This week, in the Daily49er, California State University’s college paper staff writer Samantha Diazwrote how milk has become the new symbol of hate.
“You, along with the rest of the nation, have been so accustomed to hearing the benefits of milk that you probably didn’t even realize the subtle racism hidden in our health facts,” Ms. Diaz pens.
She continues: “It may not surprise you that the United States was founded on racism. That every institution we uphold has racist roots that are sometimes difficult to catch and even harder to fight against. This phenomenon affects our voter ID laws, state testing and, yes, even our federal dietary guidelines. But how can our health guidelines, a system meant to be built upon scientific fact alone, have racist messages? Where there is a deep-rooted tradition to suppress an entire race’s existence, there’s a way.”
And yes, it all comes down to milk.
“The federal endorsement of milk in American diets contributes to the problem by uncritically pushing people to drink milk, despite the potential detriment it has on non-white people’s health,” Ms. Diaz wrote. “Our current federal dietary guidelines urge people to drink three cups of milk a day, according to the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The main health benefit of milk is to guard against osteoporosis, a disease that weakens your bones — hence the ‘stronger bones’ rhetoric. While this is a very practical health benefit, osteoporosis affects Africans at a significantly lower rate than it does most Americans.”
Thereby, milk may do a white person’s body good, but it doesn’t a black body, thereby it’s racist.
If you think Ms. Diaz analysis comes out of left field, you’d be wrong. Last month, online news publication Mic.com wrote an article titled: “Milk is the new, creamy symbol of white racial purity in Donald Trump’s America.”
Why you may ask?
Well, because an anti-Trump installation at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City featured a live-stream of neo-Nazis drinking milk by the gallon.
“Amid all the tattoos of Third Reich iconography bouncing around, one thing stood out: The neo-Nazis were all drinking milk,” Mic wrote. “They spat it out as they danced, letting it dribble down their chins.”
It continued: “Some white supremacists think white ethnic identity has a geographic, historical correlation with the body’s tolerance for milk — specifically, the production of the lactase enzyme that allows humans to break down lactose.
On 4chan, the internet’s hate speech hit factory, one anonymous poster laid this thesis out using the following graphic from a study in Nature, showing hotspots of where certain populations have higher milk tolerances,” the online magazine reported.
Oh wow.
But left-leaning news organizations are leaning in on this argument.
Last year, Mother Jones contemplated whether the U.S. dietary guidelines on milk were racist, concluding: “The medical community has yet to frame its questions in ways that investigate whether foods that have been culturally labeled as ‘good for you’ have deleterious consequences for minorities.”
And this month, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, “Get Out” director Jordan Peele explained the link between milk and hate, and how he depicted it in his movie on racial bigotry in the modern age.
In the scene, an actress sits in her bedroom, with her headphones on listening to the theme from “Dirty Dancing,” snacking on Fruit Loops and drinking milk through a straw.
As the Times explains: “Milk, it has been argued of late, is the new symbol of white supremacy in America, owing to its hue and the notion that lactose intolerance in certain ethnicities means that milk-absorbing Caucasian genetics are superior.”
“There’s something kind of horrific about milk,” Mr. Peele told the Times. “Think about it! Think about what we’re doing. Milk is kind of gross.”
So there you have it. Got Milk? Then you’re probably a Nazi. LOL.
Source: WashingtonTimes
Link: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/17/milk-new-symbol-racism-donald-trumps-america/
