Starving Student: The cultural significance of taco trucks:
It is not a secret that the highest-income earners in Chico are white people. So let’s go ahead and stop trying to pretend I’m being racist. Everyone is racist. And every journalist is biased. If you do not agree with the previous two statements, you probably understand the world much differently than I do, and will find this column at least partially offensive.
Therefore, people who stick their nose up at taco trucks are probably exactly the kind of people who need to be eating at them. Hispanics are a huge part of our community, but it seems most white folks in this town have no interaction with people of another race and this is sad because most white people are annoyingly white. If you use energy-saving light bulbs, refuse to shop at Wal-Mart and think you have done something important for Africa in your lifetime, then you’re probably annoyingly white.
I have received e-mails warning me to stay away from taco trucks because they are “roach coaches.” I’m not even Hispanic and I find this offensive. If white people ran more taco trucks, I am fairly certain other white people would not refer to taco trucks in such a derogatory way.
There are so many Hmong in Chico that during their New Year celebration in 2007 they stuffed the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds with more people than I had ever seen at an event in that location. But most people are surprised to hear this. I get the feeling Hmong people might feel a bit alienated from the community.
Inevitably, every time I go to Tacos El Pinolero there are a host of Hispanics, a few blue-collar white people and that one white guy on his cell phone wearing khaki pants who gets a burrito to go so he can tell all his gelled-hair buddies back at the office about how he slummed it for lunch.
Monday afternoon was exactly this way.
