There’s no oppressor quite like a white immigrant woman selling sushi.
Not less than that’s how Eric Rivera, a North Carolina based chef and perpetual victim, views the world.
After seeing that a blonde Australian woman, Alex Marks, recently opened Sushi Counter — a West Village take-out spot serving “Aussie-style sushi” — he launched a web-based bullying campaign from his recliner, a whopping 500 miles away.
Marks’ sin? Selling sushi while white. Her penance? Total online annihilation — and, if trolls had their way, shutting down her business.
On Friday, Rivera, whose parents hailed from Puerto Rico, nobly took to X, where he has 15,000 followers, to share and mock a TikTok video of Marks explaining her journey from corporate lawyer to sushi purveyor.
He then deployed the woke nuclear bomb, calling her a “colonizer.”
His salvo unleashed the biggest cultural appropriation food fight since 2017 — when two white women, who learned the art of tortilla making in Mexico, shuttered their Portland, Oregon, burrito stand after receiving death threats.
“Nevertheless it’s ‘stralian sushi. Give me a break colonizer,” Rivera snarkily posted, adding: “In case you don’t see why this can be a problem, you might be the issue.”
On cue, the aggrieved keyboard warriors of social justice flooded Google with nasty one-star reviews of Sushi Counter. The web harassment got so intense, that Marks wiped her TikTok clean.
Others piled on with ignorant drivel, using all those meaningless buzzwords plucked from the viral glossary of intersectionality.
Marks’ “audacity” struck fear within the hearts of Rivera’s online disciples, with one X user called Queer Latifah writing, “The contradiction & cognitive dissonance is exasperating. [Marks] feels she will’t ‘afford’ decent sushi in NYC, a spot that has one in all the biggest & vastly diverse Asian populations? So as an alternative, she funds her own sushi spot. Colonization is white & quite scary to see in real time.”
In line with the logic of Rivera and his rabid fans, one must take a 23andMe test before they’re allowed access to certain sections of the spice rack.
And what a tragic, ahistorical technique to view the world. The very bedrock of our American experience may be summed up as one big cultural appropriation — from fashion to food to music and art. Every part is borrowed. Ideas spread, they flow into and folks innovate. Appropriation is, ultimately, appreciation. The grease that keeps our collective engine humming.
To use Rivera & Co.’s retrograde, stick-to-your-own segregation is to punish innovation — and dilute the hearty, infinitely interesting stock that fills this melting pot we call America. It might also deny us grub like Tex-Mex, nearly every form of pizza, and Chinese restaurant favorites like General Tso’s chicken and beef and broccoli — cuisine that has strayed from its earliest formulas and ethnic originators.
From the fevered moral panic, one could assume that Marks, by brute force, threw a Japanese family out of their storefront, stole their materials, money, and method, and slapped her own flag on the place.
Nope, she merely introduced a staple from her homeland that she couldn’t find in NYC. As an Aussie friend of Marks’ told me, her sushi shouldn’t be meant to be to compete with what you get at an omakase. “It’s based off the on-the-go sushi counters in Australian shopping centers which might be pretty basic but so popular at home,” the friend said.
This particular style is served as uncut hand rolls and sometimes full of cooked tuna or chicken teriyaki. They’ve their very own singular spin on Asian cuisine Down Under, not that the naysayers, with their willful ignorance, took the time to learn.
Marks, in her video, chronicled the technique of whipping her quaint shop — a DIY collaboration with friends — into shape. Painting, moving furniture, sourcing materials. Turning a blank page into something tangible.
She put in labor, pluck and grit — things that ought to still be held sacred.
Rivera, meanwhile, is a flawed evangelist for this segregationist food movement. Earlier within the yr, he announced his own plans to open a Puerto Rican-Japanese fusion restaurant in Raleigh, NC. And in line with his Instagram page, he sells his own homemade pasta. Mamma mia! Have you ever no dignity? That’s just for Italians, buddy.
Fusion and appropriation for me, not for thee.
Rivera, who once owned a restaurant in Seattle, announced in March that he was offering a pop-up culinary experience starting at $750. Compared, “gentrifier” Marks, as she was called, sells three rolls for $12 — inexpensive and accessible.
But lunatics who tried to sink Marks don’t desire a system that rewards labor and good ideas. They need to flatten all the things — tear it down and rewrite the principles — in order that they are left holding the picket spoon and all the facility. They need to subjugate with their silly and empty insults like “colonizer.”
There may be hope, nevertheless. Shortly after Rivera’s campaign, word began spreading on social media and a funny thing happened. People began standing up for Marks and got her shop’s review average as much as 4.5 stars on Google.
Rivera made his account private. So did Queer Latifah.
And Sushi Counter? They’re still open, serving up low-cost and cheerful sushi rolls. Perhaps a touch of sanity is returning.
