For the past week, people have been responding to a viral tweet asking Twitter users to tweet their controversial food opinions. An American professor sparked outrage when he tweeted that Indian food was terrible.
Tom Nichols – who, according to BBC, teaches international affairs at the US Naval War College in Rhode Island – tweeted about his distaste for Indian food on Saturday, November 23.
“Indian food is terrible and we pretend it isn’t,” Nichols said in his tweet.
He added that he felt many people pretended to like non-American cuisine so that they would appear sophisticated.
Nichols’ tweets went viral and sparked outrage among many Twitter users. Celebrity chef Padma Lakshmi responded to his tweet asking if he had tastebuds.
Many pointed out that India is a large and diverse country with diverse cuisine. They felt it was an unfair generalization to call all Indian food bad.
His tweet also sparked a debate about racism. Some viewed his tweet as an outright racist statement.
In an op-ed for USA Today, Nichols criticized those outraged by his tweets calling their responses “performative.” He called the accusations that he was “playing into stereotypes about Indians and furthering a history of oppression” lunacy.
Others pointed out that while Nichols may not have had racist intentions, his tweet reminded them of racist comments people made about the food they ate. Indian American and former Congressional candidate Saira Rao said the tweet triggered her.
Nichols still feels that his tweet was blown out of proportion. He lamented that social media treats “everything that passes before our eyes” as worthy of extensive debate.
“Social media is structured to reward bad-faith takes and to treat everything that passes before our eyes as a deadly serious business worthy of extensive debate,” he wrote in his op-ed.
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