Lori Falce: America is a buffet. Don't dish up racism

Sep. 13—There is no cat in your fried rice.

Despite decades of distrust and jokes, the chicken in your chicken lo mein is just chicken. When Bill Murray's character in "Scrooged" warned his girlfriend about stray animals going into the chop suey, it was just another example of the fictional Frank Cross being a not-so-great guy.

Believe me, I've been there and heard that. The Chinese restaurant in my hometown shared a building with a veterinarian. The jokes were as thick as sweet and sour sauce.

But there's nothing innocent about this kind of humor. It's a punch aiming to reinforce that these people are different. It keeps these people in their place. That place is meant to be obvious: beneath real Americans.

It's nothing new.

It's why the villainous Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" castigated Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey for wasting the building and loan's money on "a lot of garlic eaters." The "garlic eaters" in question? They were Italians — the largest immigrant demographic in Pennsylvania from 1920 to 1990.

Americans have sneered at the people and the cuisine of every immigrant group. Sometimes it's just until we acquire a taste for it. Those Italians were on to something with all that garlic. Mmmm. Garlic.

But sometimes, even when we embrace the moo goo gai pan, the pad thai, the saag paneer or the kimchi, it's just not enough. There still are people who have to disparage the culture through the food — or the food by disdaining the culture.

That's what is happening right now with the viral social media stories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating local pets. Despite the police and the city saying this is not occurring, proponents are clinging to the stories. Even in the presidential debate, Donald Trump insisted he saw the stories shared, so they must be true.

Stories of immigrants eating cats and dogs have been shared for years. That doesn't mean there was ever a goldendoodle in your wontons.

And while, yes, a woman in Ohio was recently arrested for animal cruelty for eating a cat, it's important to note she was born in the Buckeye state and lives in Canton, almost 200 miles from Springfield.

We have to be better than this. There is no excuse for Americans diving headfirst into culinary segregation when we pride ourselves on being a melting pot.

In reality, America isn't one pot at all. We are a buffet of cultures, flavors, ethnicities, opportunities, ideologies, outlooks, religions and perspectives. We can take a little from everything, put it on one plate and share the things that nourish us most.

But let's not dish up heaping helpings of racism and xenophobia. They just leave a bitter taste in your mouth.

Lori Falce is the Tribune-Review community engagement editor and an opinion columnist. For more than 30 years, she has covered Pennsylvania politics, Penn State, crime and communities. She joined the Trib in 2018. She can be reached at [email protected].