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Introduction
The article: “Whispers in an Ice Cream Parlour: Culinary Tourism, Contemporary Legends, and the Urban Inter-zone by Bill Ellis” delves into a contemporary legend in the U.S. in 1910 that presented the notion that white women were at risk of being abducted into involuntary slavery (i.e. prostitution) if they visited an ice cream parlour (Ellis, 2009).
This legend can be considered as a manifestation of two distinct factors, namely: male chauvinism and racism directed towards Mediterranean immigrants that were arriving within the U.S. at the time.
Origin of the Legend
Ellis explains that the legend came from local religious organizations within the U.S. that viewed the growing rate of immigration as being synonymous with a subsequent increase in crime within urban/sub-urban areas.
For example, the work of Miss Florence Mabel Dedrick in 1910, a writer whose remarks appeared in the book “Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls, or, War on the White Slave Trade” stated that ice cream parlours were dens of crime which trapped unwitting girls into entering a life of prostitution (Ellis, 2009).
Such claims are refuted by Ellis who stated that at no point were unwary women kidnapped and forced into the profession when they entered or associated with people inside an ice cream parlour.
The correlation between ice cream parlours and crime was in part due to the conservative ideologies surrounding many religious congregations at the time who viewed new immigrants into the country with a certain degree of suspicion and contempt.
As Italian Americans and Middle Easterners continued to arrive into the country during the first decade of ice cream’s popularity, many attempted to establish their own businesses with several choosing to establish their own ice cream parlours.
As a result, the innocuous (i.e. seemingly ordinary) food item that is ice cream actually started to be deemed as a type of “forbidden fruit” wherein its consumption actually became synonymous as a form of ethnic tourism due to its association with ethnic minorities (Ellis, 2009).
What is interesting to note is that while ice cream parlours were thought of as inappropriate places for women, the same standards did not apply to men at the time.
The concept of “White Slavery” which was often used as a means of justifying the negative correlation between ice cream parlours and crime were for the most part directed at women being the slaves.
Men were often free to visit ice cream parlours if they so chose. This level of discrimination between men and women at the time can be considered as a manifestation of both male chauvinism and xenophobia. It can be considered as a type of male chauvinism since men consider themselves more resistant to being tricked into crime as compared to women.
While on the other hand, it can be considered as a type of xenophobia since conservative groups at the time did not want young impressionable women associating with men from other cultures that they deemed “inferior” to their own.
Explaining the Social Origins of the Behaviour towards Immigrants
Racism, as depicted in the article, can be defined as a tendency for human beings to view other groups of people from the standpoint of a distinct majority. Its premise is that anything that is outside the concept of their group is immediately classified as non-human or in extreme cases “alien”.
One manifestation of this type of behaviour is the belief that the group a particular individual belongs to is inherently superior to all other groups. This is the attitude that was shown in the case of ice cream parlours and immigrants.
One notable historical example of such a belief in action was the concept of the Übermensch developed by the German philosopher Nietzche in 1883 and taken to its extremes by the Nazi regime.
This particular brand of racism consisted of considering all other races inferior to Germans as the Übermensch or master race of humanity, a philosophy that helped to contribute to genocide of the Jewish population in Europe.
What must be understood is that the conservative religious groups shown in the Ellis study viewed American society as distinctly superior to any other. Anything else that is a direct affront to this, despite having a similar appearance to it, was met with a largely negative response due to the concept of supposed superiority.
Throughout history, the concept of human superiority has been an important concept by which humanity defined itself and thus justified its actions, it can be seen in religion which takes the form of religious theology teaching the superiority of man over animals, his ordained destiny to control the Earth and to a lesser degree it can also be seen in national culture taking the form of nationalism which manifested itself into a distinct distrust towards immigrants and in turn ice cream parlours themselves.
Conclusion
While the article expounded more into aspects related to the eventual integration of ice cream consumption into the general American consciousness, I believed that it was important to highlight the reasons given in the article surrounding the initial problems surrounding ice cream consumption and where such problems originated from.
Reference List
Ellis, B. (2009). Whispers in an ice cream parlour: Culinary tourism, contemporary legends, and the urban inter-zone. Journal of American Folklore, 122(483), 53-74.
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