Lesson Plan Über Alles

Authenticity Lecture #7

Are Social Justice Warriors Overdoing Their Mission to Defend Authenticity?

As we have studied, there are many motivations for cultural appropriation. There are respectful homages, disrespectful rip-offs, and everything in-between. Some cases aren’t so clear cut. Take, for example, the case of two white ladies who went to Mexico to learn how to make street food, returned to Portland, were accused of being thieves, and were forced to shut down. 

Their rise and fall is described in the article “Kooks Serves Pop-Up Breakfast Burritos with Handmade Tortillas Out of a Food Cart on Cesar Chavez.” 

We find that Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly left Portland for Puerto Nuevo, fell in love with the handmade tortillas, “peeked” at the methods used when the locals wouldn’t unload their secrets, returned to Portland and experimented with what knowledge they had, and they served breakfast burritos partly inspired by Puerto Nuevo and party inspired by the “SoCal burrito.”

In many ways, their synthesis of ingredients and methods make them poster children for Gustavo Arellano. They were innovating and, yes, stealing in Arellano’s “Darwinian” sense,  and were making some of the most “decadent” mouth-watering breakfast burritos in Portland, compelling people to stand in long lines. 

But if you’ll notice, the article has an “Update: Koos has closed” caption on it. 

What happened?

According to Caroline Moreno who wrote “Portland Burrito Cart Closes After Owners Are Accused of Cultural Appropriation,” the publicity surrounding Kali Wilgus and Liz “LC” Connelly grew and grew until enough people were offended by the fact that Wilgus and Connelly admitted to stealing the tortilla recipe and methods. 

Many objected to the fact that Wilgus and Connelly didn’t show any remorse or desire to compensate the Mexican women whose recipes the two Anglo women stole before returning to Portland to strike it rich. 

The narrative rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. As you can imagine in the age of social media where cancel culture is rampant, social justice warriors went on the rampage and forced the closure of Kooks. 

While a moral principle was enforced, the Mexican women are not a penny richer, the people of Portland are being deprived of what were the best burritos available, and fewer Americans can now taste a part of authentic Mexican delicacy. Is all this worth it to enforce a moral principle? There is probably no clear right or wrong answer. I’ll let you decide. But based on what we’ve read from Gustavo Arellano, we can infer that he defends Wilgus and Connelly. 

But don’t take my word for it. Here is Gustavo Arellano reiterating many of the ideas we’ve covered as he discusses the closure of Kooks on the KCRW Good Food podcast. 

Arellano observes that Portland’s social justice warriors went overboard and that a lot of their extreme behavior is more of a response to the political climate than the women’s behavior. Further, Arellano agrees with Good Food host Evan Kleinman that there is an “authenticity fallacy” that makes a lot of white people reduce Mexican food to a narrow, fallacious definition of authenticity. 

 

Attitude Counts

In Gustavo Arellano’s article “The Problem Isn’t Rick Bayless Cooking Mexican Food--It’s That He’s a Thin-Skinned Diva,” Arellano defends Rick Bayless for cooking Mexican food, but he excoriates Bayless for painting himself as a White Messiah who is America’s Mexican food champion. It is Bayless’ arrogance and condescension that piques Arellano, not Bayless’ cultural appropriation.

Race and Privilege

The controversy surrounding Rick Bayless and the aforementioned Portland women who made breakfast burritos of the now closed Kooks has steered the debate about authentic Mexican food to the subjects of race and privilege.  Tim Carman weighs in with his article “Should White Chefs Sell Burritos?” We read that racial shaming in Portland is a powerful political and economical tool and that social justice warriors have even made a list of white Portland restaurants owners whose businesses should be avoided and a list of similar restaurants of people of color who should be visited instead. As Carman writes: “Someone in the City of Roses has even created a Google doc, listing the white-owned restaurants that have appropriated cuisines outside their own culture. For each entry, the document suggests alternative restaurants owned by people of color.”

Social Justice Warriors Impose Totalitarianism on the Food World

Both Tim Carman and Gustavo Arellano agree that this scrutiny of restaurants in which social justice warriors dictate what is authentic by matching a person’s race with the cuisine is extremist, limits the freedoms of what people do in the kitchen, including their culinary creativity, puts people in racial boxes, fails to recognize that there are fusion cuisines that defy categorization, and in general push a totalitarian mentality on the food world. 

In other words, there is a totalitarian streak in the Cult of Authenticity movement. In an argumentative paper, this would be one of the grounds or reasons for defending Arellano’s claim that the Cult of Authenticity is bogus. 

Throw a Wrench into the Argument

But there are arguments against Gustavo Arellano and Tim Carman. In a critical thinking class we have to look at both sides. We have to always throw a wrench into the argument. Here is one:

In rejecting the social justice warriors’ rejection of cultural appropriation, are there abuses that cannot be ignored? Indeed, some abuses can be identified.

The “White-Washing” of Ethnic Cuisine

In the Katie Donovan article “Culinary Appropriation,” she contends that Rick Bayless and other prominent white chefs appoint themselves as translators of ethnic cuisine for a white consumer base in the interests of making money. By translating ethnic cuisine, these white chefs are appropriating the cuisine for their profits, misrepresenting the original foods and thereby diluting their authenticity, and egotistically claiming culinary greatness when the credit should be given to those who remain in obscurity. As Donovan writes:

“Bayless has had several transgressions against the Mexican culture through his response to critics.  However, his description of ‘translating’ certain traditional Mexican ingredients for his Midwestern clients is borderline offensive.  He is personally contributing to the white washing of the Mexican culinary culture in highlighting terms that would be more appealing to non-Mexican consumers.  In order to market Mexican cuisine to a different audience, it seems as though Rick Bayless puts profits above respect for culture in his restaurants.”

“White-Washing” or “Innovation”?

Gustavo Arellano would agree with some of the above, especially the egotism of self-appointed Food Messiahs for ethnic cuisine. But Gustavo Arellano doesn’t think ethnic foods get “white washed” so much as innovated, and that this innovation keeps Mexican food relevant and dynamic whereas Italian and German food are stagnant and losing relevance in the American dining scene. 

Language and Semantics

One of the most mind-boggling areas of argumentation is language or semantics: How we use language and the very words we choose to deliver our argument. If we use “white-washing” we will surely be more likely to be strongly opposed to cultural appropriation; if we use “innovation,” we will surely be more likely to defend, along with Gustavo Arellano, cultural appropriation. 

Again, Not all Cultural Appropriation is the Same

A white chef “translating,” stealing, appropriating (or whatever word you want to use) from an ethnic community and profiteering from it is a very specific kind of cultural appropriation. But on a broader level, all food preparations borrow methods and ingredients from all over the world so that the evolution of food is built on a large degree of cultural appropriation. This point is made in the Matt Gross article “The Cultural Appropriation of Food.” Gross observes that pizza, ramen, Cajun-style Gumbo, and an endless list of foods come from trans-migration, innovation, improvisation, and, yes, cultural appropriation. That in fact is the history of food. As Gross writes:

“Ancient history: Cultural appropriation has given us the best food in the world. Pizza, for example, is unthinkable without tomatoes, which originated in the New World and so came to Italy as a result of Christopher Columbus’s voyages. Ramen did not become a big deal in Japan until the postwar American transitional authority brought tons and tons of wheat to the islands. Chili peppers, as this awesome story from Vincent Bevins at The Awl beautifully explained, originate in Latin America, so whenever a Thai curry or Sichuan hotpot sets your mouth aflame, you have the Spanish and especially the Portuguese to thank for bringing that fruit around the world. Oranges probably came from Southeast Asia. Wheat from southeastern Turkey. Apples from Kazakhstan. Last week, some Facebook friends and I determined that Cajun-style gumbo may be the most international food in the world, all of its essential ingredients having originated in farflung corners of the world.”

Your Nuanced View of Cultural Appropriation & Culinary Authenticity Will Influence Your Argument

As you consider the many definitions of cultural appropriation and culinary authenticity, you must also consider that the more complex and nuanced your definitions of these terms are the more sophisticated and impressive your essay will be. 

Introduction

We have been looking at Gustavo Arellano’s claim that when it comes to Mexican food the Cult of Authenticity is a bad thing rife with fallacies and misconceptions. Let us, again, take a look at Arellano’s arguments before we examine counterarguments that challenge Arellano’s claim.

Review of Gustavo Arellano’s Arguments Against the Cult of Authenticity

(Pro Tip: The following arguments would make an excellent body paragraph outline for Essay 4) 

1. In spite of some phony white chefs who wrongly anoint themselves as ambassadors of Mexican food, mainstreaming Mexican food is on balance a good because it exposes more people to the greatness of Mexican food and encourages cultural respect and cultural celebration of Mexican contributions. 
2. Much of the purity cult behind the notion of authenticity is from whites on the Left and Right who don’t understand Mexican food or the Mexican people. 
3. Letting social justice warriors dictate what is authentic can lead to food totalitarianism and absurdly narrow, reductionist definitions of authenticity.
4. The lines are blurred between innovation, cross-cultural synergy, and cultural appropriation, which has occurred since the beginning of time and is an inevitable part of how food evolves into amazing dishes. 
5. It’s absurd to reject Tex-Mex or Cal-Mex food when we consider that these fusions are about embracing the greatness of Mexican cuisine and that no food is good or bad per se; rather, how a chef executes the dish determines whether it’s good or not. It’s all about execution. A bad taco could put you in a bad mood for a week. An exceptional taco could “change your life” and inject your brain’s amygdala with euphoric endorphins. 

Counterarguments that challenge Gustavo Arellano’s claim that we should reject the Cult of Authenticity

1. Plagiarism Argument: When we steal intellectual or creative property, there should be consequences. We call this type of stealing plagiarism. Students who commit plagiarism get into big trouble. Shouldn’t cooks who steal creatively and in effect commit culinary plagiarism be subject to some kind of penalties? Should not these chefs who engage in stealing or cultural appropriation at the very least be required to ascribe credit to their sources? Should not these chefs who commit acts of culinary plagiarism at least be required to give a portion of their profits to the areas they stole from? 
2. Moral Argument: Cultural appropriation, the kind where privileged people go to a small town in the United States, Mexico or Latin America and then steal recipes and cooking methods, offends our common sense of morality, fairness, honesty, and justice. When Gustavo Arellano says, “Everybody steals,” and that’s just the “Darwinian” way in the hyper-competitive restaurant industry, could we not accuse Arellano of using a “two rights make a wrong fallacy”? This fallacy is commonly referred to as argumentum ad populum or appeal to the majority fallacy. In other words, just because the majority engage in immoral behavior doesn't make that behavior right. 
3. Quality Control or “Wannabes” Argument: Sure, Gustavo Arellano points out all these great examples of cultural appropriation, but those examples don’t diminish the exponential growth of phony Mexican restaurants that serve the most crass, disgusting, abominable “Mexican food” imaginable. Violating the Cult of Authenticity comes with a steep price: A bunch of wannabes steal some recipes and think they know how to make Mexican food when in fact what they are serving is an insult to Mexican food and to Mexican culture. 
4. Grandmother argument: A student told me he had some very mediocre Molcajete at an expensive Mexican restaurant. He told me, “When I visit my grandmother in Guatemala, she makes me Molcajete that blows all the other ones away. I can’t get excited paying premium dollar for a bunch of sad food that goes under the name of ‘Mexican food.’” What this student is saying essentially is that the tradition, experience, and love his grandmother puts in her homemade Molcajete cannot be compared to the vastly inferior substitutes. Grandmother’s cooking, in other words, is an argument for authenticity.  

Pro Writing Tip for Essay 4: Consider Legit Food Innovation Principle Vs. Flagrant Thievery Principle

Hello Everyone,

As I pore over Gustavo Arellano’s claim that the rigid orthodoxy of food authenticity should be shattered in favor of more flexible food guidelines, I am struck by something that I believe will help you with your argumentative essay. 

I am struck by the fact that Arellano uses not one but two arguments to support his claim, and these arguments do not dovetail conveniently to support his claim. To the contrary, his two arguments are divergent: They split and move in opposite directions and as such these diverging arguments weaken his overall claim.

Legit Food Innovation Principle Vs. Flagrant Thievery Principle

What are these two arguments?

The first argument, the one I agree with, is what I’ll call the Legit Food Innovation Principle. This principle states that we have food traditions based on our family, culture, and region, and natural forces cause us to make innovations. For example, we move and in moving we make natural adaptations and innovations based on the original recipe. Or our love and respect of the tacos compels us to be “taco artists” who experiment and make variations to put a spin on old classic style recipes.

I’ll give you two examples.

First, let us say a woman from Chihuahua, Mexico, moves to El Paso, Texas. In Chihuahua, she made tacos with cotija cheese, but in El Paso she can mostly access cheddar cheese, so she goes with the cheddar. Let us say the peppers and other ingredients that grow in her El Paso backyard are different from the plants that grow in her Chihuahua backyard, so she uses the ingredients that are local to her. 

These innovations and adaptations, Arellano claims, are legit and totally support his claim that we should challenge food authenticity, which would dictate that we must rigidly adhere to the original recipe. 

Here is a second example. Head chef of Guerrilla Tacos in downtown Los Angeles is Pico Rivera native Wes Avila. Mr. Avila is also featured in Netflix’s The Taco Chronicles. Wes Avila celebrates the diversity of tacos, he celebrates the various regions of tacos, and in doing so he is what I’d call a Taco Story-Teller, a craftsman, and an artist who looks at the corn tortilla as a “blank slate” on which to make his artistic creations. His Guerrilla Tacos menu is a testament to this fact. I would consider his approach to tacos part of the Legit Innovation Argument. 

However, we must now arrive at another one of Arellano’s arguments, one that I disagree with. I call this the Flagrant Thievery Principle. Regarding the stealing of recipes, Arellano says “everyone does it” and it’s a smart money-making technique in the cutthroat restaurant business. 

Here I must depart with Arellano for several reasons. 

First the argument that “everyone does it” is a logical fallacy and any critical thinking instructor worth his salt will tell you that two wrongs never make a right. If everyone is stealing computer equipment at your workplace, that doesn’t mean it’s right for you to do the same. Our integrity demands that we never succumb to the “everyone does it” fallacy. 

My second disagreement with Arellano is that I find it morally bankrupt for privileged predatory philistines to go down to Mexico, sneak around, steal recipes, and then repackage those recipes for their own profit. Many of my students have pointed out that such behavior smacks of systemic racism and exploitation. I personally wouldn’t want that bad mojo over my restaurant or my conscience. 

My third disagreement with the Flagrant Thievery Principle is that Taco Bell got rich stealing from Mitla Cafe, and so according to Arellano, it must be good Sorry, but getting rich is not a moral defense of anything. Making an abomination of real Mexican food and contributing to the depersonalization of food culture through fast-food service is not a moral defense of food theft. My wife told me that Taco Bell and Jack in the Box exist, not for quality food, but because people get stoned and get the munchies. While she may be making an oversimplification, she may be on to something. In any event, making cheap soulless food for profit is hardly a defense of food theft and cultural appropriation. 

Conclusion

I agree with Arellano’s Legit Food Innovation Principle, but I vehemently reject his Flagrant Thievery Principle. The latter argument tailspins out of control, careens off the road, and splashes into the Pacific Ocean where it belongs.

I want to thank my students who visited me during my Zoom office hours and asked me thoughtful questions, which made me pore over Arellano’s claim with more granular rigor and intensity. 

I hope this discussion was helpful to you all.

Best to Everyone,

Jeff McMahon

Gustavo Arellano Is 75% Right

Gustavo Arellano has made many compelling, insightful points in his essay “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food,” but do I agree with him? I’d say he’s 75% right.

He’s right that stealing or appropriating food is a reality in the Darwinian restaurant industry where creating buzz and mouth-watering dishes is a cut-throat business. He’s right that stealing and innovating food makes Mexican food relevant, vibrant, current, and popular. He’s right that stealing Mexican food in a way promotes it and helps scale it to the point that it’s the fastest-growing food globally.

However, Arellano has two glaring weaknesses in his argument. For one, he conveniently doesn’t address the sad fact that stealing food too often ruins the food. American bland tastebuds want bland foods, so too often restaurateurs cater to those bland tastebuds by Americanizing Mexican, Thai, Indian, Chinese, Korean, and other foods so that in America we get inferior, insipid versions of the original. Arellano’s argument would have been more credible had he addressed this issue. 

Another weakness in Arellano’s argument is his avoidance of white rebranding of ethnic food. Take the Netflix series High on the Hog, for example, which teaches us that during slavery and the African Diaspora many African dishes were carried to America and then rebranded “Southern Cuisine,” which is a euphemism for white cuisine. Such rebranding is a moral abomination. Arellano should have addressed this type of appropriation to give his essay more credibility.

So on balance, Arellano makes some great points about how cultural appropriation can be a form of cultural appreciation that champions Mexican cooking. But he should have shown the unsavory underbelly of cultural appropriation: watered-down bland dishes like Taco Bell and white people rebranding ethnic cuisine as “white food.” Both of those scenarios are unacceptable. 

To stimulate ideas for your essay, in a paragraph, present your reaction to the following counterarguments that challenge Gustavo Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation. 

1. Plagiarism Argument: When we steal intellectual or creative property, there should be consequences. We call this type of stealing plagiarism. Students who commit plagiarism get into big trouble. Shouldn’t cooks who steal creatively and in effect commit plagiarism be subject to some kind of penalties? Should not these chefs who engage in stealing or cultural appropriation at the very least be required to ascribe credit to their sources? Should not these chefs who commit acts of culinary plagiarism at least be required to give a portion of their profits to the areas they stole from? 
2. Moral Argument: Cultural appropriation, the kind where privileged people go to a small town in the United States, Mexico or Latin America and steal recipes and cooking methods, offends our common sense of morality, fairness, honesty, and justice. When Gustavo Arellano says, “Everybody steals,” and that’s just the “Darwinian” way in the hyper-competitive restaurant industry, could we not accuse Arellano of using a “two rights make a wrong fallacy”? This fallacy is commonly referred to as argumentum ad populum or appeal to the majority fallacy. 
3. Quality Control or “Wannabes” Argument: Sure, Gustavo Arellano points out all these great examples of cultural appropriation, but those examples don’t diminish the exponential growth of phony Mexican restaurants that serve the most crass, disgusting, abominable “Mexican food” imaginable. Violating the Cult of Authenticity comes with a steep price: A bunch of wannabes steal some recipes and think they know how to make Mexican food when in fact what they are serving is an insult to Mexican food and Mexican culture. 
4. Grandmother argument: A student told me he had some very mediocre Molcajete at an expensive Mexican restaurant. He told me, “When I visit my grandmother in Guatemala, she makes me Molcajete that blows all the other ones away. I can’t get excited paying premium dollar for a bunch of sad food that goes under the name of ‘Mexican food.’” What this student is saying essentially is that the tradition, experience, and love his grandmother puts in her homemade Molcajete cannot be compared to the vastly inferior substitutes. Grandmother’s cooking, in other words, is an argument for authenticity.  

