Wonkblog

Food Equality?

Look, the world has not become flat. It’s not a flat food world here in the United States. There are what I call internal hierarchies of tastes, and there is nothing that shows this better than when you look at price, when you look at what we are willing to pay for different types of food. We are really not willing to pay for “ethnic food.” It’s true of Indian food, it’s true of Thai food, it’s true of Chinese food, and it’s true of many others. They’re just not good enough, in the minds of Americans anyway, to pay $30, $40 or $50 for these foods. People might say this isn’t true, but it’s very clear in the actions of American consumers.

The Civil Rights movement delegitimized the comfortable assignment of inferiority to different people and cultures. And that’s a good thing. It’s a powerful thing that’s a very important part of American culture. But that doesn’t mean it cured us of more implicit forms of assigning inferiority, and these hierarchies I think do a good job of showing that. Despite all this talk about how we eat everything and like everything, we are not willing to pay for everything at the same rate, and that tells you something.

It has become impolite to say that certain foods are inferior. But we are still certainly indicating that we feel that way.