Looking one step beyond the mere discussion of stinky-food trauma, we ought to spend more time examining the asian american media industry that thrives on publishing the same stinky-food stories every year and the college programs designed to produce talent for this industry.

The liberal wing of asian american media (huffpo asian voices, nextshark, 18 million rising, etc) exist to promote diaspora "inclusivity" into america. We know that the US is a colonial, capitalist empire. It cannot be redeemed without being systematically dismantled.

The asian american media masks this irredeemability by promoting the idea that more inclusion and acceptance of asian people into american capitalism is the solution to any and all oppression. It serves US interests because it is propped up by US corporate government itself.

Let's take 18 million rising for example. It's noted for driving tons of activism and promotes so-called progressive causes involving asian americans. It's also run by Allied Media which takes money from the Ford Foundation, Proteus Fund, and Macarthur Foundation.

These are corporate think-tanks created to tamp-down on anti-capitalist politics, and draw people away from groups like The Black Panther Party, Brown Berets, and I Wor Kuen (Asian American communists). Today they fund 18MR and other liberal-progressive PoC media outlets.

The corporate "PoC" media began to flood the discourse with bland, generic culture stories and "pro-media representationism". They were hoping to drown out the confrontational line from the Black Panthers, Brown Berets, and I Wor Kuen that we need revolution, not representation.

Eventually, the 70s New Communist Movement was defeated through these media campaigns and FBI repression. Many Black, Latino, and Asian American political groups fell into capitalist reformism and fake-progressive politics.

Ford Foundation, Allied Media, Knight Foundation, and these other corporate think tanks would continue to use their money and influence to guide the development of the "PoC" diversity and inclusion industry as we know it today, openly funding and directing outlets like 18MR.

As part of their inclusivity mission, 18MR, nextshark, and the other asian american activist news outlets cyclically publish the same stories about "the asian american" experience which includes stinky food trauma, but will never dare to say anything about capitalism-imperialism.

Many communists have correctly pointed out that diversity and inclusion-ism never achieves the liberatory goals they claim to want. Diverse and inclusive media are instead profitable commodities for niche genres, selling aesthetics and "form" but limited substance and depth.

The university system is also another part of this capitalist media machine because it trains a new stock of elite writers, filmographers, artists, savy social media managers, and professional activists who go on to work for the mainstream asian american media.

Mainstream asian american media has become a well-oiled machine to serve the white ruling class, by keeping the "discourse" focused on moments of individual prejudice and racism, but never about the root, systemic causes of racism found in the capitalist economic system.

This system is designed to generate super-profits through the extraction of resources like oil, and by keeping the majority of people poor and dispossessed. Mainstream asian american never talks about how this is fundamentally in contradiction to "their progressive values".

The "stinky food story" has become an archetype and trope in the arsenal of the mainstream asian american media talking points, because it sells. We wouldn't be seeing the same story published every week if no one was paying an asian american writer fresh out of college for it.

Rewriting and retelling the same stinky food story, among many other tropes like "we are a nation of immigrants" and "My Family's American Dream" that we see EVERY May, is also an effective cash cow, getting thousands of clicks and shares (ad revenue money) for the publisher.

Despite the claim that "Asian America has more representation than ever now in 2020", the sad truth is that we have little control over our own stories, because only the ones that are safe-for-capitalism are allowed through in the tight publishing and US propaganda requirements.