biscochitos for ghosts

nobody is arguing against cultural diffusion or fusion. immigrant and diasporic communities exchanging food traditions is not the same dynamic as white americans commercializing foods from cultures shaped by colonization and then acting confused when people care about the framing

white liberal woke 2.0 wants to leave appropriation discourse behind as embarrassing or outdated. so any conversation about framing, commercialization, or power gets flattened into twitter outrage instead of engaging with why food is deeply tied to colonization, labor, & identity

pretending every food exists in the exact same cultural context is the whole issue

re: the ube discourse, this reveals how people outside the ph know virtually NOTHING about the Philippines besides lumpia adobo and beaches,,,, the number of times i’ve seen our english fluency downplayed, the lack of knowledge about our history and culture and even just

people are discussing power dynamics, framing, and acknowledgment, not banning cultural exchange

The American education system does not teach empire. This is not an accident. It teaches the Revolution. It teaches the Constitution. It teaches the Civil War in a way that frames it primarily as a story of "national healing" rather than unfinished reckoning. It teaches World War II as the definitive American story: the sleeping giant awakened, the "arsenal of democracy," the liberation of Europe, the moral clarity of that specific conflict deployed as a permanent filter through which all subsequent American violence can be viewed as basically continuous with defeating Hitler. It does not teach the Philippines, where the U.S. military killed somewhere between 200,000 and 1,000,000 people between 1899 and 1913 during the Philippine-American War, a war most Americans have never heard of. It does not teach the Banana Wars, where the U.S. military intervened repeatedly in Central America and the Caribbean to protect the commercial interests of American corporations. It does not teach the full history of Iran: the 1953 coup that removed a democratically elected prime minister and installed a Shah who ran a torture state, because the elected prime minister wanted to nationalize Iranian oil. It does not honestly teach Korea, 1945-53. Guatemala, 1954. Vietnam, 1954-75. Lebanon, 1958 and 1982-84. The Congo, 1960-65. Cuba, 1961. Brazil, 1964. Dominican Republic, 1965. Haiti, across the 20th century. Indonesia, 1965. Greece, 1947-49 and 1967-74. Laos, 1964-73. Cambodia, 1969-75. Chile, 1973. Angola, 1975-1991. Argentina, 1976-1983. Nicaragua, the 1980s. El Salvador, the 1980s. Grenada, 1983. Panama, 1989. Afghanistan, 1979-92 and 2001–21. Iraq, 1991-2003 and 2003-11. Somalia, 1992-95. Sudan, 1998. Yugoslavia, 1999. Yemen, 2002-25. Venezuela, 2002 and 2014-present. Honduras, 2009. Libya, 2011. Syria, 2012-26. Ukraine, 2014-present. It does not teach these things honestly because a population that understood them would have a very different relationship to the word "freedom" when its government uses it to justify intervention. The ignorance is load-bearing. Remove it, and the entire moral architecture of American exceptionalism becomes uninhabitable. They know this. The curriculum is not an oversight. The curriculum is a choice, made deliberately, renewed continuously, defended furiously whenever teachers try to expand it. The most powerful weapon American empire has ever deployed is not the aircraft carrier. It is the history class.

so there's this perfect little tv show called WIDOW'S BAY

white liberals always turn critique into “wow i guess i can’t engage with other cultures at all then.” once they see themselves as culturally aware, any pushback feels personal, so they exaggerate everything to make everyone else seem irrational

people don’t want to engage with WHY food is sensitive for marginalized and colonized communities. they want a woke 2.0 where appropriation discourse is passé, so any pushback around language or framing gets flattened into "outrage” instead of a conversation about history & power

Coconut milk and cassava flour are literally the blueprint for traditional dirty ice cream here. It's so exhausting watching westerners use old recipes from other countries, brand them as "vegan," and act like they’ve magically pioneered something new.

@KathAntonio7 english is literally an official language of the philippines and millions of filipinos speak it fluently. dismissing people’s reactions as “they just don’t understand english” instead of engaging the cultural context is exactly why this conversation keeps going in circles

@rascuache Well yes, that is correct. Everyone who is misunderstanding is not a native speaker of English. Have you not noticed most of them are writing in Filipino?

nobody is saying people can’t use certain flavors. the pushback is about the language and framing around cultural foods once they enter western commercial spaces. “inspired by” or “adapted from” goes a long way and should be a big deal

@TiredBambooLaw “pitchforks” is doing a lot of work here. most people were just talking about framing, language, and broader patterns around cultural foods. criticism is not the same thing as a mob

@rascuache no cause then people would ask "how much did you consult" and you can tell that from people who are doubling down by critiquing his language rather than his intent. like can we at least agree that perhaps we should not all have grabbed our pitchforks quite so loudly?

ah yes, asking people to think a little harder about how they frame cultural foods = “reverse racism” and “blinding rage.”

@KathAntonio7 great, so now we’ve moved from “every native english speaker agrees with me” to “actually everyone who disagreed just doesn’t understand english” lol

@rascuache Multiple people with English as a second or third language read it incorrectly.

@KathAntonio7 “every native english speaker” clearly disagrees with you since this whole discourse started because multiple people read the phrasing differently. language is contextual, not just technical

@rascuache No, you just do not understand English properly. It does not matter what you *think* it means. Every native English speaker would disagree with you. You are flat out wrong.

@TiredBambooLaw nobody expected a “500 word treatise.” people reacted to the wording because these conversations don’t happen in a vacuum. if the follow-up was “i consulted filipino recipes and traditions,” cool, that adds context and probably should’ve been part of the original framing

@rascuache on a throwaway tweet where he was just excited about something he did and to me looks like pure appreciation not appropriation...

@KathAntonio7 people didn’t “infer” that out of nowhere though. words carry meaning beyond technical industry usage, especially around foods with long histories of being repackaged and rediscovered by western food culture

@rascuache No, "developed" is the standard term to use here. It doesn't imply origination, you merely inferred that it does.

@KathAntonio7 it’s not really accurate phrasing though. “developed” implies origination to a lot of people. modified, adapted, or inspired by would’ve communicated it better

@rascuache Or "developing a recipe", which was accurate phrasing.

if you took so much care, why not convey that?