Overview

Tom Nichols "Indian Food Is Terrible" Controversy refers to academic Tom Nichols saying that all Indian food is terrible on Twitter, leading to a debate about racism as it relates to white people and food from other countries.

Background

On November 19th, 2019, Jon Becker tweeted a prompt asking for controversial food opinions.^[1] On November 23rd, 2019, academic Tom Nichols^[2] tweeted saying "Indian food is terrible and we pretend it isn’t" (shown below).

Developments

After the tweet, @shalijapatel^[3] tweeted, "Today in white male solipsism. From the school of "women comedians are terrible" and "non-white literatures are terrible" and "hip-hop is terrible" and "anything that doesn't cater to me and reinforce my conviction that I am the center of the universe is terrible." We who?," gaining over 1,100 retweets and 5,700 points (shown below, left). Meanwhile, @redsteeze provided counter backlash, saying the response was overblown (shown below, right).

After further backlash, Nichols posted an article about his stance on USA Today.^[3] He also tweeted further defense of his opinion, tweeting "I think people whose eyes are watering, gulping water, sweating, and telling me they enjoy it are doing it because they are somehow trying to embrace an authentic experience, not because they like it" and I think people often pretend to like non-American cuisines as a way of showing sophistication. I'm honest enough to say that my mostly Irish taste buds can't handle whatever it is that is called 'Indian' in the US and UK" (shown below). The controversy was covered by BBC.^[4]

Search Interest

External References