The Colonizing of OOB and Pop Culture Trends

My critical essay criticizes the cultural appropriation of ube, the Philippine purple yam, by examining its position in contemporary pop culture trends. The ube trend demonstrates the cultural appropriation of “ethnic” food in which the West extracts, consumes, and decimates the “exotic” culture by disassociating it from its cultural, historical, and culinary context of the Philippines. Exploring the Philippines’ colonial histories and their impact on food, and the rising trend of ube in the West shows how white supremacy chooses when the exotic is civilized and uncivilized according to whether it benefits them at the expense of racialized people.