Even Apple Pie is now accused of being a racist. This is according to a UK Newspaper that is trying to cancel apple pie by linking it to slavery and the “ongoing genocide of indigenous people.”
A UK newspaper is being accused of trying to cancel apple pie by linking it to slavery and the “ongoing genocide of indigenous people.”
The Guardian has come under fire after claiming that apple pie is racist because it is an example of the “vast and ongoing genocide of indigenous people.” Food writer Raj Patel made radical comments for the famously liberal publication regarding the popular American dessert. According to Patel’s article, apple pie was a creation that stemmed from slavery and colonialism after he highlighted how apples were not original to the Americas but were first in central Asia and brought to America 400-500 years ago.
Patel’s article was entitled “Food injustice has deep roots: let’s start with America’s apple pie.” The controversial piece claimed that apple pie – the American staple on the dessert table – has “bloody origins” and is about as “American as stolen land, wealth and labor.”
“In the drama of nationalist culture, the bloody and international origins of the apple pie are subject to a collective amnesia,” Patel wrote.
“The apple pie is as American as stolen land, wealth, and labor. We live its consequences today,” concluded the author, a research professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.
“John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, took these markers of colonized property to the frontiers of US expansion where his trees stood as symbols that Indigenous communities had been extirpated,” he wrote.
He linked sugar to the slave trade, and gingham to “war capitalism” that “enslaved and committed acts of genocide against millions of Indigenous people in North America, and millions of Africans and their descendants through the transatlantic slave trade.”
While the article was published last month, it started going viral this week — outraging conservative commentators.
“I remember when we used to use the phrase ‘the flag, motherhood, and apple pie’ to signify things about which Americans were unified. It is now ‘an offensive symbol of white supremacy and ‘birthing people,’” Ben Shapiro tweeted Tuesday, adding, “So I guess we’re still good with apple pie.”
Patel has a long history of “very strong anarchist sympathies.” He was known for participating in the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999 and is the author of the book “Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.” He is a British Indian author who now has American citizenship.
He wrote in The Guardian, “Apples traveled to the western hemisphere with colonists in the 1500s in what used to be called the Columbian Exchange, but is now better understood as a vast and ongoing genocide of Indigenous people.”
While he did not directly link it to the Guardian article, many others did as they expressed outrage at Patel’s claims.
“According to The Guardian newspaper(London), apple pie is racist too. These people are nuts,” @Zayphar wrote.
Another commentator named John Black wrote, “The ‘woke’ #CancelCulture mob seeks to destroy everything that is American and/or good.”
“It’s so absurd it sounds like a parody of #CancelCulture. No such luck…,” he tweeted.
Others joked about imaginary complaints people could have with the sweet treat.
“And what about people with gluten sensitivity? Apple pie is glutenist AF!” one person joked.
Sources: AWM, New York Post, The Daily Best