Apparently, The New York Times columnist Alison Roman, who I have recently decided I cannot stand because she likes to steal food staples of people of color and whitewash them, has decided to attack two successful women of color, Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo, for their “content farm” and creating empires with their names on them. It’s funny that she would actually go after women of color who are successful instead of other white women who have decided to stick their name on everything to make millions, whether that is Gwyneth Paltrow or Rachel Ray or Giada de Laurentiis. Her spice colonialization also clearly knows no bounds, because she has repeatedly been interviewed saying that her bland coconut turmeric chickpea stew is “not a curry” and is not at all influenced by the food of South Asia, even though the New York Times, after having experienced backlash for #thestew, has edited the description to say that the stew “evokes” the food of South India. A few other foodies in my Facebook college food group have also noted that she’s taken things like kimchi, fish sauce, and harissa, and made it seem like no big deal, like she just discovered them on her own and was not influenced at all by Korea, Vietnam, or countries in North Africa/the Middle East that use harissa. She even had the gall to host a paid food tour of VIETNAM last year so that people could experience Vietnam with her, even though this was her first time in Vietnam and she knew absolutely nothing about Vietnamese culture. This tour was clearly made for white people who did not know any better at all.

It’s always amazing to me how there can be such clueless white people out there who can profit off of the foods and creativities of non-white nations and think they are doing absolutely nothing wrong. Her cookbooks, supposedly best sellers, are catering to people who are exactly like her, and sadly, what that means is that there are too many people who are just like her out there. This is how my cynicism of the world continues.