Maybe it’s their white privilege. Whatever the case, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — who now apparently has added “botanist” to her long list of qualifications — has just warned that growing cauliflower plants in nonwhite neighborhoods’ community gardens is akin to an act of colonialism.
As Fox News reports:
Cortez said Sunday that growing cauliflower in community gardens is part of the “colonial” attitudes that her Green New Deal will stamp out.
The New York Democrat, who introduced the proposal to tackle climate change by radically transforming the economy, posted a series of Instagram videos filmed in her home state talking about community gardens as a “core component” of her proposal.
“What I love too is growing plants that are culturally familiar to the community. It’s so important,” she said as she filmed a community garden in the Bronx.
“So that’s really how you do it right. That is such a core component of the Green New Deal is having all of these projects make sense in a cultural context, and it’s an area that we get the most pushback on because people say, ‘Why do you need to do that? That’s too hard.’”
She went on to add…. “But when you really think about it — when someone says that it’s ‘too hard’ to do a green space that grows [yuca] instead of, I don’t know, cauliflower or something — what you’re doing is you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
The congresswoman continued, “That is why a lot of communities of color get resistant to certain environmentalist movements because they come with the colonial lens on them” (video below). Or, I dunno’, it could be that they’re preoccupied with the drive-by shootings, rampant drug use, high illegitimacy rates, and other evils characterizing the Democrat-run cities in which they must survive.
Of course, some may point out that Ocasio-Cortez just chose to cite cauliflower off the cuff, struggling, as the video shows, to think of an example.
But that’s what’s so damning.
It’s when we react spontaneously, when we don’t have much time to think, that our hearts are revealed. And when Ocasio-Cortez spoke from the heart, she singled out a white vegetable. Then she extolled yuca.
It happens to be brown — at least on the outside.
This is fitting since leftist policy only looks, and leftist thinking only is, skin deep. Ocasio-Cortez’ botanic musings are no exception, either, as American Thinker explains:
For starters, like yuca, cauliflower most certainly is a staple of Caribbean cuisines common to the Bronx and Queens, starting with Jamaican, which has lots of cauliflower recipes if you look. Cauliflower is most frequently found in cuisines influenced by India, and guess what: the Caribbean is loaded with such influences, from Jamaica to Trinidad to Guyana, or most any place the colonial Brits cast anchor. The Brits, however, didn’t introduce the cauliflower; the colonized Indians with them were the ones who did, and the Caribbean islands made the cuisine their very own. Jerk cauliflower? Not a British invention. V.S. Naipaul (notice the name), from Trinidad and Tobago, certainly would have understood this. Since I have lived in Ocasio-Cortez’s represented Bronx, near the Elder Avenue subway stop, I can tell you Guyanese and Jamaican immigrants are well represented in the area.
Despite the above, self-proclaimed Bronx girl Ocasio-Cortez expressed that the cauliflower approach represented an example of telling people to grow vegetables that they “don’t know how to cook” and that “their palate is not accustomed to.” Don’t be surprised at her ‘hood illiteracy, though. The congresswoman was actually raised, since age five, in a place more characterized by white bread and mayonnaise than yuca: tony Yorktown Heights, NY.
Speaking of background and reflecting Ocasio-Cortez’ lack of it in horticulture, yuca is not at all native to New York, and for good reason: “The plant has an 18-month growing cycle and can’t handle frost, so unless New York gets some of that global warming climate change Ocasio-Cortez is big on condemning, those plants are going to die when the cold snap hits,” as American Thinker also informs.
Yet it gets more ridiculous still. Since yuca isn’t indigenous to New York, planting it there is “also an act of colonization,” points out the New York Post’s Max Jaeger.
Additionally and ironically, “AOC in another video talked up the Swiss chard, spinach and collard greens she has been growing — even though none of those are native to North America, either,” Jaeger later informed.
And collards “are actually part of the same species as cauliflower: Brassica oleracea,” Jaeger continues. Of course, this isn’t the first time the Democrats have discriminated among members of the same species based on color.
Lastly, the Mexican restaurant at which Ocasio-Cortez trained for politics serves cauliflower tacos, and the plant, historically, has “deep roots” in New York, as Jaeger puts it (he’s a pun guy, that Jaeger).
The humor of the whole situation wasn’t lost on commenters under the congresswoman’s YouTube video, either. Just consider some examples too good to not relate:
“She sounds like a random word generator.”
“Complains about colonialism. Literally named Cortez.”
“Calling it a colonial approach is ridiculous. If I’m Irish[,] should I be required to grow potatoes?”
And the pièce de résistance: “Need her to come talk in my garden. She spews so much [manure] that I’ll never need to fertilize again!” Swish.
In a nutshell, Ocasio-Cortez’ arrogant-ignorance-driven production may be the most ridiculous veggie-oriented video since Lost in Space’s “The Great Vegetable Rebellion” in 1968:
Unfortunately, the kind of rebellion — against economic freedom — that Ocasio-Cortez encourages is no laughing matter, as it has precedent: the Marxists in the Soviet Union (and elsewhere) who micromanaged crop production.
Millions died of starvation.
It’s a good reason to make sure that the people you take advice from have more wisdom than ego — and are at least somewhat smarter than a vegetable.
Photo: Svetlana Popova/iStock/Getty Images Plus
