{"id":22420,"date":"2010-04-08T10:32:39","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T15:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=22420"},"modified":"2013-12-15T03:33:59","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T08:33:59","slug":"cheese-steak-charley-whitewashes-his-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/04\/08\/cheese-steak-charley-whitewashes-his-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheese Steak Charley Whitewashes His Image"},"content":{"rendered":"

rachel56 sent in a fascinating story. Charley’s Grilled Subs is a super-successful franchise with locations in 16 countries. The restaurant specializes in Philly-style cheese steaks. If you go to their website and watch the video telling Charley’s story (here<\/a>), this guy plays Charley:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But, in fact, that’s not Charley.\u00a0 This is<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So here we have a Korean-American owner of a business that is Philadelphia themed.\u00a0 I’m going to assume, and feel free to call me out on this, that he decided to portray “Charley” as white because he (or his marketers) imagined that Americans (whoever they are) think like this: Philly = America = white.\u00a0 The idea that Charley is Korean might cause cognitive dissonance<\/em>.\u00a0 Cognitive dissonance is the state of holding two contradictory thoughts at the same time, such as Charley = Philly = America and Charley = Korean, when American does not = Korean.<\/p>\n

When I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, I used to frequent a fast food noodle place called “Chin’s Asia Fresh.”\u00a0 I always wondered if there was really\u00a0a Chin or if it was a made-up character.\u00a0 According to the website<\/a> there is a Leeann Chin who, growing up in Canton, China, “learned cooking traditions from her mother and an eye for the best ingredients from her father.”\u00a0 Of course, as is clear from Charley’s story, the “history” sections of restaurants can be fiction so… I guess I still wonder.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, it would be advantageous for the Chin’s chain to market itself as authentically Asian, just as it is apparently advantageous for the Charley’s chain to market itself as “authentically” “American” (i.e., white).<\/p>\n

All of this is a great example of how image is constrained and enabled by racial and ethnic stereotypes.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

rachel56 sent in a fascinating story. Charley’s Grilled Subs is a super-successful franchise with locations in 16 countries. The restaurant specializes in Philly-style cheese steaks. If you go to their website and watch the video telling Charley’s story (here), this guy plays Charley: But, in fact, that’s not Charley.\u00a0 This is: So here we have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2124,23703,285,1759,1757,37],"class_list":["post-22420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-foodagriculture","tag-marketing","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22420"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60323,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22420\/revisions\/60323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}