;
2. Your doctors were influenced by coverage of MSG in the medical press outside India.
Stupidity doesn't have to originate in racism.
> In 1995, the Food and Drug Administration asked an independent scientific group, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, to study MSG’s safety. It found that only a small number of people experienced any side effects, and that was only after consuming six times the normal serving of MSG on an empty stomach.
There is a _very_ small number of people who do in fact experience side effects when consuming MSG. Whilst it is pretty much harmless to most people, there is a population for who it creates discomfort. It isn't no one.
Do you have a different citation? Because what you actually quoted says it is no one, unless you think people are going to Chinese restaurants and being served a plate of pure MSG. Show me one person who has ever eaten instant noodles while maintaining an empty stomach.
We wonder why it's so hard to counter the anti-vaxxer movement despite the initial studies that started them being disproven; this is such a perfect parallel.
1. A study is done at the typical (very low) level of quality, and it gets published somewhere.
2. A more careful study tries to replicate the effect and finds that it doesn't exist.
3. The world concludes that the effect doesn't occur in the very specific context observed in the second study, but does occur in all other contexts.
Gelman makes the point that if the two studies occurred in the other order -- first, a high-quality study finds no effect, and second, a low-quality study finds an effect -- no one would conclude the effect was generally present. But the order in which you perform studies is not actually relevant to anything.
I'll tell you that I've inadvertently done the double-blind "Is MSG harmful" test too many times in my life. I'm one of the very, very few people who are negatively affected by MSG. But just like the hordes of non-celiacs who refuse gluten, there are many people who are not affected by MSG who prefer to avoid it as well.
What I do find disgusting is the attempts to conflate racism with the ill effects of MSG, in an effort to discredit those who do suffer from MSG sensitivity. It is telling that independent studies done in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as told in the fine article, found a connection between MSG usage and onset of negative symptoms. But when the knowledge of the connection began affecting the food industry, other studies with different findings started appearing.
That’s not true.
>> most potent yet least expensive flavour enhancers available
Salt is approx 1/4 the price, as is sugar.
>> I've inadvertently done the double-blind "Is MSG harmful" test too many times
Cheese, tomatoes, it would be hard to avoid it. What kind of restrictions do you need to follow?
>> There exists a medical controversy over the effects of MSG.
> That’s not true.
>> most potent yet least expensive flavour enhancers available
> Salt is approx 1/4 the price, as is sugar.
>> I've inadvertently done the double-blind "Is MSG harmful" test too many times
> Cheese, tomatoes, it would be hard to avoid it. What kind of restrictions do you need to follow?
My children are not sensitive, and I don't know anybody else who claims to be MSG sensitive. I'm sure that MSG is fine for the vast majority of people, just like gluten is fine for the vast majority of people. In fact, I know a few people who claim gluten intolerance who I serious doubt are celiac based on the things that I see them eat.
There can be a "controversy" which isn't taken seriously by any experts. See: Flat Earth.