A Portland-area teacher has an angry internet in fits after supposedly comparing peanut butter and jelly to ‘white privilege’. It’s time for America to wake up to the fact PB&Js aren’t all that good in the first place.
Angry internet people are up in arms after a Portland-area teacher linked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to “white privilege”. Or at least that’s what angry internet people are saying. Here’s Verenice Gutierrez’s actual quote from the generally right-leaning Portland Tribune. And yes, there is such a thing as ‘right-leaning’ in Portland. I swear.
“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” says Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School, a diverse school of 500 students in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood.
“Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”
I consider myself a moderate, and I get more annoyed than most at the crazy liberal weirdness my home city is known to spew from time to time, but what exactly about this comment is controversial? It’s a statement that could be summed up by getting kids to ask each other, “Hey, what kind of sandwiches do you eat in your culture?” ZOUNDS!!! It’s a slippery slope, people. First you start eating tortas, and the next thing you know you’ve got cocaine all over your Che Guevara t-shirt and you’re taking up arms against Banana Republic (and banana republics).
Look, I know peanut butter and jelly is an American tradition. But if you’re unwilling to experiment with pitas or tortas because you don’t want to buck convention, well, the joke’s on you. Even the crappiest torta is at least 100x better than PB&J. At least. Pitas, especially with some sort of perfectly spiced chicken and hummus, are, like, 70x better. Banh mi, choripan, the Scooch…nearly everything on Wikipedia’s awesome List of Sandwiches page is preferable to slathered peanut butter and jelly on white bread. We live in a bold new world where recipes and new sandwich ideas from across the globe are a click away. It’s time to find a new traditional American sandwich, and I say we take the best components of the world’s finest sandwiches (chimichurri, Vietnamese rolls, etc.) and create a Super American Sandwich, embracing all the tastiest aspects of American multiculturalism. (No, not the Dagwood. Only cartoon characters can eat that, silly.) That’s the great thing about America: we can take all sorts of stuff from other cultures and pretend we thought of it first.
The only sandwich culture we shouldn’t be paying attention to is the United Kingdom. All you need to innovate a British sandwiches is bread and one or two other items, like baked beans or crisps and pickles or just cucumbers. You don’t even need a decently sandwich delivery system! The Brits actually have a name for sandwiches with old, dried bread. No wonder English music and literary culture is so killer, because denizens of the British Isles certainly aren’t pouring their creativity into sandwich technology.
In conclusion, sandwiches are awesome.
I am a big fan of sandwiches, but have not had a PB&J in years. I just made one with real peanut butter and apricot-pineapple jelly on homemade white bread. It’s definitely delicious.
Sorry, but in the melting pot that is America, you don’t get to to create a classic American sandwich with a bureaucratic, top-down edict.
I’m fine with “diversity.” I’m not okay with “white privilege,” or even “whitemale (remember that word?) privilege.” They’re political losers. If anyone’s ready to start a farmer-labor party, let me know. It’d need to include us knowledge workers, as well. The dems have shot themselves in the foot with this culturalist stuff. Yes, we’d need to accept many of those “uncomfortable” teaparty people, too.
Well being in Britland – and having just got back from the bakers with a lovely pair of Crusty Bloomers, some fresh Pitta and an assortment of Foccacia – I will just have to buck the supposed Brit trend and have me Brie with Camembert Butties in silence. … or should I have The Wild Tomato, Rocket, Basil and Smoked Buffalo Mozzarella … balsamic dressing yes or no? Hell – I’ll just have to grill some peppers and be done with it – why be creative! P^) As for Buttie privilege, I get the impression that some are attempting to… Read more »
I grew up with pitas, tortillas, and I now love falafel, tacos, paninis, and veggie burgers.
But if it weren’t for PB and J(homemade raspberry jam, not jelly thank you very much) on good Jewish rye I would have starved as a kid.
So yeah, that principal can sit on it.
You know, sometimes a sandwich is just a sandwich. There’s encouraging respect for diversity and appreciation for how our differences enrich our lives and make us stronger as communities – and then there’s training people to see the world, quite literally, in black and white and in conflict. Can’t say I agree with this principal. Cultue is not a divider unless the “culture” is based on intolerance. Simply being different is just a fact of life.
This is a great and fascinating piece. Food is SUCH a huge part of culture. When we were young, an influx of refugees from Cambodia and other Southeast Asian nations. Our small Dutch town had basically only ever had WASPS, Dutch Reformed Christians, and a small Mexican-American population. At first we were all (as children) freaked out by the different smell the kids had on their clothes… Cooking smells, of food very different from what we were used to (oatmeal, sausage, bacon, etc). We didn’t even know how to place the scents, and of course many kids teased them. They… Read more »
Great points! Yeah, the principal was trying to get people to recognize the commonalities between us (inclusivity) rather than allowing word choice to mark us as different. How this ties into white privilege is if a child says they ate a sandwich for lunch, much of the country would automatically understand what they meant. No further discussion or description would be needed except to ask what type of sandwich and if it was yummy. However, if a child said, “I had a torta for lunch,” there is a good chance the child would have to explain what that means, which… Read more »
Sandwich =/= White privilege. (especially PB&J, Aztecs/GWC anyone) Its cultural privilege because we are the culture they moved into. We cannot expect to lean every new immigrants food types. The onus is on them to educate us, not whine about how we don’t understand their lunch. Why do we have pizza, pasta, brats, burgers, suchi, and any of the numerous restaurants that serve exotic food, (now possibly not so exotic food) because these people came here opened a restaurant/food processing plant and told/showed us how good it was. Check out Chamblee Ga. if your ever in Atlanta. You will find… Read more »
Jordan, You left out the part where the principal operates seminars to discuss “white privilege”. I think that takes it beyond kids asking each other what kids from other cultures like to eat. This adds a more radical element to the conversation. I don’t understand why there would need to be a widespread conversation about it. Just introduce pita or torta or whatever other food of which the appropriate committee approves. Now, if a conservative type became angry that their child’s school began offering diverse foods, that’s one thing. That would be an extreme response. But instead, we have the… Read more »