In Praise Of Diversity

Some years ago, on a visit to my hometown after years abroad, I accompanied an elderly family friend on an errand. We stopped at a place I hadn't seen in years, a shabby little cluster of shops that sold things like vacuum cleaner bags, typewriter ribbons, and pet supply goods. As soon as we got there, I saw it had changed completely. The stationery store had become a Thai and Vietnamese delicatessen; the appliance store was now a Korean greengrocer where you could buy tofu and kimchee. I stood in the parking lot and almost swooned at the smells of lemon grass, coconut milk, and ginger. I could have cried from frustration too: the people I was staying with had conservative food tastes. I wanted to buy pad thai and egg rolls, to gorge on spicy, smelly, delicious kimchee, but we were going home to a lunch of bologna sandwiches on white bread. What a waste of an opportunity!

When my companion returned from her errand, I gestured at the new, exotic stores. "I can't get over this!" I said. "It's totally different!"

She frowned and shook her head in agreement. "You can say that again. Awful, isn't it?"

I stared at her in amazement: this was a woman whose grandparents had eaten lutefisk, Limburger cheese, and sauerkraut. She was proud of her German, Norwegian, and Scots heritage, and yet she objected to a couple of Asian food stores?

"It's got so you can't even tell this is America anymore," she sighed, looking around us and shaking her head.

As if America had always been a place where only bland foodstuffs were acceptable.

"Not too long ago, this area would have been mainly Hispanic," I said as gently as I could.

"Oh, I know honey," she said. "But they're all American now."

By which she probably meant that they had learned to fit in, presumably by exchanging their diet for bologna sandwiches, Wonder bread, and Campbell's soup.

"Have you ever tried Vietnamese food?" I asked. "Or Thai, or Korean?"

She shook her head. "They don't even speak English!"

"Then why not just point to something that looks interesting? You don't know what you're missing!"

She shivered. "Some of those things they eat, though. I've heard they eat chicken feet!"

"What if they do? What's the difference between eating chicken and chicken feet? It's still chicken."

She gave me a long, worried look.

I had known this woman a long time and she meant a lot to me, but I could not get her to change her narrow-minded views. Most of her ancestors, like most of mine, had arrived in America as foreigners, and with or without English, they had certainly had their own distinctive customs and their own smelly, foreign foods. Many decades later, all of those interesting distinctions had vanished. Their descendants thought of themselves as Americans and feasted on things like hamburgers, deep fried potatoes, and packaged macaroni and cheese.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, I gave a fervent prayer that the people who ran those Asian food stores would be there the next time I passed through, and still immune to the delights of Jello and tuna casserole.