Of all the stupidity that spews from the mouths of social justice warriors (SJWs), perhaps the most pernicious idea is “cultural appropriation.” They believe that anything that is created by one culture should never be touched by another culture, which is stupid because it’s been going on for centuries. Italian pasta dishes would be very different without noodles that were invented in China, for example.
But now it’s considered cultural appropriation for the wrong Americans to run with something created by other Americans. In the latest case, it’s the chopped cheese sandwich of New York, a sandwich known for its affordability as well as its reportedly great taste. When a reporter posted a video about the sandwich, it set off a backlash.
The video that helped set off a backlash was made by Insider, an online publication, about a reporter’s trip to Hajji’s to try a chopped cheese.
To many online commenters, the video suggested a kind of imperiousness.
Of the sandwich, the reporter, who is white, said that “most New Yorkers don’t even know it exists,” a slight, it seemed, to many New Yorkers who grew up eating it. It was complimented in a backhanded way as “nothing revolutionary but still delicious.” And it did not help that the reporter called the bread a “sub roll,” not a hero, as it is commonly called in New York, revealing herself to be an outsider. But perhaps it was the description of the $4 sandwich as “a steal” that incensed the most.
“Hate to break this to you Inside Foods, but poor people do exist,” a Facebook commenter wrote.
Jeffrey Almonte, 20, a YouTube personality from Harlem, filmed an expletive-laced response in his living room, accusing the reporter of “Columbus syndrome” and comparing her segment to gentrification.
That was bad enough, but now yuppie grocery giant Whole Foods is catching it for offering the sandwich…at a significantly higher price. The problem is allegedly “cultural appropriation” of the sandwich.
Really?
Even if it were somehow wrong to enjoy foods from a different culture (and you’ll take my Chinese food when you pry it from my cold, dead hands), this is beyond stupid. The chopped cheese sandwich is an American food for crying out loud! It’s kind of hard to appropriate your own freaking culture.
But reality and the SJWs are natural enemies, so this shouldn’t be surprising.
Additionally, Kevin Williamson at National Review makes a great point:
But the real cultural appropriation here is being done by those black and brown critics of Whole Foods: If there is a definition of well-off white-people problems, it’s worrying about what’s for sale at Whole Foods. You think the poor and dispossessed and oppressed of this world care about whether that $25-a-pound roasted salmon is farm-raised or wild-caught? I think not. If you are close enough to a Whole Foods to get pissed about what’s in the deli case there, you are a 1-percenter, globally speaking. You have won the game of civilization, and if you aren’t happy with the state of your life, then you probably aren’t trying hard enough.
This is the epitome of “first-world problems” if ever there was one.
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