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I wish people stopped invoking racism everywhere, when plain "being misinformed" explains things just fine. Millions of Koreans swear up and down that MSG is b
by yongjik 6y ago
I wish people stopped invoking racism everywhere, when plain "being misinformed" explains things just fine. Millions of Koreans swear up and down that MSG is bad for health. Are we also being racist? (Against whom?)
- runawaybottle 6y agoBro, Asian on Asian racism is like way higher than western racism towards that region. I’m almost positive Koreans think they are better than Chinese, and the Chinese think they are better than Koreans, and they both low key hate Japan’s uppityness (Of course the Japanese consider them ‘less than’, we can certainly throw in some historical advantage taking to add flame to this). This is like a age old tale in almost any region (think Pakistan/India/Bangladesh). So ya, I can bet you there’s a level of passive aggressive racism to this day, like everywhere else on planet earth.
- fraudsyndrome 6y agoWhat kind of (racist) actions are taken in the east due to this prejudice they have? And how does that compare (or how is it way higher) to how western racism is towards those minorities in the western countries? Thinking they are better doesn't really compare.
- runawaybottle 6y agoSure, so the passive aggressive racism is a far cry from what would have been real manifestations of it that occurred in those regions historically. How does it manifest today? Maybe they hear a msg rumor and go ‘yeah, figures’. A better example might be that mainland Chinese people genuinely think Hong Kong people think they are ‘better than mainlanders’, and low key believe in and support the crackdown and integration of Hong Kong (put them in their place). Wild stuff, amongst your own you have this informed hatred. Similar to Karens in America, we don’t have outright segregation, we have a diluted form of it, which of course is a far cry from what it was. The water is not totally filtered yet, need a few more pass throughs (few more generations). As to why I think it’s way higher, it’s simply because the West has strong shallow racism. But the East actually knows the nuances of their region and still find ways to be prejudiced. That just simply takes more bigotry imho, where as in the West they only need pure ignorance.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre https://www.quora.com/If-youre-of-Chinese-ethnicity-and-living-in-South-Korea-is-it-hard-being-accepted-by-the-Koreans https://www.quora.com/If-youre-of-Chinese-ethnicity-and-livi... https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/in-korea-double-standards-on-racism/ https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/in-korea-double-standards-on-r... https://archive.vn/bt6n1 https://archive.vn/bt6n1
- zodiac2 6y agoYou make it sound like racism only occurs in USA. This is naive. Racism is across the world and some are worse than others. Japanese took Korean women as literal sex slaves during their occupation and didn’t give them rightful citizenship in Japan and just looked down on them. In China during the Rape of Nanking Japanese also did horrible atrocities, like cut open pregnant women and gamble on the sex of the fetus. Really horrible things but in America is only sounds like only white people commit racism, which is not true. The most modern incidents of genocide happen in Asia. Cambodia in the 1970s and even Myanmar committing genocide in the last few years against Rohingya, lead by former Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. In Korea, many half-Korean Half-black children from American army were born and until recently they were openly spat on by Koreans in public. Until Hines Ward who is half Korean half Black won MVP for NFL Super Bowl, then it raised awareness in Korea over this. So please don’t think racism is only in the US. What blacks experience today is much better than what they experience in other countries where there is true hate, not just stereotyping.
- fraudsyndrome 6y agoAbsolutely not, in fact I didn't mention USA anywhere in my post. I was curious on what constitutes racism in the east vs. the west and I don't have experience in the east. I'm also not disregarding anywhere in between the countries of the east and west. I know of the historical factors but that's like saying Germans are still racist because they have a history of being Nazis - I was more interested in what kind of experiences of racism between Asia are happening in modern times which I've seen you've written so thanks for that. I was also curious whether there were any parallels in one of the bigger issues like police brutality of minorities in Asia. There is a whole other discussion when talking about true hate vs. stereotyping.
- yongjik 6y agoI agree that there are unfortunately too much hate among different East Asians, but it doesn't seem relevant here. I mean, if you think Koreans' fear of MSG is somehow related to our prejudice against Chinese/Japanese cuisine, then clearly you haven't seen many Korean dishes.
- stouset 6y agoI think that just reinforces the point. If your culture eats tons of food that’s packed to the brim with glutamate but you’re vocal about the MSG in Chinese food… what should the takeaway be?