 

Authenticity Lecture #6

Sample Theses That Refute and Defend Gustavo Arellano’s Argument

 

Refutation

 

Gustavo Arellano is a prestigious, beloved Los Angeles culture writer. Unfortunately, his argument that attempts to ease the collective white conscience to steal Mexican food is a sad, unconvincing affair. His argument is crippled with egregious moral, legal, and logical fallacies. He knows all too well that American history is rife with white people exploiting Mexicans’ hard work and ingenuity. To defend whites because “everyone steals” is a childish remark that fails basic moral teachings, specifically the infantile notion that two wrongs make a right. Second, if Arellano wants us to take him seriously, he must give us a more narrow definition of cultural appropriation. There is no moral equivalence between an El Salvadorean husband respectfully learning the finer points of making Jahuacatas from his wife who hails from Michoacan and the white El Torito manager who hires a Mexican worker, steals the worker’s recipes over a period of two months, and then unceremoniously fires the worker.  A third most regrettable error on Arellano’s part is how he conveniently ignores the atrocious fact that the majority of white stealing of Mexican food is done in the cynical service of making money by white-washing and in effect destroying delicious food to make it palatable for philistines, tourists, and other types of phony people who fancy deluding themselves into “going out and getting some ethnic food.” The bad scenarios described above are more than just bad; they are abominations of the tastebuds and the soul, and for Arellano to omit these abominations from his argument is a form of intellectual dishonesty for which I cannot forgive. 

 

Defense

 

I feel bad for the above writer who has morally excoriated Gustavo Arellano for his supposed moral failings. This writer’s spiritual purity and moral self-righteousness have blinded him from the gustatory pleasures that result from Arellano’s “free-stealing” philosophy. By “free-stealing,” I refer to a degree of healthy chaos that exists in the food industry. Recipes are flying from one town to another; variations are infinite based on quirks, available food, cross-cultural pollination, and a synthesis of cooking techniques from the many cultures that inevitably converge in great cosmopolitan cities such as Los Angeles. Moreover, the relevance of Mexican cooking makes it the most popular, fastest-growing cuisine in the world. Contrary to the above passage which attempts to put a big stink on Gustavo Arellano and which would have us believe that Mexican food is pure, sacrosanct, and unchanging, real Mexican food is constantly evolving through ruthless stealing, borrowing, mutations, and respectful homages to its sacred origins. Thank God, Gustavo Arellano acknowledges the vibrancy of Mexican cooking and its complicated, sometimes morally questionable origins, for finally, a food writer has exposed the truth about the wonders of Mexican food. The above writer, on the other hand, gets a medal for moral self-righteousness but loses points for being a boring, propaganda writer for the Cult of Authenticity. 

 

Your Essay Assignment:

Do you agree or disagree with Arellano's defense of cultural appropriation?

Summary of the Essay's Main Arguments

• We are all rapacious creatures whose drive for success makes us to some degree cutthroat and ruthless. The more ruthlessly we steal a recipe the more we affirm the greatness of that recipe. Mediocre food isn't stolen. Only great food is. The theft of Mexican recipes is a tribute to its greatness. 
• "Stealing" is actually the natural human inclination for cross-cultural pollination. Such pollination enriches culture and in many cases actually changes culture for the better.
• To treat Mexicans as helpless victims whose delicacies are being stolen is to patronize them and to "rob them of human agency" (free will). In fact, Mexicans have been "stealing," or rather cross-pollinating, for thousands of years. Their history is rife with taking foods from other cultures such as Spain, France, and the Middle East, and making these foods their own. 
• From the Netflix series Ugly Delicious, "Tacos" episode, we find that respectful inspiration from the original dish is an acceptable form of cultural appropriation. 

Some Caveats, Stipulations, or Conditions We Can Use from Ugly Delicious, "Tacos":

• Taking shortcuts is an abomination and degrades the original version of the food such as tortillas.
• Offering stereotypes of Mexican food is an abomination and shows ignorance of the depth of ingredients and creativity from the treasures of Mexican cooking. Don't play "Jingle Bells" on the piano when you should be playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony. 
• Making tourist food or white-washing food to make it bland for mass appeal will make you money but it is an abomination of authentic Mexican food. 
• Taking agua fresca and rebranding it as "spa water" is a form of racial plagiarism so egregious that I doubt Gustavo Arellano would defend such an act of shamelessness and arrogance. 

 

What are the two opposing sides of this argument?

The Great Debate: Innovation Vs. Tradition:

On one side, Gustavo Arellano’s side, is the argument that great food evolves through stealing and that stealing is a sign of the food’s greatness. Another side of food greatness is constant evolution and constant innovation. People are open to experimenting with foods and not tied to traditions and absolutes. Mexican food, moreover, is not a monolith. There is diversity based on regions and innovations, so there is no such thing as One Kind of Mexican Food, no One Burrito, No One Taco, etc. 

On the other side, the Cult of Authenticity, is the belief that food should be unchanged. Food is iconic and rooted in tradition and attempts at changing the food is equivalent to “blasphemy.” Also, when the food is taken and changed it accounts to the loathsome act of cultural appropriation.  Which side are you on?

Use the Toulmin Argument Model with a Counterargument-Rebuttal Section

From a design and structure standpoint, you are learning to write an argumentative essay in the tradition of the Toulmin Model, named after philosopher Stephen Toulmin. In the Toulmin Model, you address your opponents’ views in a counterargument-rebuttal section. 

Sentence Fragments 

Sentence fragments are incomplete thoughts presented as dependent clauses or phrases.

A dependent clause or a phrase is never a complete sentence.

Types of dependent clauses:

Whenever I drive up windy mountains,

Because I have craved pizza for 14 months,

Unless you add coffee to your chocolate cake recipe,

,which is currently enjoying a resurgence. 

 

Phrases

Enamored by the music of Tupac Shakur,

Craving pesto linguine with olive-oil based clam sauce, 

Flexing his muscles with a braggadocio never seen in modern times,

Lying under the bridge and eating garlic pepper pretzels with a dollop of cream cheese and a jug of chilled apple cider, 

To understand the notion of Universal Basic Income and all of its related factors for social change in this disruptive age, 

Running into crowded restaurants with garlic and whiskey fuming out of his sweaty pores while brandishing a golden scepter, 

 

Examples

I won't entertain your requests for more money and gifts. Until you show at least a modicum of responsibility at school and with your friends. 

I won't consider buying the new BMW sports coupe. Unless of course my uncle gives me that inheritance he keeps talking about whenever he gets a bit tipsy. 

I can't imagine ever going to Chuck E. Cheese. Which makes me feel like I'm emotionally arrested. 

I am considering the purchase of a new wardrobe. That is, if I'm picked for that job interview at Nordstrom. 

Human morals have vanished. To the point at which it was decided that market values would triumph. 

No subject 

Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.

No complete verb

The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.

Beginning with a subordinating word

We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.

A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.

Sentence Fragment Exercises  

After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence. 

One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her. 

Two.  In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.

Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market. 

Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.  

Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.   

Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming. 

Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar. 

Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety. 

Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV. 

Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel. 

Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills. 

Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend. 

Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me. 

Identify the Fragments Below

Identify the Fragments Below

I drank the chalky Soylent meal-replacement drink. Expecting to feel full and satisfied. Only to find that I was still ravenously hungry afterwards. Trying to sate my hunger pangs. I went to HomeTown Buffet. Where I ate several platters of braised oxtail and barbecued short ribs smothered in a honey vinegar sauce. Which reminded me of a sauce where I used to buy groceries from. When I was a kid.

Feeling bloated after my HomeTown Buffet indulgence. I exited the restaurant. After which I hailed an Uber and asked the driver for a night club recommendation. So I could dance off all my calories. The driver recommended a place, Anxiety Wires. I had never heard of it. Though, it was crowded inside. I felt eager to dance and confident about “my swag.” Although, I was still feeling bloated. Wondering if my intestines were on the verge of exploding.

Sweating under the night club’s outdoor canopy. I smelled the cloying gasses of a nearby vape. A serpentine woman was holding the vape. A gold contraption emitting rose-water vapors into my direction. Contemplating my gluttony. I was suddenly feeling low confidence. Though I pushed myself to introduce myself to the vape-smoking stranger with the serpentine features. Her eyes locked on mine.

I decided to play it cool. Instead of overwhelming her with a loud, brash manner. Which she might interpret as neediness on my part.

Keeping a portable fan in my cargo pocket for emergencies. When I feel like I’m overheating. I took the fan out of my pocket, turned it on, and directed it toward the serpentine stranger. Making it so the vapors were blowing back in her face.

“Doesn’t smell so good, does it?” I said. With a sarcastic grin.

She cackled, then said, “Thank you for blowing the vapors in my face. Now I can both enjoy inhaling them and breathing them in. For double the pleasure. You are quite a find. Come home with me and I’ll introduce you to my mother Gertrude and her pitbull Jackson. I’m sure they’ll welcome you into our home. Considering what a well-fed handsome man you are.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” I said. “I would love to meet your mother Gertrude and your mother’s pitbull Jackson. Only one problem. My breath smells like a rotting dead dragon. Right after eating spicy ribs. Which reminds me? Do you have any breath mints?”

“I don’t believe in carrying breath mints. On account of the rose-water vape. That cleanses my palate. Making my breath rosy fresh.”

“Wow. Your constant good breath counteracts my intractable bad breath. Making us a match in heaven.”

“I agree. Totally. You really need to meet my mother. Because she’ll bless us and make our marriage official. Since we really need her blessing. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Now let me smell your breath. So I can identify the hot sauce.”

“Why must you do that?”

“So I can use the same hot sauce on our wedding cake, silly. To celebrate the first night we met. Capisce?”

“Capisce.”

She approached me. Affording me a view of her long, tired face. Covered in scales. Reptilian. Evocative of something primitive. Something precious and indelible from my childhood lost long ago. I wanted to run from her, but I could not. Some mysterious force drew me to her, and we inched closer and closer toward one another. Succumbing to a power neither of us could fathom. 

 

Comma Splice Review

Identify the Comma Splices Below:

It’s not a question of will there be chaos or will there be destruction, it’s a question of how much?

MySpace was disruptive in its time, however, it’s a dated platform and to simply mention it is to make people laugh with a certain derision surely it’s a platform that has seen its time, another example is the meal replacement Soylent, its creator made a drink that says, “You’re too busy to eat,” so drinking this pancake batter-like concoction gives tech people street. I may laugh at its stupidity, instead I should admire it since the product has made millions for its creator. It’s proven to be somewhat disruptive.

To be sure, though, Facebook redefines the word disruptive, it has rapidly accrued over 3 billion users and will soon have half the planet plugged into its site, that is the apotheosis of a greedy person’s fantasy, imagine controlling half the planet on a platform that mines private information and targets ads toward specific personality profiles.  

One of the scary disruptions of Facebook is that billions of people have lost their personal agency, what that means that people have unknowingly been manipulated by Facebook’s puppeteers to the point that many Facebook users suffer from social media addiction, moreover, these same users prefer the fake life they curate on social media to the real life they once had, in fact, their previous real life is just a puff of smoke that has faded into the distance, many people no longer even know what it means to be “real” anymore, having lost their agency, having succumbed to their Facebook addiction, they have become zombies waiting for their next rush of social media-fueled dopamine, what a sad state of affairs.

What is Cultural Appropriation?

According to the Origin of Everything “What Is Cultural Appropriation?” video, there are many definitions of cultural appropriation, and we cannot use cultural appropriation as an argument about any debate concerning authenticity unless we are clear with our terms.

There are egregious, ambiguous, and benign forms and examples of cultural appropriation, so we cannot lump them all together as cancel culture (group shaming someone or an organization for committing some unforgivable sin or other) would have us do. 

Egregious or Really Bad Forms and Examples of Cultural Appropriation

1. Elvis Presley imitating soul music while he gets rich and the African Americans he stole from remain on the margins. 
2. A white guy putting on black face and putting on a negative stereotype minstrel show under the name “Jim Crow.”
3. Hollywood showing a pattern of hiring white actors over ethnic actors to play ethnic roles.
4. Anytime the dominant culture steals something from marginalized culture for entertainment and profiteering purposes and obscures the original meaning, sacredness, and context of the thing that was stolen. 
5. Rachel Dolezal (shown below), a white woman, using a tanning bed and hair extensions to pass as black, lying about her racial identity, and using her identity as a “black woman” to be an authority on race, and even get a job at the NAACP, and edging out real African American women for the job. In putting on her charade, she became the consummate “wannabe.”

Controversial examples of cultural appropriation

Some actions are more controversial. For example, can a white writer assume the identity of an ethnic person in creating a narrator or character for a novel? 

Such a controversy has become huge in recent times with the best-selling novel American Dirt, by Anglo writer Jeanine Cummins (shown above). Some argue that a writer of any race should have artistic license to create any character they need to fulfill their artistic vision. Others accuse Jeanine Cummins of cultural appropriation and as a guilty party of this act, Cummins, as a white woman, cannot create an authentic experience about a Mexican mother who goes across the United States border with her son, and in fact is exploiting human suffering to make a buck. We read that some have accused, as cited in The Guardian article “Publishers defend American Dirt as claims of cultural appropriation grow,” of Cummins making “overly ripe stereotypes” from “the white gaze” and others say that the novel, cultural appropriation or not, is just bad writing, sensationalistic and formulaic, a cheap thriller. 

Defending Cultural Appropriation

New York Times Student Editorial Contest Winner seventeen-year-old Maggie Strauss defends cultural appropriation in her essay “‘Cultural Appropriation’ Is Critical to Human Progress.”

Strauss makes the point that not all cultural appropriation is alike. How we judge instances of cultural appropriation should be partly based on intention or motive. She concedes that many fashions take from different cultures, and sometimes this influence is done in good taste, but other times it is based on shallow stereotypes. As she writes:

“These fashion statements were clearly not designed to offend or degrade the cultures that influenced them. However, that is not to say that everyone who draws inspiration from different cultures is doing it with the right intentions. Issues arise when imitation is based on a shallow and offensive stereotype, which is just blatant racism.”

Syncretism

Strauss argues that cultural appropriation from a broad definition is inevitable and part of natural human progress. This broad definition of cultural exchange is called syncretism. As she writes: “From a historical perspective, the term that is typically used to describe the adoption of certain practices from one culture to the next is syncretism. Without syncretism, human progress would be next to impossible.”

We can’t put ourselves in boxes

An Irish person shouldn’t be forced to wear only Irish clothes, eat Irish food, and drink Irish beer. Such a boxing in is absurd and contrary to human nature. We are creatures who freely engage in cultural exchange. For cancel culture to lump all cultural exchange as some horrific sin of cultural appropriation is extremist and disconnected from reality.

But what about when white women go to Mexico, take recipes from the Mexican streets, and return to America to create a successful Mexican food eatery? 

We will address this question in our next post. 

Introduction

In this post we will cover the following:

1. We will look at the controversy surrounding Tex-Mex.
2. We will pause for a moment and review some of Gustavo Arellano's arguments against the Cult of Authenticity in the context of Mexican food.
3. Let us remind ourselves that in the context of Mexican food, the Cult of Authenticity says two main things: People have to come from the region the Mexican food is produced to be legit; people who don't come from the region and cook the same food are stealing the food and using innovations that compromise the purity and authenticity of the food.

Tex-Mex: You Either Hate It or Love It

We can’t argue about the Cult of Authenticity in the context of Mexican food without addressing the controversy of Tex-Mex, which is a very polarizing subject. Some people love chile con carne, fajitas, and chile con queso while others scoff at these “Americanized” versions of Mexican food. 

My personal take is that if someone makes any food category well and irresistible, I’ll eat it. I don’t care about labels. Throughout my travels, including Russia, Africa, Italy, France, England, Mexico, Canada, and Spain, I have eaten disgusting, mediocre, and amazing versions of the same food categories, so I’m sure there are abhorrent versions of Tex-Mex and unbelievably amazing versions.

Gustavo Arellano Defends Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex

In the article “Gustavo Arellano: Has the Tide Turned Against Tex-Mex Food?” by Katharine Shilcutt, Arellano is quoted as defending both Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex, foods with deep origins in the cultural exchange of Americans and Mexicans. 

The Problem Isn’t Tex-Mex; the Problem Is Phony Self-Appointed Experts of Mexican Cuisine

The problem, ironically enough, is that white chef Rick Bayless, who has taken the mantle of Mexican Food Messiah, has wrongly condemned Tex-Mex while aggrandizing himself as the Purity Expert on Mexican Food. Arellano accused Bayless and Diana Kennedy for stealing Mexican food and calling it their own: to “have raided Mexico's various states and towns to cobble together an American version of what "authentic" Mexican food should be.” To add insult to injury, Arellano observes that Bayless only takes his dishes from three regions of Mexico and ignores a huge swatch of other regions, so Bayless disqualifies from being able to call himself a true ambassador of Mexican cuisine. 

Arellano Observes Causes of Resentment of Tex-Mex

In the article, we further read that the quality of the delicious Tex-Mex food isn’t the issue; it’s resentment over cultural appropriation, and this resentment, according to Arellano, is largely shared by “Mexican elites.” We read: "With the Mexican elite, they have just hated the fact that Americans love Mexican food and despise the fact that when Americans cook Mexican food they cook Tex-Mex. It's a psychic wound," he explained. "Not only did the gabachos steal half of our territory, now they're stealing our food."

Mainstreaming Ethnic Cuisine Is Not a Bad Thing; We Do It All the Time

Arellano further observes that we mainstream ethnic cuisines all the time, and there is an upside: cultural acceptance, cultural respect, and cultural celebration. As we read: “On the other hand, says Arellano, Mexicans often aren't very fond of Tex-Mex either -- especially Mexicans in other parts of North America. Although other ethnicities' cuisines have been mainstreamed by Americans over the years (Italian and Chinese, most notably), Arellano notes that Mexicans -- by far -- hold the most contempt for the Americanized version of their food. Arellano calls it a "socio-psychological issue.’"

