Guest Post: Pumpkin spice is white culture

My friend Ashley shared this on Facebook. It struck me hard, so I asked her to submit as a guest post. She agreed. ~ Sue

I don’t make fun of pumpkin spice stuff (which I have, like, once a year) because it’s “feminine”. I make fun of it because it’s white culture. I also make fun of pumpkin stuff (which I eat on occasion) because it is also white culture.

If we want to get more specific, we can have a conversation about the commodification of a “spice blend” into a product that your ancestors probably made MY ancestors use to turn a crop indigenous to a country your ancestors stole into a seasonal treat, or we can talk about how certain crops native to North and South America get associated with Americanized “whiteness” and capitalism, or even how every year we have one particular type of crop shoved down our throats when, culturally speaking, many of us don’t even eat it because our ancestors favored a different crop closer to the ones we grew in our homeland before we were stolen (that our classmates told us was the “wrong pie” at Thanksgiving).

Or you could just sip your drink.