- yongjik 6y agoI guess I wasn't explicit enough, Koreans aren't vocal about MSG in Chinese food - we are vocal about MSG in our own food !!! (But of course, only when it's added as factory-made "chemical" - if it's from dried anchovies and seaweed, that's natural, so of course that's totally OK, either in Korean, Chinese, or any other cuisine.)
- zodiac2 6y agoAs Korean, yes there’s plenty of racism of Asians vs Asians. My aunts in Korea were terrified of Chinese people when they were kids because there were always rumors of them kidnapping kids etc. There’s a lot of anger across Asia for Mainland Chinese these days. Practically all countries look down on Mainland Chinese, even those in Hong Kong does too. They think Mainland Chinese are dirty and loud and obnoxious because as tourists they are very obnoxious. Koreans have general hate towards Japanese because of the war, but prefer Japanese to Chinese and all other Asians are looked down on, like Vietnamese, Philippines, etc.
- wincy 6y agoMy (Chinese) stepmother told me to be careful about dating/marrying Korean girls because “they get a lot of plastic surgery and your kids will be ugly”. Definitely some ingrained racism between all these different Asian ethnic groups.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> “they get a lot of plastic surgery and your kids will be ugly” This practice has successfully crossed from Korea to China. :/
- mancerayder 6y agoThe racism addition into everyday online discourse is what 'flavors' an article or topic, kind of like MSG flavors Doritos or stir-fry. Is it racism, is it not, it leads to a heated fight-or-flight type of feeling, or an indignation, or a strong nod and interest. Similar to the way salaciousness gets our attention in an ad or gossip story.
- jnordonez 6y agoI'll have my online discourse with an extra dash of racism accusations please, hold the logic.
- thereare5lights 6y agoexplain why it's called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome"
- victor106 6y agoThis. Invoking racism and gender discrimination when it’s not the reason, causes more racism and it gives more than ample opportunity to actual racists within us to exploit it for their own nefarious needs.
- jeromegv 6y agoThere’s a long history of racism against Chinese immigrants in America. Among the only jobs they were allowed to have was having restaurants. Of course this led to rumours of Chinese restaurant being dirty and their MSG causing sickness. It’s a very long history and it’s well documented. While you’re at it, read on the Chinese exclusion act. And now you’re saying that people who call this racism for what is is are the ones responsible for the racism. You’ve got to be kidding.
- dotancohen 6y agoSo does COVID-19 not exist because someone called it Chinese Flu? The phenomenon can exist despite the racist connotations.
- bobthepanda 6y agoMSG sensitivity has never been shown to be true in a replicable clinical environment in humans. The few studies that have shown this to cause symptoms use extremely large doses of MSG that aren't used in food (for one thing, the dosages involved would be unpalatable even for those without the symptoms; overseasoning is generally unpleasant)
- dotancohen 6y ago> MSG sensitivity has never been shown to be true in a replicable clinical environment in humans. Actually, it has been. The fine article even mentions that. > The few studies that have shown this to cause symptoms use extremely large doses of MSG that aren't used in food (for one thing, the dosages involved would be unpalatable even for those without the symptoms; So you do accept that some studies have demonstrated MSG sensitivity? So why the lie in the previous sentence? I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I just don't see how you claim the former statement given this statement. In any case, yes, you are correct here. As per the fine article, the dose at which symptoms become common is six times the normal dose. Do you find it utterly impossible that some people could be sensitive at one-sixth the dose that "most people" become sensitive at?
- thereare5lights 6y agolmao, the history of racism behind the demonization of msg is well documented https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-msg-got-a-bad-rap-flawed-science-and-xenophobia/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-msg-got-a-bad-rap-f... And funny enough there's another comment saying > If the only food they know to contain MSG is Chinese food then it’s a stretch to call that racism. and that's exactly where this hoax started after all, it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots when the vernacular for msg problems is "chinese restaurant syndrome"
- ryder9 6y agowelcome to hacker news, of course mostly white tech-librotarians don't think racism exists, just those pesky minorities making too much noise for nothing; anytime it's brought up an army descends to trivialize and dismiss it
- dotancohen 6y agoSo stop calling MSG sensitivity "chinese restaurant syndrome". Do you suppose that hysteria does not exist because it is a sexist term?
- bobthepanda 6y agoHysteria is no longer a valid mental diagnosis according to the APA, so yes.