This is probably a good time to stop and review Gustavo Arellano’s main arguments against the Cult of Authenticity. 

Review of Gustavo Arellano’s Arguments Against the Cult of Authenticity

(Pro Tip: The following arguments would make an excellent body paragraph outline for Essay 4) 

1. In spite of some phony white chefs who wrongly anoint themselves as ambassadors of Mexican food, mainstreaming Mexican food is on balance a good because it exposes more people to the greatness of Mexican food and encourages cultural respect and cultural celebration of Mexican contributions. 
2. Much of the purity cult behind the notion of authenticity is from whites on the Left and Right who don’t understand Mexican food or the Mexican people. 
3. Letting social justice warriors dictate what is authentic can lead to food totalitarianism and absurdly narrow, reductionist definitions of authenticity.
4. The lines are blurred between innovation, cross-cultural synergy, and cultural appropriation, which has occurred since the beginning of time and is an inevitable part of how food evolves into amazing dishes. 
5. It’s absurd to reject Tex-Mex or Cal-Mex food when we consider that these fusions are about embracing the greatness of Mexican cuisine and that no food is good or bad per se; rather, how a chef executes the dish determines whether it’s good or not. It’s all about execution. A bad taco could put you in a bad mood for a week. An exceptional taco could “change your life” and inject your brain’s amygdala with euphoric endorphins. 

If we have any questions about the authenticity of Tex-Mex, this Eater YouTube video titled “How the World’s Most Authentic Tex-Mex Is Made” should quell those doubts:

How the World's Most Authentic Tex-Mex is Made — Cooking in America

Introduction

I’ve been reading journalist Gustavo Arellano’s articles for almost two decades now. He is always truthful, gut-punching, surprising, edgy, funny, smart, and relevant. When I think about his writing, it occurs to me that Arellano  often incorporates many of the 8 Rules for Elevating Your Argumentative Thesis. 

As we prepare for our essay, let us do a study of them: 

Rule #1: Write a claim that means something to you on both an intellectual and visceral level. 

If your claim is perfunctory or listless or weak or just plain boring, it is going to show up in your writing. You have to find an angle that you care about both intellectually and viscerally (from the gut). It is impossible to fabricate authentic passion for your topic, that is, unless you are a person of remarkable talent and acting skills. If that is true, you are the exception, not the rule. 

Rule #2: Write a claim that is debatable. 

If your claim is debatable, then you have the opportunity to test it against opposing views. This testing of your claim forces you to do an intellectual deep dive, which by necessity elevates the sophistication of your writing rigor. In contrast, a thesis that is too obvious and factual will be boring because you will be lecturing down to your reader something that is self-evident. For example, writing a claim or thesis that patience is necessary for a healthy marriage is, while true, so obvious that to read through such an essay would be a slog through a compositional snoozefest. 

Rule #3 Write a claim that is modified through the use of conditions or caveats. 

A caveat is a condition you place on a proposition. For example, if you are arguing for fighting Covid-19 through contact tracing, you might argue for contact tracing with some caveats in your thesis such as this:

“Provided we have measures to protect privacy and invasive government snooping, contact tracing is essential for fighting Covid-19.”

You are arguing for contact tracing if certain conditions are met. By placing conditions in your thesis, you are elevating your writing’s sophistication. 

Rule #4: Gain credibility for your claim by using a concession clause.

In Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky’s From Inquiry to Academic Writing, Third Edition, we read that  “Part of the strategy of developing a main claim supported with good reasons is to offer a concession, an acknowledgment that readers may not agree with every point the writer is making. A concession is a writer’s way of saying, ‘Okay, I can see that there may be another way of looking at the issue or another way to interpret the evidence used to support the argument I am making.’” 

Some examples of concessions that we place before the thesis:

“While it is true that . . .”

“While I agree with X that Y, it is also important to consider.”

“Yes, some studies have convincingly shown that __________; however, a closer look reveals that _________________” 

Rule #5: Be sure that important terms in your claim are clear and explicitly defined to your reader. 

Never assume your reader understands terms you might be putting in your essay. If you are using terms like “Cult of Authenticity,” “cultural appropriation,” or “hegemony” in your thesis, you will want to be sure to define those terms in your introduction; otherwise, you will alienate your reader. 

Rule #6: Be okay with having a working or tentative thesis at first and then making your thesis more definitive as you progress deeper and deeper into the topic.

Good writing is about the process of discovery, the surprise of discovery, and the writer throwing away preconceptions in his or her passion for finding the truth. Therefore, at the start of the journey, the thesis is going to be “iffy” or tentative; as you clarify your thoughts on the topic, your thesis will become more crsytalized. For example, I grew up hearing people stigmatize Tex-Mex as phony food, but it wasn’t until I did a deep dive on this topic for my English 1C Critical Thinking class that I learned that Tex-Mex has a deep history in the land of Mexico and Texas and that there are amazing chefs who have made Tex-Mex and exquisite art form. 

Rule #7: Use the Three Means of Persuasion to make your argumentative thesis more effective. 

According to Aristotle, there are Three Means of Persuasion that a speaker or writer can use to persuade his audience:

The appeal of reason and logic: logos

The appeal of emotions: pathos

The appeal of authority: ethos 

Logos, the use of logic in your argument: Smoking will compromise your immune system and make you more at risk for cancer; therefore, logic, or logos, dictates that you should quit smoking.

Pathos, the use of emotion in your argument: If you die of cancer, you will be abandoning your family when they need you most; therefore an emotional appeal, or pathos, dictates that you quit smoking.

Ethos, the use of credible sources in your argument: The surgeon general has warned you of the hazards of smoking; therefore the credibility of an authority or expert dictates that you quit smoking. If the writer lacks authority or credibility, he is often well served to draw upon the authority of someone else to support his argument.

You would want to use logos, pathos, and ethos all together if you were trying to persuade someone to quit smoking. To neglect one would be to compromise your argument. 

Rule #8: Having mapping components following your thesis gives you and your reader a clear roadmap of where your essay is going. 

A thesis should always have a clear direction that shows you and the reader the direction of the essay or the organizational plan. For example, if we argue that it is morally wrong to watch professional football. Here is an argumentative thesis with mapping components:

"While I am a lifelong football fan who has enjoyed the suspense of close games over the years, I am convinced after reading Steve Almond’s anti-football manifesto that I can no longer patronize the game I once loved because it is morally and intellectually bankrupt evidenced by its bloodthirsty violence, misogyny-fueled domestic abuse, parasitic taxpayer trickery, exploitation of the underclass, high risk of permanent brain trauma, and narcissism-inducing toxic masculinity."

Notice the essay's direction is indicated by the claim's mapping components:

1. bloodthirsty violence
2. misogyny-fueled domestic abuse
3. parasitic taxpayer trickery
4. exploitation of the underclass
5. high risk of permanent brain trauma
6. narcissism-inducing toxic masculinity

Many of these points are elaborated on hin Ashan R. Hampton's video "Write a Good Thesis Statement":

Write a Good Thesis Statement

Authenticity Lecture #4: Not All Cultural Appropriation Is Alike

Highlights from Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America

YouTube Video: “Mexican People Try Taco Bell for the First Time”

The Cosmic Burrito

According to food writer and Los Angeles Times culture critic Gustavo Arellano, Mexican food has been assimilated and celebrated in the United States for 125 years. Tacos and burritos are America’s comfort food. 

The celebration of Mexican food in America has caused a worldwide appetite for Mexican food, from Dubai to Australia, which has its own Taco Bell, called Taco Bill’s, which specializes in fish tacos.

Arellano observes that for over 100 years, many Americans who are anti-Mexican in their prejudices are unaware of the contradiction between their racism and their undying love of Mexican food. They compartmentalize, loving the food yet inexplicably disliking the people who make it, turning Mexicans into negative stereotypes while having a relentless desire for Mexican food. 

Tortillas are the preferred food of NASA astronauts, so there is now the “Cosmic Burrito” and variations of Mexican food pop up all over America, including the muchaco, a taco made with ground beef and pita bread at the Taco Bueno restaurant chain.

Hot Cocoa Comes from Mexico

Arellano observes that traditional desserts made with cocoa and vanilla to make chocolate and vanilla desserts, including hot cocoa, come from 1700s Mexico when the Virgin Mary statues in the cathedrals had offerings of various chocolate and vanilla desserts. This vanilla was cultivated to perfection and copied by the Europeans in Pico de Orizaba, a vanilla region in Veracruz, which is in eastern Mexico. 

As early as the 1500s, Spanish conquerors fell in love with Mexican foods made with corn or maize, which were made into various forms of masa cornmeal.

The Spaniards become obsessed with tortillas and tamales, the latter being a convenience food perfect for traveling with.

The Spanish invader Cortes demanded Mexican food in his court, and according to Arellano, this is the first documented case of cultural appropriation.

Moreover, the Spaniards introduced the Mexicans to wheat flour, which brought flour tortillas to the Mexican diet. 

This is our first known case of fusion. 

Chile Con Carne (soon to become Chili)

Arrellano observes that the first chili made with hot peppers and meat was around 1870 in the San Antonio region, not Texas, but pre-Texas: Tejas. 

Chile became so popular that by the 1880s, you could already find it advertised in Hawaii and Washington D.C. 

The world doesn’t understand how good Mexican food is. They take it for granted. This is one of Arellano’s main points.

Now Chile Con Carne is just “Chili.”

Tamalero

Tamales started to spread throughout America in the 1890s and were sold by European, Indian, and Arab immigrants who were often called “Mexicans.” These immigrants who sold the tamales on the streets were called Tamaleros, AKA “The Hot Tamale Man.”

They became part of American popular culture and folklore.

World Domination of the Taco in the 1950s

As big as tamales and chili were for about 70 years, they would be replaced by the world-dominating taco starting in the 1950s. 

Arellano contributes this growth to a place in Orange County called Irvine, the birth of Taco Bell, founded by Glen Bell. 

We now have many tacos including:

• The soft-shell taco
• The taco dorado (hard shell)
• The taquito (flautas)

Tacos have exploded all over the world, including Sweden, Japan, and South Africa. 

Birthplace of the American Taco and the Gateway Drug Argument

While Glen Bell popularized the taco, the birthplace of the American taco comes from downtown Los Angeles on Olvera Street, a tiny taco stand called Cielito Lindo, circa 1931. 

The second place is in San Bernardino, the Mitla Cafe, established in 1937. The restaurant served hard-shell tacos packed with beef and shredded cheese: taco dorado con carne molida.  

Glen Bell noticed the popularity of Mexican food among the white consumer base in the San Bernardino area, and he copied Mitla Cafe when he started various taco ventures before settling on Taco Bell. 

The owners of Mitla Cafe and Gustavo Arellano defend Taco Bell with its phony “Mexican food” because it’s the “gateway drug” to real Mexican food.

We can call this the Gateway Drug Argument for your essay. 

Challenges to Authenticity

In his book, Taco USA, Arellano tackles some challenges to the idea of authenticity in Mexican food:

• Since the 1980s, many white chefs have become Mexican food “experts,” writing cookbooks, opening Mexican restaurants, and having TV shows featuring Mexican food. 
• There was a type of food from New Mexico called “Southwestern Cuisine,” which could often be pretentious “gourmet” dishes with some loose connection to Mexican food. Other times, the food is very good, featuring local ingredients like hatch chilies. The enduring food from Southwestern Cuisine is the breakfast burrito. The craze started to die in the 1990s.
• Tex-Mex, a fusion that since the 1930s features fajitas and chili has been criticized as being inauthentic, “the lowest common denominator of Mexican food.” However, the actual term Tex-Mex wasn’t coined until the 1960s.

The Great Burrito Rivalry 

Gustavo Arellano adores the legendary Manuel’s Special at Manuel’s El Tepeyac Cafe in Boyle Heights. 

He compares the burrito to an encounter with God. The burrito is 5 pounds and filled with grilled chicken, carne asada, machaca, beans, rice, guacamole, and sour cream. 

The rival to Los Angeles for burritos is San Francisco, the Mission District, a place called “El Faro,” the Lighthouse. These are called Mission Style burritos. 

“Tracing the delicious history of San Francisco’s mission style burrito”

“Why are Restaurant Burritos Better Than Homemade?”

Holy Grail Mexican Food Destinations

• Arellano says his favorite burrito is the chile relleno burrito at Lucy’s Drive-In on Pico Blvd and La Brea in Los Angeles.
• His favorite tamales are at Pasquale’s Tamales, a trailer in Helena, Arkansa, owned by a third-generation Sicilian family. 
• His favorite lamb chicharrones are Angelina’s in Espanola, New Mexico. 
• He loves the Taco Acorazado (Battleship) at Alebrije’s Grill in Santa Ana, CA. He says the tortillas alone are a miracle. 

 

Not All Cultural Appropriation Is Alike: To Agree Or Not to Agree with Gustavo Arellano

The college students in my critical thinking class and I live in Los Angeles where some of the best food in the world is in our very backyards. I don’t want my students or me to take this for granted. I want us to do a deep dive into the Los Angeles food world, particularly Mexican food, the most popular cuisine in the world. So for our final essay assignment, we read Gustavo Arellano’s article “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time” and we write an essay that supports or refutes Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation. 

Arellano defends cultural appropriation by explaining three things. One, that since the beginning of time restaurant owners have copied their competition; two, social justice warriors aren’t helping anyone when they patronize Mexicans by painting them as helpless victims when in fact Mexicans steal in the food industry just like everyone else; and three, what some might call appropriation or stealing can be in fact the healthy human impulse for cross-cultural pollination, evidenced by the fact that many of Mexico’s most famous regional dishes incorporate the food and ingredients from Spain, France, and the Middle East. 

Arellano’s argument forces us to question the very idea of authenticity. What is authenticity? In the context of Mexican food, authenticity is the traditions of regional Mexican cooking that bring labor-intensive cooking techniques, geographical richness, and time-tested rituals to produce some of the best food in the world. But authenticity is more than food. It is family and culture. I urge you to watch The Taco Chronicles on Netflix. When you see families in different parts of Mexico making carnitas, canasta, asada, pastor, barbacoa, guisado, suadero, cochinita, cabrito, birria, and pescado, you will find that the geography and family traditions make these dishes authentic. But just as importantly, these foods are so good that they are a miracle from God. Look at the love the community lavishes on the local taquero, the man selling tacos on the street corner. He is bringing love to the city, and he is appreciated for it. Look at the entire communities gathering together to make these authentic dishes and you will see that food is rooted in family and culture. What is most beautiful about this notion of authenticity is the expression of love for others by bringing them the food of the gods. There is a reason in Mexico why the taco is called madre. 

When we watch The Taco Chronicles, the sense of community combined with the making of the best food in the world wins our hearts and our stomachs. Any notion of violating this authenticity rightfully angers us and we are disinclined to agree with Arellano’s support of cultural appropriation. However, if you read Arellano’s book Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, you will get more context for Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation. Arellano would never want us to violate the authentic regional traditions of Mexican cooking. Instead, he is arguing that the splendor of regional Mexican cooking spread to America by bringing food that is both desirable and affordable and that some, not all, of the magic of authentic Mexican cuisine became accessible to the American masses. Moreover, this Mexican food changed American culture for the better. Full-flavored Mexican food replaced the tasteless pablum of “American” food. Americans speak with their money and they spend so much money on Mexican food that they have made a statement that they want Mexican food in their culture. 

Is Gustavo Arellano defending all forms of cultural appropriation? Clearly not. If you read his articles and watch the Netflix series Ugly Delicious, “Tacos,” you will see that Arellano has contempt for “soulless” Mexican food, “Mexican” food chains that bastardize good-tasting Mexican food, food chains that disconnect the food they sell from the workers and from the Mexican culture; you will also see that Arellano has a healthy contempt for white-washed tourist food--phony overpriced Mexican food that has no spice and has been altered to appeal to the most infantile tastebuds. These counterfeit “Mexican” restaurants aren’t serving Mexican food at all. Rather, they are shamelessly serving overpriced tasteless codswallop. They are an abomination of Mexican food and the very idea of cross-cultural pollination. 

However, there are defensible iterations of cultural appropriation. Stealing recipes from Mexico and elsewhere and bringing affordable street food to America doesn’t hurt anyone and in fact brings the nectar of the gods to more people for affordable prices. Recipes are stolen all the time. Just don’t take aqua fresca and call it “spa water” on your Tiktok channel, as Gracie Norton did, which is a form of racial plagiarism. 

Some will argue that if some white ladies from Portland go to Mexico and steal taco recipes from grandmothers in Mexico City, those grandmothers are entitled to a cut of the action. But in reality, millions of recipes are stolen every day in the restaurant industry and any kind of compensation through accurate and detailed accounting is an impossibility. 

Another defense of Gustavo Arellano’s claim that cultural appropriation is a good thing can be found in Netflix’s Chef’s Table Pizza series. Specifically, there are two chefs, Chris Bianco and Ann Kim, who break the rules of tradition to show that there is a place for creativity and improvisation in making superior pizza that violates notions of tradition and authenticity. In fact, Italian pizza experts have visited Chris Bianco’s Pizzeria Bianco in Pheonix, Arizona, and have proclaimed that his pizza is superior to the traditional pizzas of Italy. In the case of Ann Kim, she puts kimchi on her pizza and serves Korean mung bean pancakes and her restaurant Pizzeria Lola is so famous that to meet demand, she opened three other restaurants: Hello Pizza, Young Joni, and Sook & Mimi. Incidentally, her most recent restaurant Sook & Mimi features handmade tortillas made in the tradition of Mexico. 

When we see successful restauranters such as Chris Bianco and Ann Kim make delicious food that is based on both authenticity and creativity, we see that making authentic food, or not, is not an either/or proposition. It is possible to do both. Again, this notion of combining authenticity with cultural cross-pollination supports Arellano’s defense of cultural appropriation.

Clearly, not all forms of cultural appropriation are alike. Some types are an abomination. Others are a celebration. The purpose of this assignment is to use our critical thinking skills to distinguish the good from the bad and to find nuance, shades of gray, and complexity. 

