15 ms·

I did read the article. "Colonial policies" have nothing to do with how the bean tastes. Nor does the taste of the bean have anything to do with "violence".

bigbillheck 5y ago
There's way more to a person's and a culture's view of food than just 'taste'! You appear to be a fellow American, and as such I would have expected you to understand how and food and food choices can be political and have racial and gendered connotations. I mean, just for starters it seems like every couple years we have someone famous making a regrettable statement about watermelon and fried chicken and you know the rest. (For non-US readers, take a guess and you'll probably be right). 'Real Men Don't Eat Quiche' is a thing of the past, but "Real Men Don't Diet" isn't any older than this website, and anybody reasonably plumbed into the culture will know to what 'man food' refers. On the class side, here in America we've certainly got food that's 'for poor people', think meatloaf and rice&beans and all the other ways that cheap calories get stretched. (And we have food 'for rich people', remember Obama and arugula?) These things can get reinforced over time, I know as a child I certainly inferred facts about 'what we eat' and 'what we do not eat' from my parents and grandparents and the society around me, and I don't think many people here can say otherwise. And then one of the things about the British, they were good at playing one side off against the other and heightening existing divisions, and another thing about the British is they didn't leave Kenya until 1963. My parents were alive then, and even if the parents of you the reader were not, it's likely your grandparents were. And yet another thing about the British, they were trying to turn Kenya into a farm for export, and you can guess to whom they wanted Kenya to export, and that meant 'no' to njahi and 'yes' to exportable varieties. The seriouseats article references an article of Robertson ("Black, White, and Red All over: Beans, Women, and Agricultural Imperialism in Twentieth-Century Kenya", https://www.jstor.org/stable/3744315?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3744315?seq=1), which is on sci-hub, and from which I could quote at length but I'll limit myself to: "However, the growing of beans in the Nairobi area has been most severely affected by two factors: the colonial presence forcing the growth and sale of cash crops (or wage labor) to pay taxes and, after independence, continued similar taxation policies along with the need to pay school fees." (p287) In conclusion, people and food and their interactions are complicated, and it's not 'woke' to point this out or talk about it, nor is it wrong to use 'violence' to describe the British legacy in Kenya (and if you're getting hung up on that particular word, substitute 'cruelty').
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  Dude, you have absolutely no idea who you're talking to. Let's just say I find your lecturing... amusing. I think we're done here.

bigbillheck 5y ago

There's way more to a person's and a culture's view of food than just 'taste'! You appear to be a fellow American, and as such I would have expected you to understand how and food and food choices can be political and have racial and gendered connotations. I mean, just for starters it seems like every couple years we have someone famous making a regrettable statement about watermelon and fried chicken and you know the rest. (For non-US readers, take a guess and you'll probably be right). 'Real Men Don't Eat Quiche' is a thing of the past, but "Real Men Don't Diet" isn't any older than this website, and anybody reasonably plumbed into the culture will know to what 'man food' refers. On the class side, here in America we've certainly got food that's 'for poor people', think meatloaf and rice&beans and all the other ways that cheap calories get stretched. (And we have food 'for rich people', remember Obama and arugula?) These things can get reinforced over time, I know as a child I certainly inferred facts about 'what we eat' and 'what we do not eat' from my parents and grandparents and the society around me, and I don't think many people here can say otherwise. And then one of the things about the British, they were good at playing one side off against the other and heightening existing divisions, and another thing about the British is they didn't leave Kenya until 1963. My parents were alive then, and even if the parents of you the reader were not, it's likely your grandparents were. And yet another thing about the British, they were trying to turn Kenya into a farm for export, and you can guess to whom they wanted Kenya to export, and that meant 'no' to njahi and 'yes' to exportable varieties. The seriouseats article references an article of Robertson ("Black, White, and Red All over: Beans, Women, and Agricultural Imperialism in Twentieth-Century Kenya", https://www.jstor.org/stable/3744315?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3744315?seq=1), which is on sci-hub, and from which I could quote at length but I'll limit myself to: "However, the growing of beans in the Nairobi area has been most severely affected by two factors: the colonial presence forcing the growth and sale of cash crops (or wage labor) to pay taxes and, after independence, continued similar taxation policies along with the need to pay school fees." (p287) In conclusion, people and food and their interactions are complicated, and it's not 'woke' to point this out or talk about it, nor is it wrong to use 'violence' to describe the British legacy in Kenya (and if you're getting hung up on that particular word, substitute 'cruelty').

Turing_Machine 5y ago
Dude, you have absolutely no idea who you're talking to. Let's just say I find your lecturing... amusing. I think we're done here.