- newen 6y agoAnd they removed it as a valid mental diagnosis because it has sexist connotations? I doubt it though considering current political climate, I wouldn’t be surprised. His point still stands, however.
- bobthepanda 6y agoIt was removed as a mental diagnosis because it only applied to women and basically functioned as a catch-all for "we don't understand why women are freaking out." It was overly broad as to be unhelpful. The diagnoses that have succeeded it do not only apply to women, and they also have more specific requirements.
- fraudsyndrome 6y agoAre they for different reasons? What is the reason Koreans think it's bad for health? As I haven't read about that. Given that in the west it was also dubbed "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" I would think some form of prejudice played a part.
- thereare5lights 6y ago> Chinese Restaurant Syndrome you'd think the name would give it away, but people are so quick to dismiss racism that this blaring red flag is just glossed over
- xyzelement 6y agoUmm "red flag"? If you are going to chastise people please make sure your language does not rely on racist cliches...
- thereare5lights 6y ago"your langauge" My language? That's the f@#$ing name society attached to it. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51139005 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51139005 So you calling it a racist cliche means that you're agreeing with me that the origins of this hoax IS racism.
- esrauch 6y agoWhat are you referring to? "Red flag" does not appear to have any racial etymology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_(idiom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_(idiom)
- mc32 6y agoAh but people didn’t make up that term. It was ‘popularized’ by the likes of the NYT. I’ve never heard a regular person refer to their perceived reaction to msg as Chinese restaurant syndrome. That comes from the press —the same ones now chastising people.
- dotancohen 6y ago
- mc32 6y agoMy parents used to have an msg shaker. I don’t even recall what they used it for. The first time I heard something about avoiding MSG foods was from upper middle class fresh transplants from HK. Others of less means never mentioned it. So it’s news to me that someone would apply a blanket accusation as to where the myth comes from.
- pzone 6y agoSeasoning with salt, pepper and MSG is typical in Asian cooking.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoParmesan cheese and Worcestershire sauce are used to add MSG to western dishes.
- baby 6y agoI’m half Chinese and my whole family think MSG is bad lol.
- eplanit 6y agoMy wife and her family immigrated to the US from China -- they all believe that MSG is bad, too.
- scruple 6y agoSame here. Wife is first generation Chinese-American. All of the immigrant generation thinks MSG is bad. The family still in Hong Kong and Guangdong have said it, too. My mother-in-law believes MSG prevents her from getting to sleep easily at night. She can "always tell" when some restaurant uses MSG because of it. Lots of stories like that to be heard among this part of our family...
- zodiac2 6y agoKoreans are generally racist against Chinese, especially Mainland Chinese.
- Thorentis 6y agoYep, from the article: "... a disturbing undercurrent of racism that seemed to blame the unsavoriness of Chinese food" You can't be racist towards food. Chinese people aren't the only people capable of cooking food originally consumed and prepared in China. If you don't like Chinese food and find it unsavoury, no normal person would think you're a racist. This whole "red under the bed" approach to racism is getting out of hand.
- wwweston 6y agoDoes anyone who swears that MSG is bad for health do so because they personally hold anti-chinese racist views? Probably not. Is it possible that: * the MSG mythology in some Western nation was proposed by those with some degree of bias against foreign things or chinese cuisine or people specifically * it caught on and was repeated by people who were enthusiastic about it because of some degree of that bias * MSG was attended to in some food but not in others because of some degree of that bias * as this reached critical mass in western culture the idea became common wisdom even among those with no particular bias and exported anywhere that western culture has reach People sometimes refer to this kind of construction as "systemic" racism. The majority of people subscribing to the myth might be entirely innocent of any kind of identifiable racial stereotyping or discrimination and yet inputs from people who are might be enough to tip the system that way. Maybe there's other equally credible explanations, but this one is hardly incredible.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sellyme 6y ago> Maybe there's other equally credible explanations While I have very little doubt that xenophobia was a large factor in the hysteria over MSG in the United States, there's definitely no need for a "Maybe" here. Just look at the "pink goop" claims about McNuggets that range from two decades out of date to completely falsified - people are willing to believe all kinds of nonsense that fits their preconceived notions.