Just as the best tacos have a complexity of flavors, the best essays have a complexity of ideas.  

Authenticity Lecture #3

 

“Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time” by Gustavo Arellano

My thoughts on cultural appropriation of food changed forever in the research for my 2012 book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. One of my personal highlights was discovering the restaurant that Glenn Bell of Taco Bell infamy had cited in his autobiography as being the source of "inspiration" for him deciding to get into the taco business. How did he get inspired? He'd eat tacos at the restaurant every night, then go across the street to his hot dog stand to try and re-create them.

Bell freely admitted to the story, but never revealed the name of the restaurant. I did: Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, which is the oldest continuously operating Mexican restaurant in the Inland Empire. I was excited to interview the owner, Irene Montaño, who confirmed Bell's story. I was upset for the Montaños, and when I asked Montaño how she felt that Bell had ripped off her family's recipes to create a multibillion-dollar empire, I expected bitterness, anger, maybe even plans for a lawsuit in an attempt to get at least some of the billions of dollars that Taco Bell has earned over the past 50-plus years.

Instead, Montaño responded with grace: "Good for him!" She pointed out that Mitla had never suffered a drop in business because of Taco Bell, that her restaurant had been in business longer than his and "our tacos were better."

It's an anecdote I always keep in mind whenever stories of cultural appropriation of food by white people get the Left riled up and rock the food world. The latest skirmish is going on in Portland, where two women decided to open up what Willamette Week called "a concept that fits twee Portland": a breakfast burrito pop-up located within a hipster taco cart. The grand sin the gabachas committed, according to the haters, was the admission that they quizzed women in Baja California about how to make the perfect flour tortilla.

For their enthusiasm, the women have received all sorts of shade and have closed down their pop-up. To which I say: laughable. The gabachas knew exactly what they were doing, so didn't they stand by it? Real gumption there, pendejas.

But also laughable is the idea that white people aren't supposed to—pick your word—rip off or appropriate or get "inspired" by Mexican food, that comida mexicana is a sacrosanct tradition only Mexicans and the white girls we marry can participate in. That cultural appropriation is a one-way street where the evil gabacha steals from the poor, pathetic Mexicans yet again.

As we say in Mexico: No se hagan.

What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don't realize is that we're talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It's the human condition at its most Darwinian, where everyone rips everyone off. The only limit to an entrepreneur's chicanery isn't resources, race or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.

And no one rips off food like Mexicans.

The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—that's what the culinary manifestation of mestizaje is, ain't it? The Spaniards didn't know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn't care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn't care much for wine, so we embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawarma from the Lebanese, adding pork and making it something as quintessentially Mexican as a corrupt PRI?

Don't cry for ripped-off Mexican chefs—they're too busy ripping each other off. Another anecdote I remember from Taco USA: one of the lieutenants of El Torito founder Larry Cano telling me Larry would pay them to work at a restaurant for a month, learn the recipes, then come back to the mothership so they could replicate it. It ain't just chains, though: In the past year, I've seen dozens of restaurants and loncheras across Southern California offer the Zacatecan specialty birria de res, a dish that was almost exclusively limited to quinceañeras and weddings just three years ago. What changed? The popularity of Burritos La Palma, the Santa Ana lonchera-turned-restaurant. Paisa entrepreneurs quickly learned that Burritos La Palma was getting a chingo of publicity and customers, so they decided to make birria de res on their own to try and steal away customers even though nearly none of them are from Zacatecas.

Shameless? Absolutely.

And that's what cultural appropriation in the food world boils down to: It's smart business, and that's why Mexicans do it, too. That's why a lot of high-end Mexican restaurants not owned by Sinaloans serve aguachile now, because Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria made it popular. That's why working-class Mexicans open marisco palaces even if they're not from the coast—because Sinaloans made Mexican seafood a lucrative scene. That's why nearly every lonchera in Santa Ana serves picaditas, a Veracruzan specialty, even though most owners are from Cuernavaca. That's why a taqueria will sell hamburgers and french fries—because they know the pocho kids of its core clients want to eat that instead of tacos. And that's why bacon-wrapped hot dogs are so popular in Southern California—because SoCal Mexican street-cart vendors ripped off Mexicans in Tijuana, who ripped off Mexicans in Tucson, who ripped off Mexicans in Sonora.

To suggest—as SJWs always do—that Mexicans and other minority entrepreneurs can't possibly engage in cultural appropriation because they're people of color, and that we're always the victims, is ignorant and patronizing and robs us of agency. We're no one's victims, and who says we can't beat the wasichu at their game? And who says Mexicans are somehow left in the poorhouse by white people getting rich off Mexican food? Go ask the Montaños of Mitla how they're doing. Last year, they reopened a long-shuttered banquet hall, and the next generation is introducing new meals and craft beers.

They cried about Bell's appropriation of their tacos all the way to the history books.

This story originally appeared in OC Weekly.

 

Your Essay Assignment:

Do you agree or disagree with Arellano's defense of cultural appropriation?

Summary of the Essay's Main Arguments

• We are all rapacious creatures whose drive for success makes us to some degree cutthroat and ruthless. The more ruthlessly we steal a recipe the more we affirm the greatness of that recipe. Mediocre food isn't stolen. Only great food is. The theft of Mexican recipes is a tribute to its greatness. 
• "Stealing" is actually the natural human inclination for cross-cultural pollination. Such pollination enriches culture and in many cases actually changes culture for the better.
• To treat Mexicans as helpless victims whose delicacies are being stolen is to patronize them and to "rob them of human agency" (free will). In fact, Mexicans have been "stealing," or rather cross-pollinating, for thousands of years. Their history is rife with taking foods from other cultures such as Spain, France, and the Middle East, and making these foods their own. 
• From the Netflix series Ugly Delicious, "Tacos" episode, we find that respectful inspiration from the original dish is an acceptable form of cultural appropriation. 

Some Caveats, Stipulations, or Conditions We Can Use from Ugly Delicious, "Tacos":

• Taking shortcuts is an abomination and degrades the original version of the food such as tortillas.
• Offering stereotypes of Mexican food is an abomination and shows ignorance of the depth of ingredients and creativity from the treasures of Mexican cooking. Don't play "Jingle Bells" on the piano when you should be playing Beethoven's 9th Symphony. 
• Making tourist food or white-washing food to make it bland for mass appeal will make you money but it is an abomination of authentic Mexican food. 
• Taking agua fresca and rebranding it as "spa water" is a form of racial plagiarism so egregious that I doubt Gustavo Arellano would defend such an act of shamelessness and arrogance. 

 

 

 

What are the two opposing sides of this argument?

The Great Debate: Innovation Vs. Tradition:

On one side, Gustavo Arellano’s side, is the argument that great food evolves through stealing and that stealing is a sign of the food’s greatness. Another side of food greatness is constant evolution and constant innovation. People are open to experimenting with foods and not tied to traditions and absolutes. Mexican food, moreover, is not a monolith. There is diversity based on regions and innovations, so there is no such thing as One Kind of Mexican Food, no One Burrito, No One Taco, etc. 

On the other side, the Cult of Authenticity, is the belief that food should be unchanged. Food is iconic and rooted in tradition and attempts at changing the food is equivalent to “blasphemy.” Also, when the food is taken and changed it accounts to the loathsome act of cultural appropriation.  Which side are you on?

Use the Toulmin Argument Model with a Counterargument-Rebuttal Section

From a design and structure standpoint, you are learning to write an argumentative essay in the tradition of the Toulmin Model, named after philosopher Stephen Toulmin. In the Toulmin Model, you address your opponents’ views in a counterargument-rebuttal section. 

Sentence Fragments 

Sentence fragments are incomplete thoughts presented as dependent clauses or phrases.

A dependent clause or a phrase is never a complete sentence.

Types of dependent clauses:

Whenever I drive up windy mountains,

Because I have craved pizza for 14 months,

Unless you add coffee to your chocolate cake recipe,

,which is currently enjoying a resurgence. 

 

Phrases

Enamored by the music of Tupac Shakur,

Craving pesto linguine with olive-oil based clam sauce, 

Flexing his muscles with a braggadocio never seen in modern times,

Lying under the bridge and eating garlic pepper pretzels with a dollop of cream cheese and a jug of chilled apple cider, 

To understand the notion of Universal Basic Income and all of its related factors for social change in this disruptive age, 

Running into crowded restaurants with garlic and whiskey fuming out of his sweaty pores while brandishing a golden scepter, 

 

Examples

I won't entertain your requests for more money and gifts. Until you show at least a modicum of responsibility at school and with your friends. 

I won't consider buying the new BMW sports coupe. Unless of course my uncle gives me that inheritance he keeps talking about whenever he gets a bit tipsy. 

I can't imagine ever going to Chuck E. Cheese. Which makes me feel like I'm emotionally arrested. 

I am considering the purchase of a new wardrobe. That is, if I'm picked for that job interview at Nordstrom. 

Human morals have vanished. To the point at which it was decided that market values would triumph. 

No subject 

Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.

No complete verb

The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.

Beginning with a subordinating word

We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.

A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.

Sentence Fragment Exercises  

After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence. 

One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her. 

Two.  In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.

Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market. 

Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.  

Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.   

Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming. 

Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar. 

Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety. 

Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV. 

Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel. 

Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills. 

Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend. 

Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me. 

Identify the Fragments Below

Identify the Fragments Below

I drank the chalky Soylent meal-replacement drink. Expecting to feel full and satisfied. Only to find that I was still ravenously hungry afterwards. Trying to sate my hunger pangs. I went to HomeTown Buffet. Where I ate several platters of braised oxtail and barbecued short ribs smothered in a honey vinegar sauce. Which reminded me of a sauce where I used to buy groceries from. When I was a kid.

Feeling bloated after my HomeTown Buffet indulgence. I exited the restaurant. After which I hailed an Uber and asked the driver for a night club recommendation. So I could dance off all my calories. The driver recommended a place, Anxiety Wires. I had never heard of it. Though, it was crowded inside. I felt eager to dance and confident about “my swag.” Although, I was still feeling bloated. Wondering if my intestines were on the verge of exploding.

Sweating under the night club’s outdoor canopy. I smelled the cloying gasses of a nearby vape. A serpentine woman was holding the vape. A gold contraption emitting rose-water vapors into my direction. Contemplating my gluttony. I was suddenly feeling low confidence. Though I pushed myself to introduce myself to the vape-smoking stranger with the serpentine features. Her eyes locked on mine.

I decided to play it cool. Instead of overwhelming her with a loud, brash manner. Which she might interpret as neediness on my part.

Keeping a portable fan in my cargo pocket for emergencies. When I feel like I’m overheating. I took the fan out of my pocket, turned it on, and directed it toward the serpentine stranger. Making it so the vapors were blowing back in her face.

“Doesn’t smell so good, does it?” I said. With a sarcastic grin.

She cackled, then said, “Thank you for blowing the vapors in my face. Now I can both enjoy inhaling them and breathing them in. For double the pleasure. You are quite a find. Come home with me and I’ll introduce you to my mother Gertrude and her pitbull Jackson. I’m sure they’ll welcome you into our home. Considering what a well-fed handsome man you are.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” I said. “I would love to meet your mother Gertrude and your mother’s pitbull Jackson. Only one problem. My breath smells like a rotting dead dragon. Right after eating spicy ribs. Which reminds me? Do you have any breath mints?”

“I don’t believe in carrying breath mints. On account of the rose-water vape. That cleanses my palate. Making my breath rosy fresh.”

“Wow. Your constant good breath counteracts my intractable bad breath. Making us a match in heaven.”

“I agree. Totally. You really need to meet my mother. Because she’ll bless us and make our marriage official. Since we really need her blessing. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Now let me smell your breath. So I can identify the hot sauce.”

“Why must you do that?”

“So I can use the same hot sauce on our wedding cake, silly. To celebrate the first night we met. Capisce?”

“Capisce.”

She approached me. Affording me a view of her long, tired face. Covered in scales. Reptilian. Evocative of something primitive. Something precious and indelible from my childhood lost long ago. I wanted to run from her, but I could not. Some mysterious force drew me to her, and we inched closer and closer toward one another. Succumbing to a power neither of us could fathom. 

 

Comma Splice Review

Identify the Comma Splices Below:

It’s not a question of will there be chaos or will there be destruction, it’s a question of how much?

MySpace was disruptive in its time, however, it’s a dated platform and to simply mention it is to make people laugh with a certain derision surely it’s a platform that has seen its time, another example is the meal replacement Soylent, its creator made a drink that says, “You’re too busy to eat,” so drinking this pancake batter-like concoction gives tech people street. I may laugh at its stupidity, instead I should admire it since the product has made millions for its creator. It’s proven to be somewhat disruptive.

To be sure, though, Facebook redefines the word disruptive, it has rapidly accrued over 3 billion users and will soon have half the planet plugged into its site, that is the apotheosis of a greedy person’s fantasy, imagine controlling half the planet on a platform that mines private information and targets ads toward specific personality profiles.  

One of the scary disruptions of Facebook is that billions of people have lost their personal agency, what that means that people have unknowingly been manipulated by Facebook’s puppeteers to the point that many Facebook users suffer from social media addiction, moreover, these same users prefer the fake life they curate on social media to the real life they once had, in fact, their previous real life is just a puff of smoke that has faded into the distance, many people no longer even know what it means to be “real” anymore, having lost their agency, having succumbed to their Facebook addiction, they have become zombies waiting for their next rush of social media-fueled dopamine, what a sad state of affairs.

Cultural Pollination:

Grandmother's food to father's business to son's business

Authenticity Lecture #2

Review of Gustavo Arellano’s Arguments Against the Cult of Authenticity

(Pro Tip: The following arguments would make an excellent body paragraph outline for Essay 4) 

1. In spite of some phony white chefs who wrongly anoint themselves as ambassadors of Mexican food, mainstreaming Mexican food is on balance a good because it exposes more people to the greatness of Mexican food and encourages cultural respect and cultural celebration of Mexican contributions. 
2. Much of the purity cult behind the notion of authenticity is from whites on the Left and Right who don’t understand Mexican food or the Mexican people. 
3. Letting social justice warriors dictate what is authentic can lead to food totalitarianism and absurdly narrow, reductionist definitions of authenticity.
4. The lines are blurred between innovation, cross-cultural synergy, and cultural appropriation, which has occurred since the beginning of time and is an inevitable part of how food evolves into amazing dishes. 
5. It’s absurd to reject Tex-Mex or Cal-Mex food when we consider that these fusions are about embracing the greatness of Mexican cuisine and that no food is good or bad per se; rather, how a chef executes the dish determines whether it’s good or not. It’s all about execution. A bad taco could put you in a bad mood for a week. An exceptional taco could “change your life” and inject your brain’s amygdala with euphoric endorphins. 

Counterarguments that challenge Gustavo Arellano’s claim that we should reject the Cult of Authenticity

1. Plagiarism Argument: When we steal intellectual or creative property, there should be consequences. We call this type of stealing plagiarism. Students who commit plagiarism get into big trouble. Shouldn’t cooks who steal creatively and in effect commit culinary plagiarism be subject to some kind of penalties? Should not these chefs who engage in stealing or cultural appropriation at the very least be required to ascribe credit to their sources? Should not these chefs who commit acts of culinary plagiarism at least be required to give a portion of their profits to the areas they stole from? 
2. Moral Argument: Cultural appropriation, the kind where privileged people go to a small town in the United States, Mexico or Latin America and then steal recipes and cooking methods, offends our common sense of morality, fairness, honesty, and justice. When Gustavo Arellano says, “Everybody steals,” and that’s just the “Darwinian” way in the hyper-competitive restaurant industry, could we not accuse Arellano of using a “two rights make a wrong fallacy”? This fallacy is commonly referred to as argumentum ad populum or appeal to the majority fallacy. In other words, just because the majority engage in immoral behavior doesn't make that behavior right. 
3. Quality Control or “Wannabes” Argument: Sure, Gustavo Arellano points out all these great examples of cultural appropriation, but those examples don’t diminish the exponential growth of phony Mexican restaurants that serve the crassest, disgusting, abominable “Mexican food” imaginable. Violating the Cult of Authenticity comes with a steep price: A bunch of wannabes steal some recipes and think they know how to make Mexican food when in fact what they are serving is an insult to Mexican food and to Mexican culture. 
4. Grandmother argument: A student told me he had some very mediocre Molcajete at an expensive Mexican restaurant. He told me, “When I visit my grandmother in Guatemala, she makes me Molcajete that blows all the other ones away. I can’t get excited paying premium dollar for a bunch of sad food that goes under the name of ‘Mexican food.’” What this student is saying essentially is that the tradition, experience, and love his grandmother puts in her homemade Molcajete cannot be compared to the vastly inferior substitutes. Grandmother’s cooking, in other words, is an argument for authenticity.  

 

Two Weaknesses in Gustavo Arellano's Argument

One. Arellano doesn't address food plagiarism. For example, it is indefensible to take the original food, give it a new name, and claim it as yours as in the notorious case of Gracie Norton who promotes "her spa water" when in fact the water is aqua fresca. 

Two. Arellano doesn't address the white-washing effect: taking delicious meals and watering them down into soulless bland plates that insult the original dish. 

 

 

 

What are the two opposing sides of this argument?

The Great Debate: Innovation Vs. Tradition:

On one side, Gustavo Arellano’s side, is the argument that great food evolves through stealing and that stealing is a sign of the food’s greatness. Another side of food greatness is constant evolution and constant innovation. People are open to experimenting with foods and not tied to traditions and absolutes. Mexican food, moreover, is not a monolith. There is diversity based on regions and innovations, so there is no such thing as One Kind of Mexican Food, no One Burrito, No One Taco, etc. 

On the other side, the Cult of Authenticity, is the belief that food should be unchanged. Food is iconic and rooted in tradition and attempts at changing the food is equivalent to “blasphemy.” Also, when the food is taken and changed it accounts to the loathsome act of cultural appropriation.  Which side are you on?

Use the Toulmin Argument Model with a Counterargument-Rebuttal Section

From a design and structure standpoint, you are learning to write an argumentative essay in the tradition of the Toulmin Model, named after philosopher Stephen Toulmin. In the Toulmin Model, you address your opponents’ views in a counterargument-rebuttal section. 

Using Counterargument-Rebuttal Makes Your Arguments More Persuasive:

For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section. 

To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion). 

To write an effective counterargument-rebuttal, good writers use a variety of sentence structures:

• Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
• Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.  
• It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________. 
• I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________. 

