Reading list: race and GIs

Reading list:

Mathilde Cohen, The Whiteness of French Food: Law, Race, and Eating Culture in France (forthcoming in French Politics, Culture, and Society, 2021)

English Abstract:

Food is fundamental to French identity. So too is the denial of structural racism and racial identity. Both tenets are central to the nation’s self-definition, making them difficult, yet all the more important to think about together. This article purports to identify a form of French food Whiteness (blanchité alimentaire), that is, the use of food and eating practices to reify and reinforce Whiteness as the dominant racial identity. To do so, it develops four case studies of how law elevates a fiction of homogeneous French/White food as superior and normative at the expense of alternative ways of eating and their eaters—the law of geographical indications, school lunches, citizenship, and cultural heritage.

Really interesting perspective on GIs; if you believe that they were born in sin (racism/colonialism), do you think that they can be redeemed?