- KMag 6y agoSee also the number of people who believe they have a gluten sensitivity or peanut allergy, or who are worried about the pH of their food, etc., etc. A large segment of the US population has been conditioned to be paranoid about food. A rise in self-diagnosis combined with the placebo effect when testing a self-diagnosis certainly hasn't helped matters.
- eli 6y agoYou don’t have to knowingly possess a racist motive to be racist.
- aaron695 6y agoI think your mistake is to think being racist is bad. We are all racist. It's part of being human, we form groups, it's how we invent vaccines and go to the moon. I see MSG as Japanese, since the purified process was invented there. I have no idea if Koreans in general consider it a Japanese invention? Equally it could be the power of Hollywood. It changes culture. But it's not "being misinformed". It's well know MSG is ok. MSG can also replace fat and sugar for taste, I'd consider this a worse public health issue than the anti-vaccine movement (outside of pandemics) for instance.
- wpietri 6y agoHumans are also naturally violent, but me saying "Hey, I'm going to stab you because I'm just human" is probably not something you'd shrug off. In particular, what you're indulging here is the naturalistic fallacy, or the is/ought fallacy. What's natural tells us nothing about what's good. Tooth decay is natural and your toothbrush is artificial. But I'd bet you're not going to stop brushing your teeth just to stay philosophically consistent.
- mechnesium 6y agoYeah, but you can’t put an end to violence, and violence serves an incredible biological purpose. Racism will never cease to exist, nor should society try to force it away, since that will only make things worse. Perhaps racism even serves some meritable biological purpose. Come to think of it, racism is like a social heuristic. Antivirus software uses heuristic analysis to quickly group certain classes of malware based on code similarity. In the same vein, humans do it to categorize people, based on slightly fuzzier logic.
- wpietri 6y agoSo what if you can't put an end to violence or racism? In both cases, we can work to minimize them. We can and should.
- loufe 6y agoI mean I kind of get your point but just replace "racism" with "prejudice" and it doesn't hold water any longer.
- stouset 6y agoYeah, especially when you consider that people will complain about MSG in Chinese food all day while, as mentioned, eating Doritos by the bagful. Prejudice is probably a more accurate term than racism.
- wpietri 6y agoI used to think the same way. But now that I see how pervasive a force racism has been in America's history, I have a different view. Now I think it's worth asking both questions: Is racism really at play? And given America's lasting, endemic racism, is there reason to think something makes it absent in a given case? A couple of the books that turned me around here: Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning", a history of racist ideas. And Loewen's "Sundown Towns", a look at the wave of ethnic cleansing during the Nadir that happened across America. I had known about the Tulsa Massacre, but what I didn't know was how common smaller-scale events were for decades.
- BoiledCabbage 6y agoI think you've hit on the true issue. The majority of people have only leared on a superficial level of of the intertwined racism of America's past - often times mostly the light touches they learned in elementary school. And what's taught in elementary school is intentionally simplified to something deemed appropriate for children. Some summary of slavery is bad, MLK, Rosa Parks, sit-ins... Most people don't actually learn anything about American's history and ties with racism at an adult level. So instead people think they know the history of it, and as a result think (based on what they've learned) it's overblown. Anyone I know who has actually taken time as an adult to read about American history and its relationship with racism, comes away with a very different view point. It's so intertwined it's incredible.
- dsohn0 6y agoBlack people want their victimhood to last 1000 years. Let's not pretend American racism is somehow exceptional. Africans have been committing ethnic cleansing as a continental pastime for centuries and no one cries a river about that.
- aksss 6y agoI often think the people who talk loudly and overly-much about the US’s endemic racism have never travelled abroad much to witness what the rest of the world is really like (looking at you, Japan). It’s a product of an education curriculum that is hyper-focused on the misdeeds of the US. While the misdeeds need attention the view completely lacks an honest accounting of how amazing the state of this 325m culturally heterogenous society is compared to.. throw a dart at the world map.
- franklampard 6y agoDifferent groups of people can hold the same point of view due to different reasons. Koreans hold it for non-racist reasons do not prove the rest hold it for the same reasons
- markdown 6y agoI wonder what proportion of Koreans who believe that MSG is bad also believe that fan death is real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
- darkerside 6y agoBro don't pretend Koreans never act racist towards Chinese!
- starfallg 6y ago1. MSG (and its link to the taste of unami) was discovered by a Japanese chemist. 2. East Asian can also be racist against other East Asians. Not saying that discrimination against MSG is racist, but your argument falls way short.