For Review:

For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section. 

To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion). 

To write an effective counterargument-rebuttal, good writers use a variety of sentence structures:

• Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
• Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.  
• It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________. 
• I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________. 

Study the Templates for Counterargument-Rebuttal Section of the Essay 

• While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . . 
• While the authors make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . . 
• These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . . 
• While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . . 
• Although it is often true that . . . 
• While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . . 
• While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . . 
• While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince us when we consider X, Y, and Z. 
• My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z. 
• While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .

 

 

“Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time” by Gustavo Arellano

My thoughts on cultural appropriation of food changed forever in the research for my 2012 book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. One of my personal highlights was discovering the restaurant that Glenn Bell of Taco Bell infamy had cited in his autobiography as being the source of "inspiration" for him deciding to get into the taco business. How did he get inspired? He'd eat tacos at the restaurant every night, then go across the street to his hot dog stand to try and re-create them.

Bell freely admitted to the story, but never revealed the name of the restaurant. I did: Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, which is the oldest continuously operating Mexican restaurant in the Inland Empire. I was excited to interview the owner, Irene Montaño, who confirmed Bell's story. I was upset for the Montaños, and when I asked Montaño how she felt that Bell had ripped off her family's recipes to create a multibillion-dollar empire, I expected bitterness, anger, maybe even plans for a lawsuit in an attempt to get at least some of the billions of dollars that Taco Bell has earned over the past 50-plus years.

Instead, Montaño responded with grace: "Good for him!" She pointed out that Mitla had never suffered a drop in business because of Taco Bell, that her restaurant had been in business longer than his and "our tacos were better."

It's an anecdote I always keep in mind whenever stories of cultural appropriation of food by white people get the Left riled up and rock the food world. The latest skirmish is going on in Portland, where two women decided to open up what Willamette Week called "a concept that fits twee Portland": a breakfast burrito pop-up located within a hipster taco cart. The grand sin the gabachas committed, according to the haters, was the admission that they quizzed women in Baja California about how to make the perfect flour tortilla.

For their enthusiasm, the women have received all sorts of shade and have closed down their pop-up. To which I say: laughable. The gabachas knew exactly what they were doing, so didn't they stand by it? Real gumption there, pendejas.

But also laughable is the idea that white people aren't supposed to—pick your word—rip off or appropriate or get "inspired" by Mexican food, that comida mexicana is a sacrosanct tradition only Mexicans and the white girls we marry can participate in. That cultural appropriation is a one-way street where the evil gabacha steals from the poor, pathetic Mexicans yet again.

As we say in Mexico: No se hagan.

What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don't realize is that we're talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It's the human condition at its most Darwinian, where everyone rips everyone off. The only limit to an entrepreneur's chicanery isn't resources, race or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.

And no one rips off food like Mexicans.

The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—that's what the culinary manifestation of mestizaje is, ain't it? The Spaniards didn't know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn't care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn't care much for wine, so we embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawarma from the Lebanese, adding pork and making it something as quintessentially Mexican as a corrupt PRI?

Don't cry for ripped-off Mexican chefs—they're too busy ripping each other off. Another anecdote I remember from Taco USA: one of the lieutenants of El Torito founder Larry Cano telling me Larry would pay them to work at a restaurant for a month, learn the recipes, then come back to the mothership so they could replicate it. It ain't just chains, though: In the past year, I've seen dozens of restaurants and loncheras across Southern California offer the Zacatecan specialty birria de res, a dish that was almost exclusively limited to quinceañeras and weddings just three years ago. What changed? The popularity of Burritos La Palma, the Santa Ana lonchera-turned-restaurant. Paisa entrepreneurs quickly learned that Burritos La Palma was getting a chingo of publicity and customers, so they decided to make birria de res on their own to try and steal away customers even though nearly none of them are from Zacatecas.

Shameless? Absolutely.

And that's what cultural appropriation in the food world boils down to: It's smart business, and that's why Mexicans do it, too. That's why a lot of high-end Mexican restaurants not owned by Sinaloans serve aguachile now, because Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria made it popular. That's why working-class Mexicans open marisco palaces even if they're not from the coast—because Sinaloans made Mexican seafood a lucrative scene. That's why nearly every lonchera in Santa Ana serves picaditas, a Veracruzan specialty, even though most owners are from Cuernavaca. That's why a taqueria will sell hamburgers and french fries—because they know the pocho kids of its core clients want to eat that instead of tacos. And that's why bacon-wrapped hot dogs are so popular in Southern California—because SoCal Mexican street-cart vendors ripped off Mexicans in Tijuana, who ripped off Mexicans in Tucson, who ripped off Mexicans in Sonora.

To suggest—as SJWs always do—that Mexicans and other minority entrepreneurs can't possibly engage in cultural appropriation because they're people of color, and that we're always the victims, is ignorant and patronizing and robs us of agency. We're no one's victims, and who says we can't beat the wasichu at their game? And who says Mexicans are somehow left in the poorhouse by white people getting rich off Mexican food? Go ask the Montaños of Mitla how they're doing. Last year, they reopened a long-shuttered banquet hall, and the next generation is introducing new meals and craft beers.

They cried about Bell's appropriation of their tacos all the way to the history books.

This story originally appeared in OC Weekly.

Authenticity Lecture #1

Should We Reject the Cult of Authenticity?

Essay is 200 points and due as an upload on December 16. 

The Assignment:

In a 1,200-word essay that adheres to current MLA format and provides a minimum of 4 sources for your Works Cited page, write an argumentative essay that defends, refutes, or complicates food and culture writer Gustavo Arellano’s claim in his essay “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food” and elsewhere that in the realm of food, especially Mexican food, we must step away from the Cult of Authenticity and embrace the idea that the greatness of Mexican food is related to its constant evolution from stealing, borrowing, synthesizing, and even culturally appropriating from one ethnic culture to another and that cuisines that fail to evolve lack relevance and vitality. 

Sample Outline:

Paragraph 1: Summarize the main ideas in the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food.” Or summarize the main ideas in the YouTube video “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”

Paragraph 2: Then transition to an argumentative claim in which you show support or repudiation of Arellano’s main ideas.

Paragraphs 3-6 would be your supporting paragraphs.

Paragraphs 7 and 8 would be your counterargument-rebuttal.

Paragraph 9 would be a powerful restatement of your thesis, your conclusion.  

Another way of looking at the essay debate:

Is the greatness of Mexican food rooted in its tradition or innovation?

A closer look at Gustavo Arellano's argument:

Arellano makes the observation that the food business, including the ever-popular Mexican cuisine, requires constant innovation because it is “rapacious” and “Darwinian.” As he writes:

What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don't realize is that we're talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It's the human condition at its most Darwinian, where everyone rips everyone off. The only limit to an entrepreneur's chicanery isn't resources, race or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.

Arellano says the greatness of Mexican food is largely based on stealing. As he writes:

The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—that's what the culinary manifestation of mestizaje is, ain't it? The Spaniards didn't know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn't care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn't care much for wine, so we embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawarma from the Lebanese, adding pork and making it something as quintessentially Mexican as a corrupt PRI?

Don't cry for ripped-off Mexican chefs—they're too busy ripping each other off. Another anecdote I remember from Taco USA: one of the lieutenants of El Torito founder Larry Cano telling me Larry would pay them to work at a restaurant for a month, learn the recipes, then come back to the mothership so they could replicate it. It ain't just chains, though: In the past year, I've seen dozens of restaurants and loncheras across Southern California offer the Zacatecan specialty birria de res, a dish that was almost exclusively limited to quinceañeras and weddings just three years ago. What changed? The popularity of Burritos La Palma, the Santa Ana lonchera-turned-restaurant. Paisa entrepreneurs quickly learned that Burritos La Palma was getting a chingo of publicity and customers, so they decided to make birria de res on their own to try and steal away customers even though nearly none of them are from Zacatecas.

Gustavo Arellano further argues that cultural appropriation is “smart business.” As he writes:

And that's what cultural appropriation in the food world boils down to: It's smart business, and that's why Mexicans do it, too. That's why a lot of high-end Mexican restaurants not owned by Sinaloans serve aguachile now, because Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria made it popular. That's why working-class Mexicans open marisco palaces even if they're not from the coast—because Sinaloans made Mexican seafood a lucrative scene. That's why nearly every lonchera in Santa Ana serves picaditas, a Veracruzan specialty, even though most owners are from Cuernavaca. That's why a taqueria will sell hamburgers and french fries—because they know the pocho kids of its core clients want to eat that instead of tacos. And that's why bacon-wrapped hot dogs are so popular in Southern California—because SoCal Mexican street-cart vendors ripped off Mexicans in Tijuana, who ripped off Mexicans in Tucson, who ripped off Mexicans in Sonora.

***

Gustavo Arellano contends that the success of Mexican food as one of the dominant cuisines in America and throughout the world is its refusal to be some sort of stagnant “authentic relic” but rather a constantly changing cultural phenomenon. Is his claim sacrilegious? Is he encouraging cultural appropriation, that is white privilege moving in and stealing Mexican cuisine for its own ends? Are his points defensible? Explain.  

What are the two opposing sides in this argument?

The Great Debate: Innovation Vs. Tradition:

On one side, Gustavo Arellano’s side, is the argument that great food evolves through stealing and that stealing is a sign of the food’s greatness. Another side of food greatness is constant evolution and constant innovation. People are open to experimenting with foods and not tied to traditions and absolutes. Mexican food, moreover, is not a monolith. There is diversity based on regions and innovations, so there is no such thing as One Kind of Mexican Food, no One Burrito, No One Taco, etc. 

On the other side, the Cult of Authenticity, is the belief that food should be unchanged. Food is iconic and rooted in tradition and attempts at changing the food is equivalent to “blasphemy.” Also, when the food is taken and changed it accounts to the loathsome act of cultural appropriation.  Which side are you on?

The Purpose:

Most of us are influenced and touched by Mexican food on a deep, personal level. Many of us have been eating Mexican food since we were babies. It is part of who we are. Moving forward, Mexican food is a dominant food in American and international cuisine. 

One of the controversies about Mexican food is when people of privilege go to economically modest places in Los Angeles, Mexico, or elsewhere and engage in cultural tourism when these privileged people delight in “street food” and some appropriate the food (steal the recipe) so they can make a profit at their own restaurant. Many people find this offensive. 

The purpose of this essay is critically examine when a culture is stealing from another culture’s food source, there is an arrogance too often attached to this stealing, but at the same time we want to examine the power of cultural exchange as a way of opening doors for diverse people, the power of constantly evolving food, and the power of food that is constantly being stolen. For example, Gustavo Arellano makes the point that German pub food is not being stolen; Mexican food is. This speaks to the power and relevance of Mexican cuisine. There are only a handful of German restaurants in Los Angeles. In contrast, there are thousands of Mexican restaurants in southern California. We must explore the causes of a cultural force that continues to evolve and gain power. 

Your source material for your argument:

Gustavo Arellano article “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It All the Time” (same article from the original source, The Orange County Weekly) 

LA Taco interview with Gustavo Arellano in “The Fetish of Authenticity” in which he discusses the notion of authenticity and vitality in Mexican cuisine.  

See YouTube video: “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”

Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good

The Gustavo Arellano article: “The Problem Isn’t Rick Bayless Cooking Mexican Food--It’s That He’s a Thin-Skinned Diva.”

The Tim Carman article “Should White Chefs Sell Burritos?”

Katie Donovan article “Culinary Appropriation”

Dinner Party Download article “Gustavo Arellano Pushes a Few Buttons”

Hispanic Food & Culture in LA article “From Rick Bayless to Bad Burritos”

Matt Gross article “The Cultural Appropriation of Food”

Recommended, but Not Mandatory, Optional:

All from Ugly Delicious on Netflix:

• Season 1, Episode 2 Tacos (fantastic episode about the cultural synthesis behind the evolution of the taco)
• Season 1, Episode 1 Pizza
• Season 1, Episode 6 Fried Chicken

Use the Toulmin Argument Model with a Counterargument-Rebuttal Section

From a design and structure standpoint, you are learning to write an argumentative essay in the tradition of the Toulmin Model, named after philosopher Stephen Toulmin. In the Toulmin Model, you address your opponents’ views in a counterargument-rebuttal section. 

Using Counterargument-Rebuttal Makes Your Arguments More Persuasive:

For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section. 

To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion). 

To write an effective counterargument-rebuttal, good writers use a variety of sentence structures:

• Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
• Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.  
• It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________. 
• I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________. 

Use MLA Format for Your Essay

Your essay should follow the conventions of the MLA format.

For MLA format, I recommend the following:

Jason Morgan’s video:

Formatting a paper in MLA style 

“Setting Up MLA Format Paper in Google Docs”

Setting Up MLA Format Paper in Google Docs

Support Your Essay with Sources Using MLA In-Text Citations:

Also be sure to use signal phrases for your correct MLA in-text citations, as you will find explained in this Purdue Owl article. 

Kate Guthrie Caruso has made an excellent video on MLA in-text citations titled “MLA Formatting: In-Text Citations--Basics.”

MLA Formatting: In-Text Citations--Basics

Writing an Introductory Paragraph

I recommend one of two approaches for your introductory paragraph. 

Method #1: Summarize the main ideas in the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food.” 

Method #2 Summarize the main ideas in the YouTube video “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”

Then transition to an argumentative claim in which you show support or repudiation of Arellano’s main ideas. 

Sample Thesis Structure

While I take offense at the inflated prices of some of these appropriation restaurants and the lack of credit given to the original sources, I agree with GA’s claim that _______ because ________.____________, _____________, __________________, and ___________________.  

Writing an argumentative thesis or claim

When I started teaching 35 years ago, everyone called the central argument a thesis, but in the last 10 years the term claim is gaining more and more popularity. 

• Your claim is the central focus of your essay.
• Your claim is what “your essay is about.”
• Your claim answers a central question.

In this case, your claim is answering this question:

Are weight-loss quests futile or not?

Why it’s advantageous to add mapping components to a claim: They outline your essay. 

Developing an argumentative claim with mapping statements or your argument’s reasons gives you a roadmap and tells you where you’re going. 

Example: Should Community College be Free?

Sample Argumentative Claim

While free college education would help a small percentage of low-income students who already have a baseline of writing and math skills, for the most part the argument for free community college is not persuasive when we consider that free things tend to lead to entropy (decline, chaos and worthlessness, Tragedy of the Commons), free college doesn’t solve the problems of baseline acquisition that would allow students to complete their graduation in a timely manner, free tuition would take away from budgeting for instructors and infrastructure, and free college would only lower the already abysmally low graduation rate.

Notice the above claim has mapping components that outline the body paragraphs:

• Paragraph: Free things tend to lead to entropy (decline, chaos and worthlessness, Tragedy of the Commons)
• Paragraph: Free college doesn’t solve the problems of baseline acquisition that would allow students to complete their graduation in a timely manner
• Paragraph: Free tuition would take away from budgeting for instructors and infrastructure
• Paragraph: Free college would only lower the already abysmally low graduation rate.

In the above examples, you might find that more than one paragraph is needed to support a mapping component, but the organization is still the same. 

Second Example: Should I put spyware on my twin daughters’ computers?

Sample Argumentative Claim:

While I would be tempted to put spyware on my daughters' computers as a way of repelling predators, I would not do so, as some people advocate, for several reasons. One, the spyware might lull me into a false comfort and impede me from communicating with my daughters about the dangers of indiscreet internet activities; two, if I violated my daughters' trust, I may compel them to turn away from me, and they would find more insidious ways to do internet communications that jailbreak my spyware; third, a prison-like security environment in my daughters' internet landscape strikes me as the kind of overkill that overprotective fathers use who alienate their children. 

Notice the above claim has mapping components that outline the body paragraphs:

• Paragraph: One, the spyware might lull me into a false comfort and impede me from communicating with my daughters about the dangers of indiscreet internet activities
• Paragraph: Two, if I violated my daughters' trust, I may compel them to turn away from me, and they would find more insidious ways to do internet communications that jailbreak my spyware
• Paragraph: Third, a prison-like security environment in my daughters' internet landscape strikes me as the kind of overkill that overprotective fathers use who alienate their children. 

After Your Body Paragraphs and Before Your Conclusion, Write Your Counterargument-Rebuttal Section:

For Review:

For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section. 

To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion). 

To write an effective counterargument-rebuttal, good writers use a variety of sentence structures:

• Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
• Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.  
• It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________. 
• I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________. 

Study the Templates for Counterargument-Rebuttal Section of Essay 

• While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . . 
• While the authors make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . . 
• These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . . 
• While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . . 
• Although it is often true that . . . 
• While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . . 
• While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . . 
• While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince us when we consider X, Y, and Z. 
• My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z. 
• While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . .

Writing Your Conclusion

Your conclusion is about creating emotional power and finding a way to reiterate your essay’s purpose in order to maximize the strength of your persuasion. 

Since you want emotional power in your conclusion, you want to avoid cliches or overused (hackneyed) conclusion structures. 

Some conclusion transitions to avoid:

• In conclusion,
• As you can now clearly see,
• Before we get out of here let me just say, 
• To wrap things up, 
• Just in case you forgot, 
• To sum up what I just said,
• Sorry for this lousy essay, but just in case you didn’t understand what I was saying, 

Effective Conclusion Strategies:

• Use the “full circle” technique. If you begin with a story or image in your introduction, return to that story or image in your conclusion. 
• End on a rhetorical question.
• End with a gut-punching quotation.
• End with an indelible image. 
• End with a dire warning.
• End with a universal truth that applies to your specific argument. 
• End with an emotionally-powerful restatement of your thesis. 

Works Cited

After your conclusion, you will cite a minimum of 4 sources on a separate page for Works Cited using current MLA format as explained in this these videos:

Purdue OWL video for Word 

Purdue OWL video for Google Docs

Title for Your Essay

Make sure your essay has a strong title. Avoid a generic title like “Cultural Appropriation” or “Essay 4.” Try to have a catchy title that is relevant to your focus. 

• What’s the Difference Between Respecting and Stealing Mexican Cuisine?
• Is Cultural Appropriation Even a Thing?
• Stop Calling Tex-Mex Real Mexican Food

Due as an upload for 25 points on December 3. 

The Assignment: Write 2 Paragraphs:

Write 2 paragraphs, an Introductory Paragraph and an Argumentative Thesis Paragraph.

