Why Conservatives Are Mad About 'White Guy Tacos'

It's Tim Walz's modest white-guyness that has them really threatened.

Photo by Max Griss on Unsplash

Longtime readers will know that I can’t resist a good story about food and presidential campaigns; how many writers have penned multiple columns about the delicate cheesesteak dance presidential candidates perform at Pat’s and Geno’s in Philadelphia while reporters judge their performances like stern Russian figure skating judges at the Winter Olympics?

That is why I was pleased to see right-wingers lose their minds over Tim Walz joking with Kamala Harris about his “white guy tacos.” While conservatives complain that liberals are too quick to find racism in every offhand remark, in fact it’s the right’s rage-mongers who are on a constant hair-trigger to take offense on behalf of white people everywhere. 

On its surface, this incident might not appear to follow the standard story about candidates and food, which is usually about how a gustatory gaffe reveals the politician’s deep lack of authenticity. But in fact, it’s the inversion of that story. It’s precisely because Walz is so authentic, and authentic as a particular kind of “white guy,” that they find him so threatening. 

Before we get to Walz and Harris, let’s consider the background. The modern progenitor of the “Food Faux Pas Reveals Candidate’s Inability to Relate” story may be the time in 1976 when Gerald Ford sunk his teeth into a tamale without shucking it first, immortalized in the introduction of political scientist Samuel Popkin’s influential 1991 book The Reasoning Voter. Since then there have been all kinds of stories following this pattern: The candidate goes to a place they don’t come from, and is offered a local favorite dish. Something about the way they order or eat it reveals their lack of familiarity with this particular food. Their struggle, no matter how momentary, is held up as proof that they are phony, insincere, and inauthentic, unable to relate to the ordinary folk not only of that locale but anywhere in the country.

While that story has been written about both Democrats and Republicans, the most vivid and influential example was when John Kerry visited the aforementioned cheesesteak ground zero (Pat’s and Geno’s, the two giants of the cheesesteak scene, sit on the same corner in South Philly) and ordered a cheesesteak with Swiss cheese. The assembled reporters reacted with horror, as though he had requested some obscure brand of Beaufort available only from a small Savoie farm where the cows are given daily shiatsu massages. Their judgment was swift and brutal: This guy can’t relate to ordinary people, who know that you’re supposed to order Cheez Whiz on your cheesesteak, as any drunken fratboy would at three in the morning.  

The truth, and the reason this coverage is so problematic, is that how a candidate eats other people’s food actually tells us absolutely nothing about them. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be genuinely offensive on this subject; witness this, which was so vulgar and stupid it didn’t even rise to the level of culinary appropriation:

But what about a candidate’s own food? This is where we get to Tim Walz’s tacos.

Tim Walz is secretly spicy

On Thursday, the Harris campaign released a ten-minute video of the running mates having a chat about themselves and the campaign, meant to be a humanizing get-to-know-ya. As they’re chatting before sitting down, Walz mentions “white guy tacos,” which produces this exchange:

Harris: What is that, like mayonnaise and tuna? What are you doing there?

Walz: Pretty much ground beef and cheese.

Harris: That’s okay. Do you put any flavor in it?

Walz: No.

Harris: Oh. [laughs]

Walz: Here’s the deal. They said to be careful, let her know this, that black pepper is the top of the spice level in Minnesota, you know.

Here’s the video in its entirety:

There are two ways to look at this. One is that sure, these are politicians enacting a performance of friendliness, but it’s also a heartwarming representation of the intricate tapestry that is America, showing how a Midwestern white guy and a multiracial gal from California can poke gentle fun at themselves and each other over their real but ultimately unimportant cultural differences. It plays on harmless stereotypes — Minnesotan food is bland, black people and Indian-Americans love intense flavors — as a way into a conversation intended to create personal affinity. Walz loves Bruce Springsteen, Harris grew up on Aretha Franklin and Miles Davis, but aren’t we all kinda the same deep down? Sure!

That’s the first interpretation. The second is that this back-and-forth was terribly dishonest and deeply offensive to white people. Which is of course just how the right saw it. Intrepid influencers unearthed Walz’s award-winning hot dish recipe, which includes chili powder, thereby refuting his remark that he’s “not much of a spice guy.” Caught you! “Tim Walz Accused of Lying About His 'White Guy Tacos'” read the headline on a Newsweek article (if you weren’t aware, the once-respected newsmagazine is these days nothing more than a sad clickbait site). 

And the reverse racism police were on it. “This isn’t cute,” harrumphed Fox News columnist David Marcus. “Walz is being used as a clown to mock white people.” Right-wing superstar Ben Shapiro tweeted this to his 7 million followers:

This is where things get revealing. To this network of influencers, whiteness is and must be about grievance. Being white means being silenced by the libs, shoved aside from your entitled place in universities and jobs by undeserving minorities, hounded and oppressed and disregarded. To be white is to be a victim whose unending rage is righteous and must be addressed. 

Now consider Tim Walz. He’s as white as they come, but he’s not angry about it. He’s warm and friendly and optimistic. He’ll give you a great big hug and a corny-but-inspiring pep talk. Just as he models a kind of supportive and confident masculinity conservatives find disturbing (since their model runs more to the bitter and insecure), his brand of whiteness is one they can’t abide. It’s too modest. Confronted with cultural difference, it doesn’t grab a tiki torch and chant “You will not replace us!” It says “Well isn’t that somethin’, look at all them spices!” 

That’s why conservatives are so mad about “white guy tacos.” It’s not the idea that they eat bland food that casts them in a bad light. It’s Walz himself.

Other things I wrote this week

Here’s a column at MSNBC on Kamala Harris’s embrace of eliminating taxes on tips; I argue that she’d do much better to argue for eliminating tipping entirely.

Here’s a column at Heatmap in which I try to find some small silver lining in the discussion between Donald Trump and Elon Musk on climate change.

Here’s a piece Tom Schaller and I wrote for The New Republic on Tim Walz’s communitarian impulses.