- criley2 6y agoIronically, many asians know that over-consumption of MSG leads to the symptoms that are now "racist" to discuss. Here's popular chef (and half-Japanese) J Kenji Lopez-Alt discussing how he experiences "MSG Symptom Complex" rarely, and that his Japanese grandmother was intimately familiar with the idea that msg overconsumption could those symptoms https://twitter.com/kenjilopezalt/status/1291880511577546753 https://twitter.com/kenjilopezalt/status/1291880511577546753 https://twitter.com/kenjilopezalt/status/1291882403506475008 https://twitter.com/kenjilopezalt/status/1291882403506475008 The racism angle totally takes over people's minds and this has quickly become a "taboo" subject where any questioning of the new order makes you a villainous racist, even though the science very clearly does not rule out msg causing these symptoms and concludes "more research is needed". Is what it is, I'm pretty left-leaning in most ways, marched with BLM, and aggressively vote for racial equality: but I guess I'm a racist for not believing that this is settled science. And, as you mention, many east asians must also apparently be racist against themselves.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoDo you ever use the phrase "long time no see"? It is treated as innocuous today but it is rooted in a mocking jest at broken English spoken by Chinese immigrants. The funny part is that I know Asian Americans who say it without knowing where it came from. You can be misinformed about something that is fundamentally racist. The twisted MSG belief system is just a less overtly racist version of "Chinese restaurants serve cat and dog". i.e. This ethnic food is not trustworthy and worthy of derision, as are the people by extension.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> The funny part is that I know Asian Americans who say it without knowing where it came from. I know many Asian Chinese; they tend to really like saying "long time no see" because they find the saying so intuitive.
- bobthepanda 6y agoI mean, long time no see is a word for word translation for a Chinese greeting (in Cantonese, hou noi mou gin)
- thaumasiotes 6y agoIn Mandarin, 好久不见 háo jiǔ bú jiàn. It's not really word-for-word; the Mandarin version breaks down as very-longtime-no-see.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> Are we also being racist? (Against whom?) I mean, it wouldn't be at all surprising for Koreans to be racist against Chinese, unless you take a specific American perspective in which Koreans and Chinese are the same thing.
- jonathanyc 6y agoAs a half-Korean, I can personally attest that Koreans are unfortunately (and kind of surreally) quite racist. Koreans also tend to hold quite naive views about racism encountered by Asian Americans. I'm not taking a position on whether "MSG is bad" is purely due to racism, but I can't really buy "I'm Korean and I don't like MSG" as evidence against that claim.
- vkou 6y agoI wish more people understood that racism isn't just the cartoon boogieman of a redneck living in a trailer park who hates and fears _ethnic group_.
- phkahler 6y agoYeah. There are some foods that give me terrible migraine headaches, but not always. It seems to require eating a lot. I'm not certain but I think the culprit is MSG. Now people want to say I'm racist for thinking that? WTF?
- yomly 6y agoExactly - it's definitely not racism. I do experience "chinese restaurant syndrome" (maybe the name is prejudiced???) when I get dim sum in the UK, US, Canada, sometimes Singapore but rarely in Hong Kong. Stuff like 豉汁蒸排骨 and 糯米鸡can be the worst. Generally, I dislike cantonese restaurant food outside of China/HK and that's really not racist given I have cantonese origins. I experience "Chinese restaurant syndrome" less when I consume "mainland" chinese food - like Sichuan, Hunan, Xinjiang, Shanxi food. Who knows whether it's MSG - I definitely don't experience that lethargy eating Japanese food. But I'm also unconvinced that MSG and konbu/katsuo dashi are the same thing. The viewpoint "chemical x is chemical x in all its delivery mechanisms" is remarkably naive. The chemistry of digestion is really quite complex and the purified salt of something rather than in-aqua extraction to direct consumption REALLY is not the same thing. You ignore all kinds of subtle interactions that could be going on and is wholly unnuanced. Anyone who has spent any time in a chem/biochem lab knows all too well the strange and weird world of solvation and impurity and its effects on reactions, not to mention enzyme chemistry is insanely sensitive. It's not the same but just compare smooth vs pulpy orange juice vs eating a raw orange. The nutrition profiles of that already are different even if you are par for #oranges consumed.