There was quite an Internet scuffle last week, as a prominent white woman made some appalling comments about two wildly successful women of color (WOC) in the food and wellness spaces. I could care less about petty media scuffles. However—this is an opportunity for white women (WW) and white-run media platforms to do work we’ve needed to do for centuries.
This morning, a friend asked why this prominent WW was being called racist for the comments she made. From my own limited perspective as a WW, there’s a twofold answer.
On a micro level: In said interview, she mentions two other successful women without slandering their work—Katie Couric and Gwyneth Paltrow, both white. Gwyneth has created an empire so blatantly userous that it’s a goldmine for anyone looking to make an argument about deservedness or consumer manipulation. I am reminded of the photo that accompanied Taffy Brodesser-Akner‘s New York Times profile of Gwyneth—illuminated, angelic, almost ghostly white. This is the space she occupies in the American psyche, as do many WW: She does wrong but can do no wrong. Instead, women want to be her.
On a macro level: WW have made money off the backs of WOC since the foundation of America and before. White women were slave owners same as men, and up through the seventies, eighties, and even today, WW are freed to pursue careers and work because of the un/underpaid labor of women of color. This is part of the system our country thrives on. This is how things are built, how capitalism runs. This is why WW are writing ”ethnic” recipes for the NYT while women of color can’t get a column. And this is also why it is profoundly unsettling, in a way the WW-in-question may never realize unless she does the work, for her to see two WOC—neither of whom she sees as deserving—thriving and capitalizing on the very same system that would otherwise be capitalizing upon them.
We must do the work to decolonize food and wellness media. It is systemic—as in, dictated in part by entrenched systems of hiring and editorial—but it is also personal. It’s a matter of consumers demanding columns by women of color.
I plan to write on this to Sam Sifton, editor of New York Times Cooking, today—join me. I also invite you to send similar letters to editorial directors at other major publications to demand better representation and accountability for culinary cultural appropriation.
I also invite you to purchase Layla F. Saad’s bestselling Me & White Supremacy workbook, and begin the work within, today.
I want to clarify why I chose not to name names in this post:
I would rather direct attention to personal examination, accountability, action, and co-conspiratorship as opposed to giving more energy to the person in question. I would rather Sam Sifton get a dozen letters demanding WOC representation on NYT Cooking versus a bunch of letters complaining about said WW.
It is up to each of us to educate ourselves and take action to make change.
