The world of dining in Evanston gives us so much. We get the ambience of quaint coffee shops. We Northwestern folk get cookie bar nights and stir fry. We get cheap fast food.
And each time our forks dip into a plate, we get a little life lesson.
Some of our greatest lessons can happen around the dinner table. Each time I walk into an ethnic restaurant, I enter a world not quite like my own. Struggling to pronounce the proper name of a food at an Indian restaurant unveils my ignorance of the culture. And the waiter’s smug clarification makes me smarter.
Food is not the diversion that students often see it as, nor is it an excuse to become drunken and belligerent off drinks that I won’t even venture to pronounce. Food, instead, is nourishment for our bodies and our minds.
Few better examples exist for such cerebral dining than the cafeteria at NU’s Allison Hall. I will never forget my freshman year, when a friend asked me where I was from. I stopped chewing my lettuce, a favorite food of mine, and told her I was from New York.
“No, but where are you from from … Like, you know, Africa?”
“Well, actually, my parents are Jamaican.”
“Jamaican?” she replied. “Well then, where are your dreadlocks?”
As others at the table guffawed at my poor friend’s ignorance, I again filled my mouth with lettuce to give myself more time to think about a response. After I swallowed, I calmly started talking about the dangers of pure, ethnic stereotype. The food was my savior. It gave me time to collect myself and a casual setting to discuss the ever-present problem of prejudice.
It was one of those moments where you wish books such as Beverly Daniel Tatum’s “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” didn’t have to be written. If diverse people would eat with those who aren’t like them, our society would have an easier time understanding “the other.”
As The Daily’s former cultural affairs and diversity reporter, I can testify that no interracial dialogue was ever as productive as the occasions when the Multicultural Center would hold ethnic food nights. People satisfied with their shrimp lo mein certainly were more rational than people screaming at each other during meetings every time an act of intolerance occurs on campus.
The food allowed thought.
Reach Daily editor in chief Robert Samuels at [email protected].
