Neglected to mention that my service issues were all experienced at the Elmwood location, not any other sites.

RE: Bon Appetit, they don't need to look far to find diversity. The NYC public schools have more than 1 million students speaking 176 different languages. I gotta say, this statement:

quote:
People calling for Bon Appetit to hire people from random African countries to be on their videos and I'm just wondering how many Ethiopians are lined up to be a video personality at BA.

is pretty tone deaf. Ethiopian food is excellent, widely known and distinctive as a cuisine. there are probably dozens and dozens of trained culinarians of Ethiopian descent in the greater NYC area who would jump at the chance for screen time at BA. But someone at BA decided that brown faces making brown food weren't interesting. It's not because they can't find diverse people interested in being on screen. That's just laughable.

Frankly, I'm waiting for a decent, multi-ethnic food publication (e or print or hybrid) to come out of this. I'd subscribe in a heartbeat, as would many others. So tired of the dumbed down content pitched at people who don't really want to cook or have their POV challenged--they want to be entertained and don't really want to learn anything.

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Posted by LouisianaLady

Member since Mar 2009

81309 posts

Posted on 6/12/20 at 2:17 pm to hungryone

FWIW, I'm pretty solidly on the "screw BA" side (as posted many times in the thread dedicated to it).

Ultimately, we don't really know. Are Ethiopian culinarians in NYC applying with BA? We don't know. BA hasn't really said.

Another important thing to note is that a lot of BA's staff is comprised of folks in journalism and communications, who have interest in food. Writing for a magazine and appearing on screen is a lot more than being a great cook.

Maybe there are tons of Ethiopian folks with a solid writing/communications background who also have the massive personality to be a video host? Maybe there also aren't

Or maybe they're not interested in applying for BA.

I just don't know if I can 100% get behind the idea that these companies are intentionally shying away from people of color, when we aren't really looking into the full picture. (This is generally speaking on hiring specific people - BA has done a lot of other terrible things)

Someone on another thread mentioned that Sohla and Priya's videos are the least watched out of anyone else on the channel. Ultimately, BA is a business. While I do agree they should use their power/influence to make unfamiliar food more recognized, I also can understand why from a business standpoint it wasn't important to them. Businesses usually want to do whatever is the most financially successful. See: Food Network playing Chopped all day long.

This post was edited on 6/12/20 at 2:24 pm

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