You guys. I call us all to kill cultural appropriation. I completely understand how people want their cultures to be respected and I agree (coming from a brown background). But this is too far. It's like if they were serving curry and now all of a sudden wanted to stop. It feels like some kind of separation and divisive tool that should be stopped. We need to respect and educate each other on our cultures, but we should also be able to enjoy them. I lost a bit of respect for you Lena.
I don;t think food can be really cultural appropriation. The reason for that is because in a lot of countries, food from other countries have been introduced by immigrants who themselves already altered their recipes for Western Cultures. The food I call 'Chinese' here in The Netherlands is basically just a watered down and altered version of the traditional food they would serve me in the actual country.
I mean Native Americans didn't asked for Western cultures to use their sacred hat pieces as Halloween pieces or several other things that are related to religion, or other important things for their cultures. And I completely understand why that bothers people and why that is called cultural appropriation.
Food is a very hard case, since food changes and recipes melt and change from region to region, immigrants alter their recipes when they want to commercially sell the food. Not eating Sushi or calling it cultural appropriation won't change a thing. The thing is people want their actual culture to be respected, including traditions. I mean I could have understood this if Sushi was food that normally only gets eaten at special occasions related to Japanese Culture, but from what I heard from friends who went to Japan, there are loads of Sushi restaurants there and people just eat that as normal food and not as some exclusive that only gets eaten at a holiday or whatever.
This is just a big step too far for cultural appropriation. The focus should be on respecting the actual culture and traditions and not on random kind of foods, because statements like that only put the focus off the real problems.