A viral YouTube video, “‘Kalen Reacts’ Mac & Cheese,” features a young African American man commenting on a cooking segment featuring a white woman making a healthier version of macaroni and cheese.¹ As the woman folds brussel sprouts and squash into the macaroni and cheese, the young man protests in a comedic fashion that the macaroni and cheese has been ruined!

            The video is funny because the young man commenting is so dramatic, and probably also because we all have had some experience with a family-favorite recipe that has been altered to be healthier and it just isn’t the same.

            But what the video leaves unsaid is the cultural appropriation of foods and food culture that happens in racially divided societies. Having a cooking segment with a white woman cooking a dish that is known and loved in African American culture, a dish that she alters to fit the norms of white culture, is problematic. It may seem insignificant; it’s macaroni and cheese, after all! But it is very significant when a minority-culture dish is changed to fit majority-culture ideals. The cooking video is a microcosm of a much larger societal issue.

Being woke

            Recognizing that kind of cultural appropriation can be difficult if one is a member of a majority culture, because it becomes part of the air you breathe. All the social, political, economic and cultural forces that give power to majority culture become part of the accepted milieu to those in that culture. It is hard to be aware of all the ways one benefits from systems that are fundamentally unjust when they are part of the way your world has always been constructed. <

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