Instructions for Introductory Paragraph

I recommend one of two approaches for your introductory paragraph. 

Method #1: Summarize the main ideas in the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food.” 

Method #2 Summarize the main ideas in the YouTube video “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”

Instructions for Argumentative Thesis Paragraph

Then transition to an argumentative claim in which you show support or repudiation of Arellano’s main ideas. 

While I take offense at the inflated prices of some of these appropriation restaurants and the lack of credit given to the original sources, I agree with GA’s claim that _______ because ________, ______________, ________________, and _______________________. 

Writing an argumentative thesis or claim (review). 

When I started teaching 35 years ago, everyone called the central argument a thesis, but in the last 10 years the term claim is gaining more and more popularity. 

In this case, your claim is answering this question: Are weight-loss quests futile or not?

Why it’s advantageous to add mapping components to a claim: They outline your essay. 

Developing an argumentative claim with mapping statements or your argument’s reasons gives you a roadmap and tells you where you’re going. 

Example: Should Community College be Free?

Sample Claim

While free college education would help a small percentage of low-income students who already have a baseline of writing and math skills, for the most part the argument for free community college is not persuasive when we consider that free things tend to lead to entropy (decline, chaos and worthlessness, Tragedy of the Commons), free college doesn’t solve the problems of baseline acquisition that would allow students to complete their graduation in a timely manner, free tuition would take away from budgeting for instructors and infrastructure, and free college would only lower the already abysmally low graduation rate.

Notice the above claim has mapping components that outline the body paragraphs:

• Paragraph: Free things tend to lead to entropy (decline, chaos and worthlessness, Tragedy of the Commons)
• Paragraph: Free college doesn’t solve the problems of baseline acquisition that would allow students to complete their graduation in a timely manner
• Paragraph: Free tuition would take away from budgeting for instructors and infrastructure
• Paragraph: Free college would only lower the already abysmally low graduation rate.

In the above examples, you might find that more than one paragraph is needed to support a mapping component, but the organization is still the same. 

Second Example: Should I put spyware on my twin daughters’ computers?

Sample Claim:

While I would be tempted to put spyware on my daughters' computers as a way of repelling predators, I would not do so, as some people advocate, for several reasons. One, the spyware might lull me into a false comfort and impede me from communicating with my daughters about the dangers of indiscreet internet activities; two, if I violated my daughters' trust, I may compel them to turn away from me, and they would find more insidious ways to do internet communications that jailbreak my spyware; third, a prison-like security environment in my daughters' internet landscape strikes me as the kind of overkill that overprotective fathers use who alienate their children. 

Notice the above claim has mapping components that outline the body paragraphs:

• Paragraph: One, the spyware might lull me into a false comfort and impede me from communicating with my daughters about the dangers of indiscreet internet activities
• Paragraph: Two, if I violated my daughters' trust, I may compel them to turn away from me, and they would find more insidious ways to do internet communications that jailbreak my spyware
• Paragraph: Third, a prison-like security environment in my daughters' internet landscape strikes me as the kind of overkill that overprotective fathers use who alienate their children. 

List of Requirements for This Assignment

1. You present two paragraphs, an introduction and an argumentative thesis.
2. Your introduction summarizes the major points of the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food”or the YouTube video titled “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.” This paragraph will be about 150 words. 
3. Your second paragraph, your thesis paragraph, answers the question: How persuasive is Gustavo Arellano in his claim that the greatness of Mexican food is based largely on rejecting the Cult of Authenticity?  This paragraph should be about 150 words or so.
4. The reasons that you provide in your thesis provide an outline for the subsequent body paragraphs.
5. Your paragraph should be uploaded as an attachment to Canvas. 

 

Due for 25 points as an upload on December 10.

Assignment Description

For your Cultural Authenticity essay, present a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph in which you present an opposing view to your argument and give this opposing view, a counterargument, and a rebuttal. 

The counterargument-rebuttal paragraph (which can be more than one) usually comes before your conclusion paragraph. 

Why is the counterargument-rebuttal necessary for an argumentative essay? Because for an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section to show your argument has been “tested” by the “fire of opposing views.” 

To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion). 

Writing a Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraph:

For an argumentative essay, providing compelling support paragraphs to make your claim or thesis persuasive is not enough. You also need a counterargument-rebuttal section. 

To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion). 

Instructions for This Assignment

1. To write an effective counterargument-rebuttal, good writers use a variety of sentence structures that set up the counterargument and the rebuttal. 
2. To learn how to write an effective counterargument-rebuttal, good writers use a variety of sentence structures based on templates:

Study the Templates for Counterargument-Rebuttal Section of Essay 

• Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
• Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.  
• It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________. 
• I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider _________________________. 
• While the author’s arguments for meaning are convincing, she fails to consider . . . 
• While the authors make convincing arguments, they must also consider . . . 
• These arguments, rather than being convincing, instead prove . . . 
• While these authors agree with Writer A on point X, in my opinion . . . 
• Although it is often true that . . . 
• While I concede that my opponents make a compelling case for point X, their main argument collapses underneath a barrage of . . . 
• While I see many good points in my opponent’s essay, I am underwhelmed by his . . . 
• While my opponent makes some cogent points regarding A, B, and C, his overall argument fails to convince us when we consider X, Y, and Z. 
• My opponent makes many provocative and intriguing points. However, his arguments must be dismissed as fallacious when we take into account W, X, Y, and Z. 
• While the author’s points first appear glib and fatuous, a closer look at his polemic reveals a convincing argument that . . . 

Using the Above Templates Is Not Plagiarism

I strongly suggest you use these templates. Using them is not a form of plagiarism. You are taking structures that are commonly used by professional writers and filling in the blanks for your own purposes. 

Partial Example of a Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraph:

My opponents will disagree with my argument that social media is intrinsically addicting because they will point out that anyone can find extreme cases of dysfunctional people getting addicted to anything. However, these critics are in egregious error, for they fail to see that _____________________________________. 

Three. Be sure to provide compelling and accurate counterarguments. 

Do not use weak or misrepresented arguments to make your rebuttal easier. The stronger the counterargument, the stronger your rebuttal, and the strength of your rebuttal determines how persuasive your argumentative essay is. 

Four. Be sure to have sufficient detail for your counterargument-rebuttal paragraph. Aim for 150-200 words. 

List of Requirements for This Assignment

1. Your counterargument rebuttal has a suitable sentence structure that conforms to one of the templates I’ve provided. 
2. Your counterargument-rebuttal addresses a legitimate concern that your opponents reasonably have. 
3. Your rebuttal diminishes or outright refutes your opponent’s counterargument. 
4. Your paragraph has sufficient detail evidenced by a length of about 150-200.
5. Your paragraph should be uploaded as an attachment to Canvas. 

Introducing Essay 4: A Debate about Mexican Food and the Notion of Authenticity

"Why are we writing an essay about Mexican food?"

I can imagine someone saying, “Hey, McMahon, I love Mexican food. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but I don’t get it. Why are we writing an essay about Mexican food?”

That is a great question. For your final essay assignment, an argumentative essay, the topic does indeed focus on Mexican food. 

So why have I chosen this topic? Here are some reasons:

1. Mexican food is huge. Its popularity is not only growing throughout the United States but the entire world. 
2. Mexican food is not a stagnant cuisine. It is constantly changing, adapting, synthesizing. In other words, it is a great art form.
3. Mexican food creates flavors, flavor combinations, and tangy spices that are so salient, irresistible, tantalizing, and reliably producing the “Wow Factor” that it is justifiably an obsession for many. 
4. According to the Puerto Vallarta Daily News, Mexican food, with its use of chili, honey, salt, garlic, herbs, cactus, banana leaves, Aztec seasoning, and chocolate, and its incorporation of foods from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa is the most “international food” the world has ever known. If you want to get a better grasp of how international Mexican food is, please watch the wonderful Netflix Ugly Delicious program, Season 1, Episode 2, titled "Tacos."
5. The power and influence of Mexican food in the United States and elsewhere is a much-welcome platform for cultural exchange that is vital in a world where close-minded tribalism too often raises its ugly head. There’s no getting around it. How we approach food is political. 
6. The notion of Mexican food as a traditional and stagnant art form pitted against the idea of Mexican food as a constant innovation that breaks traditional rules forces us to question the notion of authenticity and is a profoundly human and complex subject worthy of a critical thinking class. 

Should We Reject the Cult of Authenticity?

The Assignment:

In a 1,200-word essay that adheres to current MLA format and provides a minimum of 4 sources for your Works Cited page, write an argumentative essay that defends, refutes, or complicates food and culture writer Gustavo Arellano’s claim in his essay “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food” and elsewhere that in the realm of food, especially Mexican food, we must step away from the Cult of Authenticity and embrace the idea that the greatness of Mexican food is related to its constant evolution from stealing, borrowing, synthesizing, and even culturally appropriating from one ethnic culture to another and that cuisines that fail to evolve lack relevance and vitality.

What are the two opposing sides in this argument?

The Great Debate: Innovation Vs. Tradition:

On one side, Gustavo Arellano’s side, is the argument that great food evolves through stealing and that stealing is a sign of the food’s greatness. Another side of food greatness is constant evolution and constant innovation. People are open to experimenting with foods and not tied to traditions and absolutes. Mexican food, moreover, is not a monolith. There is diversity based on regions and innovations, so there is no such thing as One Kind of Mexican Food, no One Burrito, No One Taco, etc. 

On the other side, the Cult of Authenticity, is the belief that food should be unchanged. Food is iconic and rooted in tradition and attempts at changing the food is equivalent to “blasphemy.” Also, when the food is taken and changed it accounts to the loathsome act of cultural appropriation. Which side are you on?

The Purpose:

Most of us are influenced and touched by Mexican food on a deep, personal level. Many of us have been eating Mexican food since we were babies. It is part of who we are. Moving forward, Mexican food is a dominant food in American and international cuisine. 

One of the controversies about Mexican food is when people of privilege go to economically modest places in Los Angeles, Mexico, or elsewhere and engage in cultural tourism when these privileged people delight in “street food” and some appropriate the food (steal the recipe) so they can make a profit at their own restaurant. Many people find this offensive. 

The purpose of this essay is critically examine when a culture is stealing from another culture’s food source, there is an arrogance too often attached to this stealing, but at the same time we want to examine the power of cultural exchange as a way of opening doors for diverse people, the power of constantly evolving food, and the power of food that is constantly being stolen. For example, Gustavo Arellano makes the point that German pub food is not being stolen; Mexican food is. This speaks to the power and relevance of Mexican cuisine. There are only a handful of German restaurants in Los Angeles. In contrast, there are thousands of Mexican restaurants in southern California. We must explore the causes of a cultural force that continues to evolve and gain power. 

Your source material for your argument:

• Gustavo Arellano article “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It All the Time” (same article from the original source, The Orange County Weekly) 
• LA Taco interview with Gustavo Arellano in “The Fetish of Authenticity” in which he discusses the notion of authenticity and vitality in Mexican cuisine.  
• See YouTube video: “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”

Introduction

In this post, I'm stringing together the following pieces from your Essay 4 before we get to the content section of this unit:

1. Introduction suggestions for Essay 4
2. Suggested outline for Essay 4
3. Method and time required for Essay 4
4. Resources for MLA format, Works Cited page, and in-text citations
5. Writing an effective conclusion
6. Writing an effective title
7. How points are earned on this essay

Writing an Introductory Paragraph

I recommend one of two approaches for your introductory paragraph. 

Method #1: Summarize the main ideas in the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food.” 

Method #2 Summarize the main ideas in the YouTube video “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”

Then transition to an argumentative claim in which you show support or repudiation of Arellano’s main ideas. 

Sample thesis structure might look like this:

While I take offense at the inflated prices of some of these appropriation restaurants and the lack of credit given to the original sources, I agree with GA’s claim that _______ because ________, _______________, ___________________, and _________________________. 

Sample Outline:

Paragraph 1: Summarize the main ideas in the article by Gustavo Arellano titled “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food.” Or summarize the main ideas in the YouTube video “Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good.”

Paragraph 2: Then transition to an argumentative claim in which you show support or repudiation of Arellano’s main ideas.

Paragraphs 3-6 would be your supporting paragraphs.

Paragraphs 7 and 8 would be your counterargument-rebuttal.

Paragraph 9 would be a powerful restatement of your thesis, your conclusion.  

The Method and Time Required

Of course, everyone is different, but estimating the time based on the assigned videos, supplementary material, note taking, first draft of a 1,200 word essay of about 9 paragraphs, making a Works Cited page, and then rewriting your draft for correct grammar, spelling, and format, I would say that over the course of 4 weeks you could very well spend 16 hours, or 4 hours a week, to get this essay to a polished state that is ready to upload. 

If you include doing the above readings, this essay will take approximately 16 hours to write.

 Use MLA Format for Your Essay

Your essay should follow the conventions of the MLA format.

Works Cited

After your conclusion, you will cite a minimum of 4 sources on a separate page for Works Cited using current MLA format as explained in this these videos:

Purdue OWL video for Word 

Purdue OWL video for Google Docs

For MLA format, I recommend the following:

Jason Morgan’s video:

Formatting a paper in MLA style 

Setting Up MLA Format Paper in Google Docs

Setting Up MLA Format Paper in Google Docs

Support Your Essay with Sources Using MLA In-Text Citations:

Also be sure to use signal phrases for your correct MLA in-text citations, as you will find explained in this Purdue Owl article. 

Kate Guthrie Caruso has made an excellent video on MLA in-text citations titled “MLA Formatting: In-Text Citations--Basics.”

MLA Formatting: In-Text Citations--Basics

Writing Your Conclusion

Your conclusion is about creating emotional power and finding a way to reiterate your essay’s purpose in order to maximize the strength of your persuasion. 

Since you want emotional power in your conclusion, you want to avoid cliches or overused (hackneyed) conclusion structures. 

Some conclusion transitions to avoid:

• In conclusion,
• As you can now clearly see,
• Before we get out of here let me just say, 
• To wrap things up, 
• Just in case you forgot, 
• To sum up what I just said,
• Sorry for this lousy essay, but just in case you didn’t understand what I was saying, 

Effective Conclusion Strategies:

• Use the “full circle” technique. If you begin with a story or image in your introduction, return to that story or image in your conclusion. 
• End on a rhetorical question.
• End with a gut-punching quotation.
• End with an indelible image. 
• End with a dire warning.
• End with a universal truth that applies to your specific argument. 
• End with an emotionally-powerful restatement of your thesis. 

Title for Your Essay

Make sure your essay has a strong title. Avoid a generic title like “Cultural Appropriation” or “Essay 4.” Try to have a catchy title that is relevant to your focus. 

• What’s the Difference Between Respecting and Stealing Mexican Cuisine?
• Is Cultural Appropriation Even a Thing?
• Stop Calling Tex-Mex Real Mexican Food

“Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food--Mexicans Do It to Ourselves All the Time” by Gustavo Arellano

My thoughts on cultural appropriation of food changed forever in the research for my 2012 book, Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. One of my personal highlights was discovering the restaurant that Glenn Bell of Taco Bell infamy had cited in his autobiography as being the source of "inspiration" for him deciding to get into the taco business. How did he get inspired? He'd eat tacos at the restaurant every night, then go across the street to his hot dog stand to try and re-create them.

Bell freely admitted to the story, but never revealed the name of the restaurant. I did: Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, which is the oldest continuously operating Mexican restaurant in the Inland Empire. I was excited to interview the owner, Irene Montaño, who confirmed Bell's story. I was upset for the Montaños, and when I asked Montaño how she felt that Bell had ripped off her family's recipes to create a multibillion-dollar empire, I expected bitterness, anger, maybe even plans for a lawsuit in an attempt to get at least some of the billions of dollars that Taco Bell has earned over the past 50-plus years.

Instead, Montaño responded with grace: "Good for him!" She pointed out that Mitla had never suffered a drop in business because of Taco Bell, that her restaurant had been in business longer than his and "our tacos were better."

It's an anecdote I always keep in mind whenever stories of cultural appropriation of food by white people get the Left riled up and rock the food world. The latest skirmish is going on in Portland, where two women decided to open up what Willamette Week called "a concept that fits twee Portland": a breakfast burrito pop-up located within a hipster taco cart. The grand sin the gabachas committed, according to the haters, was the admission that they quizzed women in Baja California about how to make the perfect flour tortilla.

For their enthusiasm, the women have received all sorts of shade and have closed down their pop-up. To which I say: laughable. The gabachas knew exactly what they were doing, so didn't they stand by it? Real gumption there, pendejas.

But also laughable is the idea that white people aren't supposed to—pick your word—rip off or appropriate or get "inspired" by Mexican food, that comida mexicana is a sacrosanct tradition only Mexicans and the white girls we marry can participate in. That cultural appropriation is a one-way street where the evil gabacha steals from the poor, pathetic Mexicans yet again.

As we say in Mexico: No se hagan.

What these culture warriors who proclaim to defend Mexicans don't realize is that we're talking about the food industry, one of the most rapacious businesses ever created. It's the human condition at its most Darwinian, where everyone rips everyone off. The only limit to an entrepreneur's chicanery isn't resources, race or class status, but how fast can you rip someone off, how smart you can be to spot trends years before anyone else, and how much money you can make before you have to rip off another idea again.

And no one rips off food like Mexicans.

The Mexican restaurant world is a delicious defense of cultural appropriation—that's what the culinary manifestation of mestizaje is, ain't it? The Spaniards didn't know how to make corn tortillas in the North, so they decided to make them from flour. Mexicans didn't care much for Spanish dessert breads, so we ripped off most pan dulces from the French (not to mention waltzes and mariachi). We didn't care much for wine, so we embraced the beers that German, Czech and Polish immigrants brought to Mexico. And what is al pastor if not Mexicans taking shawarma from the Lebanese, adding pork and making it something as quintessentially Mexican as a corrupt PRI?

Don't cry for ripped-off Mexican chefs—they're too busy ripping each other off. Another anecdote I remember from Taco USA: one of the lieutenants of El Torito founder Larry Cano telling me Larry would pay them to work at a restaurant for a month, learn the recipes, then come back to the mothership so they could replicate it. It ain't just chains, though: In the past year, I've seen dozens of restaurants and loncheras across Southern California offer the Zacatecan specialty birria de res, a dish that was almost exclusively limited to quinceañeras and weddings just three years ago. What changed? The popularity of Burritos La Palma, the Santa Ana lonchera-turned-restaurant. Paisa entrepreneurs quickly learned that Burritos La Palma was getting a chingo of publicity and customers, so they decided to make birria de res on their own to try and steal away customers even though nearly none of them are from Zacatecas.

