For a restaurant, being woke means more than just putting a urinal in the ladies’ room (to signify the inclusion of trans womxn as well as cancel any TERFs from the property). Even the most modest hot dog cart should display a mindfulness of the ways structural patriarchy, unconscious racism, and yellow mustard oppress underserved, over-policed, and fat-positive communities.
First, a bit of background. I am an ultra-woke, super-straight cis male of whiteness who is too despicable to deserve pronouns. I am fully committed to the woke creed that it is better for white men to live on their knees than assert their racial privilege. My favorite sandwich shop had just closed for two months for remodeling, and until their lady urinal is installed, I have to replace over half my weekly caloric load lest I lose my solidarity with those victimized for being fat.
As Marx would have it, a new taco stand, “Basic Taco”, opened right next door to the gulag where I supervise the reeducation of free speech liberals about the violent harms of their incessant hate speech. Basic Taco is located at 2901 Commerce Street, Deep Ellum, Texas 75226. Their full menu can be viewed at their website but as you will see, this should be avoided.
Upon discovering Basic Taco, I would have felt a utopian glee were I not so completely concerned with securing reparations for people of color – after all, commissar Alexandria Ocasio Cortez began her career waitressing in a taco stand. Was Basic Taco a sign from Chairman Biden that I am destined to help lead the Green New Deal revolution? If white men were worthy of hope, I would so hope.
Just as Grammy Award-winning womxn of color Cardi B taught us justly that womxn should be judged primarily on their WAPs, so too a taco stand in the Epoch of Woke should be judged on the hate speech in their menu. The tastiness of their food, their affordability, their healthiness, their friendliness, and their convenience no longer matter as those factors do not further the revolution.
To my great disappointment, the menu of Basic Taco is filled with so much problematic harm that the arch villain Jordan Peterson would go red-skulled with envy at the power of their evil. I was able to document a few of their right-wing talking points before they shattered my emotional stability and I had to use coloring books and plushy toys to drag myself back to sanity. Thank, you know, the thing, that Biden had already confiscated my assault rifles and gifted them to the brave human traffickers of the Latinx cartels where they belong.
It is here that I must issue a massive TRIGGER WARNING: what follows is so horrible only white and Asian men have the institutional racism and structural sexism necessary to survive reading it. All other races and genders should go sniff the blue hair of college feminists or something.
You have been trigger warned.
The first section of the Basic Taco menu contains references to “Asada, Al Pastor, … Carnitas, Barbacoa, … chicharron.” These are words from a Latinx language known as Spanish, and their inclusion in an Anglx menu smacks of colonialism as well as cultural appropriation. Perhaps Basic Taco’s intention was to try to be inclusive to Latinxes but good intentions do not matter when one considers the massive harms done to people of color.
The second section of the Basic Taco menu contains the menu item, “Dad Bod”, a type of taco. When I saw this I raised my face to the heavens and screamed in pain. It was overwhelming – “Dad Bod” is patriarchal, misogynistic, and fat-phobic. It is racist because it attacks Black Lives Matter’s goal of dissolving the nuclear family. It is sexist because it tries to erase mothxrs. It is transphobic because it emphasizes sexual reproduction over gender identity. Only the n-word exceeds the nastiness of “Dad Bod”.
In rage and disbelief I noted other problematic food item names too terrifying to deconstruct – the “All Inclusive”. The “Food Coma”. The “Gym Selfie”. And then, at last, they snuffed “The Rooster”.
At this point I was reeling. Feebly I searched for a “mom” menu item to counterbalance this nightmare, and then, in the Quesadilla section, I found the “Dad Joke”, a large quesadilla. Basic Taco had doubled down!
I crawled away to the nearest safe space. Wildly I wondered what Basic Taco’s food was like.
But the only taste in my mouth was fascism.
