Further to the wet market thing:

I need white folks to understand that most of the food they consider “normal” was once “exotic.”

You like lobster?

You’re eating sea bugs. It used to be poverty food. That $20 lobster roll? To your ancestors you might as well be eating ants or spiders.

You like turkey?

It was a nuisance animal that was often considered too gamey to eat unless you were starving.

Tomatoes?

Are you in Congress with the Devil? That’s witch fruit and it will kill you.

Squash. Squash is harmless, it must be safe!

Nope, it came from the “new world” and was regarded with deep suspicion. Only crazies would eat something that looks so brain like inside!

Everything you think of as “normal food” was once “strange.”

Maybe, just maybe, we can stop with the sensationalizing White Bullshit now? Please?

It strikes me though, that when we come too close to seeing The Other as human, the conservative response is to go after food. Because if they don’t *eat like you* they’re not really people.

Food is universal. All life requires sustinance and for humans it is provided through food. Food being universal is what led to laws of hospitality (it was illegal to kill someone who had the shelter of your table).

This is why “wet markets” are so pernicious as a bigotry rallying cry. Because if it’s not food there is no table you can share, and thus no obligation to human respect.

So when you talk about “weird food”, just keep in mind, you do the Devil’s work for him.

(And thank you to @sricola whose conversations about food he ate while traveling helped me develop this theory.)