Shameless? Absolutely.

And that's what cultural appropriation in the food world boils down to: It's smart business, and that's why Mexicans do it, too. That's why a lot of high-end Mexican restaurants not owned by Sinaloans serve aguachile now, because Carlos Salgado of Taco Maria made it popular. That's why working-class Mexicans open marisco palaces even if they're not from the coast—because Sinaloans made Mexican seafood a lucrative scene. That's why nearly every lonchera in Santa Ana serves picaditas, a Veracruzan specialty, even though most owners are from Cuernavaca. That's why a taqueria will sell hamburgers and french fries—because they know the pocho kids of its core clients want to eat that instead of tacos. And that's why bacon-wrapped hot dogs are so popular in Southern California—because SoCal Mexican street-cart vendors ripped off Mexicans in Tijuana, who ripped off Mexicans in Tucson, who ripped off Mexicans in Sonora.

To suggest—as SJWs always do—that Mexicans and other minority entrepreneurs can't possibly engage in cultural appropriation because they're people of color, and that we're always the victims, is ignorant and patronizing and robs us of agency. We're no one's victims, and who says we can't beat the wasichu at their game? And who says Mexicans are somehow left in the poorhouse by white people getting rich off Mexican food? Go ask the Montaños of Mitla how they're doing. Last year, they reopened a long-shuttered banquet hall, and the next generation is introducing new meals and craft beers.

They cried about Bell's appropriation of their tacos all the way to the history books.

This story originally appeared in OC Weekly.

 

Chaos Machine and Anti-Vaxxing Conspiracy Chimera Lecture #2

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher

 

Facebook delivers conspiracy-driven news to over two billion users every day. These conspiracies generate money for Facebook. Facebook wants to deny charges of hijacking billions of brains with conspiracies, but the evidence shows that they are guilty.

Facebook doesn’t create conspiracies; they provide a platform for bad actors, racist organizations, troll farms, “grassroots movements,” “hyperpartisan outlets,” and foreign agents who know how to use Facebook to manipulate its users.

An outsourced tech contractor working in Silicon Valley named “Jacob” saw the connection between misinformation and Facebook and Instagram early in the game.

Jacob was monitoring and flagging misinformation with his team. That was his job. Around 2017, he noticed the posts growing more extreme and violent. 

Jacob realized that FB’s safety measures were grossly inadequate to stem the torrent of often racist misinformation. 

With weak countermeasures, FB was allowing millions of its users to become radicalized and brain-hijacked by conspiracies.

Jacob reported his findings “up the chain of command” and waited for a response. One never came. 

As Jacob saw mass violence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, he realized he would have to be more aggressive than sending reports to an unresponsive bureaucracy. He “siphoned internal rule books and training documents” from his office computers. He cleaned these documents of their “fingerprints” so they couldn’t be traced to him, and then he leaked them to The Guardian, Vice News, and the author Max Fisher. 

When FB discovered Max Fisher had the documents, they invited him to headquarters. Fisher found the anti-propaganda team to be very kind, conscientious, and hard at work fighting misinformation, but in spite of their efforts, the problem was getting worse and worse.

The failing of these higher-ups wasn’t their effort toward bad actors; it was their failure to acknowledge something intrinsically dangerous with the very platform itself: Facebook.

Its very model for success is based on extremist algorithms, which generate more clicks. More clicks mean more revenue for Facebook.

Facebook is built to amplify extremists’ misinformation. Extremists will use FB for that purpose and their devastation will overrun any good things that come from Facebook and Instagram.

One example is the growth of a QAnon story: liberals kidnapping children and selling them as slaves. Their slavery hub was a pizza restaurant in Maryland. A major study shows that nearly 1 in 5 Americans believes in QAnon. Such a crisis would not be possible without Facebook. 

Thanks, Facebook, for sucking 20% of America into a fever swamp of lies and conspiracies. American democracy is hanging by a thread.

In spite of this catastrophe, the well-paid FB minions “believe in the mission of Facebook.” Of course, they do. It’s in their self-interest, just not ours.

Algorithms and Divisiveness

One FB researcher leaked this to the Wall Street Journal in 2018: “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.” 

In other words, causing societies to fracture and wage war against each other in a non-nuanced, non-critical thinking battle of belligerent misinformation is the winning business model for Facebook. 

As an example, we can as a country have a nuanced and deep discussion about Jim Crow and racism, but such a discussion becomes impossible when a racist group weaponizes any discussion of race by turning it into “CRT” a buzzword for indoctrination. Critical Race Theory or CRT becomes a buzzword for shutting down any discussion of race. Shouting “CRT” becomes a way of showing your allegiance to your tribe. 

Of course, not all discussions of racism and Jim Crow can be labeled as “CRT,” but it doesn’t matter when the political discourse is based on divisiveness, hate, bombast, division, and over-simplification.

The world of social media is a world where human minds by the very nature of the platform become more stupid. This is well observed in Jonathan Haidt’s 2022 Atlantic essay “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” 

People who work in the inner chambers of social media have been sounding the alarm for several years, but the top people don’t listen because they don’t want anyone questioning their Money Machine or the ways their Machine generates cash revenue.

Lipstick on a Pig

The top executives will say “we’re doing everything possible to fight misinformation,” but this is lipstick on a pig.

Low Vaccine Rates

Renee DiResta, a tech analyst, discovered that many schools have only a 30% vaccination compliance rate. 

While 85% of parents wanted vaccine mandates at schools, a small number of parents feeding off Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook were passionate and well-organized. They could assert their influence at the schools. 

Radicalized people can punch up so their influence is beyond their numbers.

Renee DiResta noticed that if she typed “vaccine,” she didn’t get information for both sides of the debate, just negative misinformation. This is because the algorithm makes more money on negative misinformation than on science. 

DiResta noticed that anti-vaxxer misinformation was linked to other conspiracies like Chemtrails and Flat Earth. Conspiracies are the jackpot of social media.

Hijacking the human brain with misinformation is the business model of FB.

DiResta discovered that FB “wasn’t indulging anti-vaccine extremists. It was creating them.” 

Fake Consensus Becomes a Persuader

Max Fisher observes that when Facebook invented the news feed in 2006, it created something we can call Fake Consensus, the illusion that the majority of people have accepted something to be true on their news feed. Even if we are skeptical of this news feed, Fischer observes, we “internalize” it and eventually believe it to be true.

What is the number-one type of news feed that generates engagement? Outrage. 

Think about that. Outrage, that toxic emotion that overtakes us, is the secret sauce of social media.

2007 Is a Turning Point in World History

Outrage spiked FB’s growth so that it was worth 15 billion in 2007. This is a turning point in world history.

FB created a “social-validation feedback loop” and gave you a shot of dopamine to get over 3 billion people hooked on the drug.

Brain Hijack

Max Fisher writes: “Social apps hijack a compulsion--a need to connect--that can be even more powerful than hunger or greed.”

FB taught us to connect through shared outrage, and outrage is created through misinformation. Hence, we have the recipe for the Fever Swamp where people lose their minds.

 

Anti-Vaxxing Conspiracy Chimera

 

Sample Thesis Statements and Outline

 

Chimera of Fear: A Pandemic During Political Polarization

 

Public intellectual and Stanford neuroscientist Sam Harris said that if the Covid Pandemic was a dress rehearsal for an even more fatal pandemic, we as a society failed. 

 

We failed because we didn’t come together during a time we needed to. The Pandemic became a wedge between the Red and the Blue parties and compounded preexisting political polarization. 

 

The Big Three: Masks, Vaccines, and Lockdowns: Chimera of Government Intrusion and Overreach

 

On the Right, masks, vaccines, and lockdowns were seen as intrusions by Big Government, AKA “A Liberal Plot,” AKA “A Communist Plot,” AKA “Satan Himself.”

 

On the Left, vaccines were seen as dangerous substances that conflicted with highly educated left-leaning people’s embrace of alternative medicine and organic living. 

 

Social Influencers Have More Power Than Legacy Media

 

Both the Right and the Left now live in a new Information Ecosystem where cultural influencers Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla have more podcast listeners than CNN and MSNBC have viewers and New York Times readers combined. 

 

Both Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla are hard to pin down politically because they are complicated individuals but they do invite conspiracy theorists on their shows, they do have hostility toward big government, they do tend to be libertarian in wanting minimum government, and their views tend to be embraced by anti-government players in social media who weaponize their information to push their own agendas. 

 

“News” can travel light-speed on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook faster than all the “legacy media” combined. 

 

We no longer believe in our media sources, we no longer believe in our government institutions, and we no longer even live in the same reality. We have what is called an epistemic crisis, which means we can’t even agree on how to determine what is knowledge and what is real. 

 

Vaccine Compliance

 

To beat the Pandemic, we needed vaccine compliance, but red zones were huge non-compliance zones. This doesn’t bode well for future pandemics when viruses may be more fatal. 

 

We failed to address the Covid Pandemic appropriately because we saw a breakdown of trust in our public institutions. 

 

If we can’t trust government institutions during times of crisis when we have to comply with life-and-death safety measures, we as a society are done. 

 

The polarization of the Covid Pandemic may be a precursor to our extinction. 

 

The same conspiracy-soaked brains that reject all government information about Covid as a lie are the same brains that see free elections as a lie and are the same brains that believe Nancy Pelosi and her minions stole the 2020 election. 

 

Once your brain gets hijacked with one conspiracy theory, it opens the gates to getting hijacked by hundreds more. 

 

To Wear a Mask Or Not: Shaming Doesn’t Work

 

In this environment, wearing a mask, or not wearing a mask, becomes a signal to not only your political beliefs but your tribal affiliation. 

 

Shaming and ridiculing non-maskers who have been featured in viral videos has not helped persuade non-maskers to wear masks. It has only helped to deepen the political polarization. 

 

The Appeal of Conspiracies 

 

People more and more have not been doing deep dives into credible news. Rather, they are enjoying “entertainment news,” which imitates the dramatic conspiracy stories from Hollywood movies.

 

Conspiracy believers feel a loss of control in a stressful world, and believing in a conspiracy makes them feel like they are in control and not one of the “sheeple” being manipulated by big government.

 

Conspiracy believers rely on a childish narrative about the world: It can be a world of closure, certainty, and control if we have a conspiracy theory to frame the world in such a way. In fact, the world is chaotic, illogical, and uncertain. Adults can embrace the uncertainty of the world. Emotionally-stunted narcissists can not. 

 

Conspiracy believers love believing that they have knowledge of a “secret reality” that the sheeple are too blind to see and this belief makes them feel special, suggesting that conspiracies appeal to narcissism, a form of psychological maladaptation. 

 

Social media weaponized misinformation and scales it so that what was once fringe has the appearance of being mainstream and gives conspiracy believers a sense of being normal because they enjoy power in numbers. In reality, they live in a fever swamp of insane beliefs. 

 

****

Fallacies That Misinform Anti-Vaxxers

 

Additives are toxic when in fact the amount of toxins is less than what you consume in water every day. 

 

I lead a natural lifestyle, so I am building my immunity when in fact only the vaccine will increase your immunity in a significant way. 

 

Vaccines lead to allergies.

 

Big government is exaggerating the danger of disease.

 

Vaccines lead to autism.

 

As a free person, I should have a choice since my choice affects me and me alone.

 

Big Pharma is making billions from this corrupt business. 

 

Failures of Media to Promote Truth in Vaccines

 

Bothsideism, providing both sides to create what appears to be a balanced view when in fact, a conspiracy gets a lopsided advantage.

 

The media peddles fake controversies because sensationalism gets high ratings. We can call this entertainment news. 

 

Anecdotes carry as much weight as legit studies to an audience that gives as much credence to anecdotes as they do to real data. 

 

Fringe news and fringe conspiracy believers go on high-profile shows like Oprah and other media stars.

 

***

 

Sample Thesis Statements for Chimera of Conspiracies

 

Sample #1

 

In an age of the Covid Pandemic, we find that a significant population has been brain-hijacked by the anti-vax chimera because of a distrust in institutions, political polarization, the rise of “expert” influencers over true experts, and narcissistic personality types that crave conspiracies. 

 

Sample #2

 

The appeal of anti-vax conspiracies is a case study of the breakdown of ethos, pathos, and logos. 

 

Sample #3

 

Anti-vax conspiracists live in a self-feeding fever swamp defined by weaponized misinformation, political polarization, and logical fallacies that defy reason and the powers of persuasion.

 

Sample #4

 

A conspiracy chimera such as anti-vax propaganda hijacks the brain in such a way that the person stubbornly resists even the clearest presentation of ethos, pathos, and logos to support the efficacy of vaccines. 

 

Sample Outline:

 

Paragraph 1: Define a chimera in the context of conspiracies.

Paragraph 2: Present your thesis or claim.

Paragraphs 3-7: Your supporting paragraphs

Paragraph 8: Your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.

Your final page, Works Cited, in MLA format with 4 sources. 

Sentence Fragments 

Sentence fragments are incomplete thoughts presented as dependent clauses or phrases.

A dependent clause or a phrase is never a complete sentence.

Types of dependent clauses:

Whenever I drive up windy mountains,

Because I have craved pizza for 14 months,

Unless you add coffee to your chocolate cake recipe,

,which is currently enjoying a resurgence. 

 

Phrases

Enamored by the music of Tupac Shakur,

Craving pesto linguine with olive-oil based clam sauce, 

Flexing his muscles with a braggadocio never seen in modern times,

Lying under the bridge and eating garlic pepper pretzels with a dollop of cream cheese and a jug of chilled apple cider, 

To understand the notion of Universal Basic Income and all of its related factors for social change in this disruptive age, 

Running into crowded restaurants with garlic and whiskey fuming out of his sweaty pores while brandishing a golden scepter, 

 

Examples

I won't entertain your requests for more money and gifts. Until you show at least a modicum of responsibility at school and with your friends. 

I won't consider buying the new BMW sports coupe. Unless of course my uncle gives me that inheritance he keeps talking about whenever he gets a bit tipsy. 

I can't imagine ever going to Chuck E. Cheese. Which makes me feel like I'm emotionally arrested. 

I am considering the purchase of a new wardrobe. That is, if I'm picked for that job interview at Nordstrom. 

Human morals have vanished. To the point at which it was decided that market values would triumph. 

No subject 

Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.

No complete verb

The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.

Beginning with a subordinating word

We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.

A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.

Sentence Fragment Exercises  

After each sentence, write C for complete or F for fragment sentence. If the sentence is a fragment, correct it so that it is a complete sentence. 

One. While hovering over the complexity of a formidable math problem and wondering if he had time to solve the problem before his girlfriend called him to complain about the horrible birthday present he bought her. 

Two.  In spite of the boyfriend’s growing discontent for his girlfriend, a churlish woman prone to tantrums and grand bouts of petulance.

Three. My BMW 5 series, a serious entry into the luxury car market. 

Four. Overcome with nausea from eating ten bowls of angel hair pasta slathered in pine nut garlic pesto.  

Five. Winding quickly but safely up the treacherous Palos Verdes hills in the shrouded mist of a lazy June morning, I realized that my BMW gave me feelings of completeness and fulfillment.   

Six. To attempt to grasp the profound ignorance of those who deny the compelling truths of science in favor of their pseudo-intellectual ideas about “dangerous” vaccines and the “myths” of global warming. 

Seven. The girlfriend whom I lavished with exotic gifts from afar. 

Eight. When my cravings for pesto pizza, babaganoush, and triple chocolate cake overcome me during my bouts of acute anxiety. 

Nine. Inclined to stop watching sports in the face of my girlfriend’s insistence that I pay more attention to her, I am throwing away my TV. 

Ten. At the dance club where I espy my girlfriend flirting with a stranger by the soda machine festooned with party balloons and tinsel. 

Eleven. The BMW speeding ahead of me and winding into the misty hills. 

Twelve. Before you convert to the religion of veganism in order to impress your vegan girlfriend. 

Thirteen. Summoning all my strength to resist the giant chocolate fudge cake sweating on the plate before me. 

Identify the Fragments Below

Identify the Fragments Below

I drank the chalky Soylent meal-replacement drink. Expecting to feel full and satisfied. Only to find that I was still ravenously hungry afterwards. Trying to sate my hunger pangs. I went to HomeTown Buffet. Where I ate several platters of braised oxtail and barbecued short ribs smothered in a honey vinegar sauce. Which reminded me of a sauce where I used to buy groceries from. When I was a kid.

Feeling bloated after my HomeTown Buffet indulgence. I exited the restaurant. After which I hailed an Uber and asked the driver for a night club recommendation. So I could dance off all my calories. The driver recommended a place, Anxiety Wires. I had never heard of it. Though, it was crowded inside. I felt eager to dance and confident about “my swag.” Although, I was still feeling bloated. Wondering if my intestines were on the verge of exploding.

Sweating under the night club’s outdoor canopy. I smelled the cloying gasses of a nearby vape. A serpentine woman was holding the vape. A gold contraption emitting rose-water vapors into my direction. Contemplating my gluttony. I was suddenly feeling low confidence. Though I pushed myself to introduce myself to the vape-smoking stranger with the serpentine features. Her eyes locked on mine.

I decided to play it cool. Instead of overwhelming her with a loud, brash manner. Which she might interpret as neediness on my part.

Keeping a portable fan in my cargo pocket for emergencies. When I feel like I’m overheating. I took the fan out of my pocket, turned it on, and directed it toward the serpentine stranger. Making it so the vapors were blowing back in her face.

“Doesn’t smell so good, does it?” I said. With a sarcastic grin.

She cackled, then said, “Thank you for blowing the vapors in my face. Now I can both enjoy inhaling them and breathing them in. For double the pleasure. You are quite a find. Come home with me and I’ll introduce you to my mother Gertrude and her pitbull Jackson. I’m sure they’ll welcome you into our home. Considering what a well-fed handsome man you are.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” I said. “I would love to meet your mother Gertrude and your mother’s pitbull Jackson. Only one problem. My breath smells like a rotting dead dragon. Right after eating spicy ribs. Which reminds me? Do you have any breath mints?”

