Immigrant eats: no cats or dogs involved.
The US Presidential Election is fast approaching, and immigration is front and center. Over the next six weeks, we’ll take a look at the history behind some of the key immigration debates that are shaping the race. First up: immigrant eats.
No, Haitian migrants aren’t eating your pets. But Donald Trump is not the first person to use food to stigmatize immigrants as “backwards” or even amoral. In fact, the trope has a long history in America.
An urban myth that Chinese restaurants served dog, cat, and rat meat dates all the way back to the first Chinese immigrants who arrived in San Francisco during the Gold Rush in the 1840s. A pejorative label for Italians was once “garlic eaters.” One of the worst slurs against Mexicans reflects stereotypes about their bean-heavy diet.
This illustration, Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner by G.F. Keller, was published in the San Francisco Wasp in 1877. It reflects prevalent, hostile attitudes towards non-white and immigrant groups in the US in the late 19th century. Amid racist and demeaning caricatures of various ethnic groups, a Chinese man holds a rat with cutlery (while his table mates look on, aghast). The trope of Chinese immigrants eating dogs, cats, and rats was just one product of the era’s rampant anti-Chinese sentiment, eventually resulting in the passing of the Chinese Exclusion Acts.
Source: Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner, by G. F. Keller, San Francisco Wasp. Library of Congress, Collection: The Chinese in California 1877
Growing up, my Greek American family loved the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding—a romantic comedy about a woman, Toula, who’s caught between her close-knit but overbearing family and her non-Greek fiancé. When I was interviewing many first and second generation chefs for CalMigration’s Melting Spots project, I kept thinking of a scene from that movie.
In a flashback to Toula’s childhood, we see her in a school cafeteria among peers eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Toula opens a tupperware of moussaka, a traditional Greek dish made with eggplant, tomato sauce, and bechamel. Her tablemates scrunch their noses and sneeringly call it “moose kaka.” Plenty of the chefs I talked to had similar stories— about trying to break out from being seen as “ethnic” cooks, or trying to blend in as kids by eating “American.”
“Spicy and stinky, sour and umami: the real story of immigrant food in America is one about adaptation, resilience, and creativity.”
But I don’t think that’s the whole story. Today, I feel incredibly lucky to live in a city that lets me eat my way across the world. A city in which many iconic dishes—from chop suey to garlic noodles to mission burritos—actually reflect the coming together of diverse cultures.
I think Melting Spots really illustrates that San Francisco's food culture could never exist without the diverse waves of immigrants to the city over the last 175 years. The spicy and stinky, the sour and umami: the real story about immigrant food in America is one about adaptation, resilience, and creativity. No cats—or dogs—involved.
Thanks for reading,
Gabby Santas & the CalMigration Team
Anti-Haitian Racism in the US
Haitians immigrants have been demonized by US politicians for almost as long as the United States has existed. Slave-owning founding fathers were terrified that Haiti’s revolutionaries, who successfully fought off French rule to found a black-led Republic in 1804, might infiltrate the South and stir up revolt. Ever since, Haitians have been subject to particularly vicious characterization as lawless and diseased. Check out this piece from Vox for more on the long history of Anti-Haitian racism in the US.