“I don’t believe in carrying breath mints. On account of the rose-water vape. That cleanses my palate. Making my breath rosy fresh.”

“Wow. Your constant good breath counteracts my intractable bad breath. Making us a match in heaven.”

“I agree. Totally. You really need to meet my mother. Because she’ll bless us and make our marriage official. Since we really need her blessing. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Now let me smell your breath. So I can identify the hot sauce.”

“Why must you do that?”

“So I can use the same hot sauce on our wedding cake, silly. To celebrate the first night we met. Capisce?”

“Capisce.”

She approached me. Affording me a view of her long, tired face. Covered in scales. Reptilian. Evocative of something primitive. Something precious and indelible from my childhood lost long ago. I wanted to run from her, but I could not. Some mysterious force drew me to her, and we inched closer and closer toward one another. Succumbing to a power neither of us could fathom. 

 

Comma Splice Review

Identify the Comma Splices Below:

It’s not a question of will there be chaos or will there be destruction, it’s a question of how much?

MySpace was disruptive in its time, however, it’s a dated platform and to simply mention it is to make people laugh with a certain derision surely it’s a platform that has seen its time, another example is the meal replacement Soylent, its creator made a drink that says, “You’re too busy to eat,” so drinking this pancake batter-like concoction gives tech people street. I may laugh at its stupidity, instead I should admire it since the product has made millions for its creator. It’s proven to be somewhat disruptive.

To be sure, though, Facebook redefines the word disruptive, it has rapidly accrued over 3 billion users and will soon have half the planet plugged into its site, that is the apotheosis of a greedy person’s fantasy, imagine controlling half the planet on a platform that mines private information and targets ads toward specific personality profiles.  

One of the scary disruptions of Facebook is that billions of people have lost their personal agency, what that means that people have unknowingly been manipulated by Facebook’s puppeteers to the point that many Facebook users suffer from social media addiction, moreover, these same users prefer the fake life they curate on social media to the real life they once had, in fact, their previous real life is just a puff of smoke that has faded into the distance, many people no longer even know what it means to be “real” anymore, having lost their agency, having succumbed to their Facebook addiction, they have become zombies waiting for their next rush of social media-fueled dopamine, what a sad state of affairs.

Conspiracy Chimera Essay Lecture #1

Essay Comparison Choice #6: The Chimera of Conspiracies:

People lose contact with reality as they go down rabbit holes of conspiracies. We will examine the forces of “the epistemic crisis,” the breakdown of faith in institutions, the death of expertise, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and we will narrow our focus on conspiracies to anti-vaxxing and QAnon. 

Sample Outline for Choice #6

For paragraph 1, your introduction, define the idea of a conspiracy as a very tempting chimera to certain types of people.

For paragraph 2, your thesis, develop a claim that explains the causes of a conspiracy chimera. You might want to focus on a specific conspiracy like the one that supports the belief of anti-vaxxers or QAnon. Otherwise, you may find your essay is so broad that you can’t chisel a 1,200-word essay. 

Paragraphs 3-7 would explain the above thesis.

Your conclusion is a powerful restatement of your thesis. 

Notice there is no Counterargument-Rebuttal Section because this is not so much an argument essay as it is cause-and-effect. 

Works Cited page with the sources you used would be your last page. 

Since the subject is so broad, we will focus on ant-vaxxers.

For sources, we will look at the following: 

• Why Are Conspiracy Theories So Appealing to So Many People?
• The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories
• “Why Incompetent People Think They’re Amazing” (Dunning-Kruger Effect)
• “Why America Loves Fake News” 
• “Anti-Vaxxers: What Went Wrong?”
• “Anti-Vaxxers: How the Media Created a Monster” 
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: 
• “Vaccines” (June 25, 2017)
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: “Covid Vaccines” (May 2, 2021). 

• “Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” by Jonathan Haidt

Types of Conspiracies

 

Proxy Conspiracism: The conspiracy belief is a substitute or a proxy for some deep psychological need like control, power, and revenge against others.  (From Michael Shermer’s Conspiracy).

 

Tribal Conspiracism: The conspiracy is linked to a chain of other like-minded conspiracies that as a whole define the religious, political, or tribal beliefs of the individual (From Michael Shermer’s Conspiracy). 

 

Constructive Conspiracism: The conspiracy that is believed “just in case” it’s true because it’s better to be safe. There have been so many true conspiracies, we might just as well be skeptical of everything (From Michael Shermer’s Conspiracy). 

 

Profit Conspiracism: You don’t believe in the conspiracy, but you cynically fabricate one to make money. Alex Jones is a top-level Profit Conspiracist. 

 

Radicalized Conspiracism: You live in a fever swamp of social media, cable news, cherry-picked evidence, and confirmation bias. Worse, many succumb to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which states that there are many people who think they’re smart when in fact they are the opposite and they lack the self-awareness to see how others perceive them.  

 

Outrage Conspiracism: According to social scientist Jonathan Haidt, around 2012, social media algorithms exploited our reptile brains by feeding our appetite for anger and outrage. These emotions are strengthened by extreme misinformation, which makes money for social media companies, destroys our brains, and destroys democracy. “Going viral” is “proof” that the conspiracy is true. 

 

The Epistemic Crisis in Jonathan Rauch’s The Constitution of Knowledge

 

From the ancient Greeks, we had a tradition of mentor and student in which the mentor was the authority on knowledge and both engaged in a humble quest for higher knowledge, battle-testing their ideas by putting them against their opponents’ objections.

 

Such rigor is in little evidence today. As a result, we live in an epistemic crisis: We can’t even agree on what reality is anymore. 

 

Already, for example, the attack on Nancy Pelosi, Paul Pelosi, has been politicized. 

 

A group of people who say the 2020 election was stolen blame Nancy Pelosi so she was targeted and her husband was attacked instead. This is the most logical and clear explanation.

 

But conspiracy trolls have already weaponized misinformation to call the event a “media conspiracy” to hide the truth: The real event is that Paul Pelosi was having an illicit affair with the attacker and the violence was the result of a relationship gone bad.

 

Just as getting vaccines and wearing masks is politicized, so is the way society interprets the murder attempt of Paul Pelosi.

 

***

Are We Losing American Democracy to Conspiracies?

“Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” by Jonathan Haidt

 

David Pakman Video Interview with Jonathan Haidt

We are trapped in a Groundhog Day of Fragmented Realities

 

We are trapped in a Groundhog Day, a term for being trapped in a crucible. According to John Haidt, author of the essay “Why the Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” the trap is the fragmentation of human experience into “different realities” that don’t mesh with the other. Depending on which information silo you live in, your reality differs from other people’s, and these differences represent your cognitive biases, preferences, and moral development. 

 

Haidt observes that this fragmentation leads to anxiety, alienation, and hostility toward one another. As he writes: “We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”

 

We are therefore trapped in a state of disharmony, alienation, and hostility among each other. We live in chaos. This is our crucible.

 

We are not in a Cooperation Mode of History

 

In more sunny periods of history, Haidt observes, we live in cooperation with one another, but to do so we have to address conflicts from a shared reality. Thanks to social media, the shared reality has been shattered and we don’t live in cooperation. Rather, we live in animosity toward each other, largely in a cultural and political war, but even within the same tribes, a spirit of irrationality causes them to splinter so that Red and Blue tribes have insane subsets that erode and metastasize the entire party.

The glue that holds society together has come undone from social media

 

Haidt writes that society is held together by three things:

 

Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in the several years following 2009. 

 

From Friendship to Marketing and Looking for the Viral Effect

 

Over time, people on Facebook and other platforms moved away from deepening friendships and instead looked to promote themselves and their brands. 

 

As Haidt writes: “Once social-media platforms had trained users to spend more time performing and less time connecting, the stage was set for the major transformation, which began in 2009: the intensification of viral dynamics.”

 

2012 is when things started to go crazy:

 

Haidt writes that viral sharing started to motivate social media users to become obsessed with going viral and this is when the craziness began. As he writes:

 

Before 2009, Facebook had given users a simple timeline––a never-ending stream of content generated by their friends and connections, with the newest posts at the top and the oldest ones at the bottom. This was often overwhelming in its volume, but it was an accurate reflection of what others were posting. That began to change in 2009, when Facebook offered users a way to publicly “like” posts with the click of a button. That same year, Twitter introduced something even more powerful: the “Retweet” button, which allowed users to publicly endorse a post while also sharing it with all of their followers. Facebook soon copied that innovation with its own “Share” button, which became available to smartphone users in 2012. “Like” and “Share” buttons quickly became standard features of most other platforms.

 

What tended to go viral? Anger and outrage and making social media “a nasty place”

 

Going viral was best achieved through anger and outrage. Social media algorithms want our attention because that is their business model, so their algorithms targeted anger. As a result, anger on social media began to snowball. 

 

By 2013, your posts could either leave you loved or hated, so you started to behave performatively to be loved, even if being loved meant venting hatred toward others. 

 

As Haidt writes:

 

By 2013, social media had become a new game, with dynamics unlike those in 2008. If you were skillful or lucky, you might create a post that would “go viral” and make you “internet famous” for a few days. If you blundered, you could find yourself buried in hateful comments. Your posts rode to fame or ignominy based on the clicks of thousands of strangers, and you in turn contributed thousands of clicks to the game.

 

The Race to the Bottom

 

Social media posts were now based on dishonesty, oversimplification, and catering to the mob mentality, or in other words, The Race to the Bottom.

 

As Haidt writes:

 

This new game encouraged dishonesty and mob dynamics: Users were guided not just by their true preferences but by their past experiences of reward and punishment, and their prediction of how others would react to each new action. One of the engineers at Twitter who had worked on the “Retweet” button later revealed that he regretted his contribution because it had made Twitter a nastier place. As he watched Twitter mobs forming through the use of the new tool, he thought to himself, “We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.”

 

A whole country drunk and addicted to outrage and its collective judgment debased is the unraveling of a free democracy

 

Haidt observes that for a sustainable free democracy, we need a voting populace that is reasonably sane, educated, and not living in a Fever Swamp of heated passions. As he writes: 

 

The key to designing a sustainable republic, therefore, was to build in mechanisms to slow things down, cool passions, require compromise, and give leaders some insulation from the mania of the moment while still holding them accountable to the people periodically, on Election Day.

 

 

Social media and its rampant conspiracy theories erode trust in institutions

 

Conspiracy theories go viral on social media so they are rewarded by the algorithms. 

 

A society beholden to frivolous distractions and two-bit conspiracy theories is not a serious society capable of upholding a free democracy. 

 

Cooperation dies and in its place is “owning” your enemies 

 

We care less about democracy than we do about “owning” our enemies and destroying them. As Haidt writes: “But when citizens lose trust in elected leaders, health authorities, the courts, the police, universities, and the integrity of elections, then every decision becomes contested; every election becomes a life-and-death struggle to save the country from the other side.” 

 

Social media has put different political tribes into different information silos and have “broken the mortar of trust.”

 

Haidt observes that the exponential growth of social media has fragmented us and resulted in a tribalistic society incapable of democracy. This breaking down of American society into hostile factions occurred between 2011 and 2015. During this time there was “The Great Awokening” on the Left and MAGA on the Right and the two groups have been ratcheting up their mutual hatred since. As he observes:

 

Mark Zuckerberg may not have wished for any of that. But by rewiring everything in a headlong rush for growth—with a naive conception of human psychology, little understanding of the intricacy of institutions, and no concern for external costs imposed on society—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other large platforms unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.

 

Twitter kills newspapers

 

In the present age, Twitter can spread ideas faster than any newspaper however big. 

 

So an ignoramus with a big platform can spread lies on Twitter and if he spreads his lies with outrage and caters to the cognitive biases of his core audience, he will enjoy far more influence than any credible peer-reviewed report in the world’s biggest newspapers.

 

As a result, dishonest outrage trumps honest reporting.

 

Social media and its billions of injurious darts have brought injustice and political dysfunction in three ways.

 

First, trolls get all the attention, not average, responsible citizens with reasonable voices. The more grotesque the more attention. This ruthless aggression scales. 

 

Secondly, political extremism enjoys more voice than moderation even if moderation is 80% of the country. The most white, rich groups on the Right and Left dominate their Extremes. 

 

Thirdly, social media judges and cancels people before they’re given a fair defense. In the words of Haidt: “Finally, by giving everyone a dart gun, social media deputizes everyone to administer justice with no due process.”

 

Information Silos lead to Structural Stupidity

 

In social media, we are isolated in our information silos that cater to our cognitive biases so never addressing a counterargument, we become more and more stupid and ignorant. 

 

Not even agreeing on what constitutes reality or a health crisis to be specific, we live in what Jonathan Rauch calls an “epistemic crisis.”

A divided country cannot maintain democracy

 

Haidt reminds us that we are not more stupid; the problem is structural: the “enhanced virality of social media.” In other words, social media is a weapon and this weapon makes for stupid conversation, aggressive political discourse, and a country that is getting more and more divided to the point that it cannot uphold democracy. 

 

Disinformation is the tool of autocrats

 

Disinformation, a tool of autocrats, is going to get worse, not better. We currently do not have any countermeasures in place to repel weaponized disinformation and bad political actors are seizing upon the opportunity to win their political battles by using the same type of disinformation used by Russia’s Putin and Germany’s Nazis. In the words of Haidt:

 

In a 2018 interview, Steve Bannon, the former adviser to Donald Trump, said that the way to deal with the media is “to flood the zone with shit.” He was describing the “firehose of falsehood” tactic pioneered by Russian disinformation programs to keep Americans confused, disoriented, and angry. But back then, in 2018, there was an upper limit to the amount of shit available, because all of it had to be created by a person (other than some low-quality stuff produced by bots).

 

Now, however, artificial intelligence is close to enabling the limitless spread of highly believable disinformation. The AI program GPT-3 is already so good that you can give it a topic and a tone and it will spit out as many essays as you like, typically with perfect grammar and a surprising level of coherence. In a year or two, when the program is upgraded to GPT-4, it will become far more capable. In a 2020 essay titled “The Supply of Disinformation Will Soon Be Infinite,” Renée DiResta, the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, explained that spreading falsehoods—whether through text, images, or deep-fake videos—will quickly become inconceivably easy. (She co-wrote the essay with GPT-3.)

American factions won’t be the only ones using AI and social media to generate attack content; our adversaries will too. In a haunting 2018 essay titled “The Digital Maginot Line,” DiResta described the state of affairs bluntly. “We are immersed in an evolving, ongoing conflict: an Information World War in which state actors, terrorists, and ideological extremists leverage the social infrastructure underpinning everyday life to sow discord and erode shared reality,” she wrote. The Soviets used to have to send over agents or cultivate Americans willing to do their bidding. But social media made it cheap and easy for Russia’s Internet Research Agency to invent fake events or distort real ones to stoke rage on both the left and the right, often over race. Later research showed that an intensive campaign began on Twitter in 2013 but soon spread to Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, among other platforms. One of the major goals was to polarize the American public and spread distrust—to split us apart at the exact weak point that Madison had identified.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

When you confuse a public and tire them with constant lies and disinformation, you break them into despair, they shrug their shoulders with apathy, and say, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” You’ve defeated them. 

Misinformation, extremism, fear of being Twitter-shamed: all these things combined have made us scared, apathetic, conformist, and oblivious to more reasonable voices that might save our democracy. 

Haidt proposes 3 reforms to save our democracy

Haidt proposes that we “harden democratic institutions,” reform social media, and “prepare the next generation.” 

***

 

Review of Jonathan Haidt

• Since 2009 when social media scaled, we started living in separate information and news bubbles, causing us to mistrust each other. Many of these information bubbles are conspiracy-soaked. 
• Social fragmentation is antithetical to cooperation and weakens democracies.
• We’ve had a breakdown of trust in our major institutions. This has cleared the way for crazy beliefs in conspiracies. 
• We’ve developed a misguided trust in unreliable sources and ourselves as “experts” who can push the real experts away and embrace conspiracy theories.
• The Viral Effect gives false credence to conspiracies so that the popularity of an idea becomes its power, not its truth. This results in the growth of conspiracies.
• Misinformation spreads on social media faster than legacy media can slow it down with vetted facts so that conspiracies flood the mass consciousness. 
• Misinformation creates chaos, but the very same misinformation provides conspiracy theories, which give their believers a false sense of understanding and control. 
• History teaches us that conspiracies are the tool of the autocrat.
• A public confused and fatigued by a flood of misinformation gives up on the notion of truth, credibility, accountability, and critical thinking. They shrug their shoulders in despair and say, “I don’t know what to believe anymore. All I know is the cost of gas.” 

***

Sample Thesis Statements

Sample #1

What kind of person gets their brain hijacked by a conspiracy theory? I’m afraid the answer is not a pretty one. Typically, a person who has failed to love and connect with others in a mature, meaningful way and who has deeply-rooted prejudices becomes the perfect personality for the True Conspiracy Believer. Not wanting to confront her personal failings, he scapegoats some Enemy Entity--Anthony Fauci, the WHO, the libs, the Woke, the Jews, the terrorists, the liberal media, the Immigrant Caravan, or some other Enemy Combatant. Secondly, this person is overwhelmed by life’s uncertainty and has a childish desire for a simple narrative to make sense out of the chaos. Third, this person is so deep into the social media rabbit hole that he is disconnected from real people, real news, and reality itself. This is a dangerous cocktail that turns this person into a radicalized conspiracy believer. 

Sample #2

Why are people on both the Left and the Right anti-vaxxers? It seems there are plenty of conspiracies out there for people of any political persuasion. For the Right, anti-vaxxing sentiments are rooted in hostility for “big government,” the liberal plot to join China to create a world order, and a weaponizing of Covid to allow the Democrats to destroy the Republicans. On the Left, anti-vaxxing sentiments are rooted in hostility toward Big Pharma, a preference for alternative medicine to mainstream science, and the belief that “personal choice” is superior to being a “sheeple,” and anecdotal evidence of children getting vaxxed and immediately becoming autistic. 

Sample #3

Anti-vaxxer beliefs are built on a wobbly foundation of logical fallacies. 

Sample #4

Eric Hoffer's perennial classic The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, published in 1951, is a cogent explanation of conspiracy believers today. The conspiracy believer is marked by a sense of personal failure, a cowardice that prevents honest self-inspection to account for the personal failure, a lust for power and easy opportunities for self-advancement, fear of future change, and faith in an "infallible leader" who possesses some theory to make sense of their world.