The Fojol Bros. is one of the most popular food trucks in Washington, DC and is partly responsible for the popularity of food trucks in the nation’s capital more generally. It is also at the heart of a recent and growing controversy about race and culture. The Fojol Bros. — a self-described “traveling culinary carnival” that offers Indian, Ethiopian, and Thai food — has come under fire for the manner in which they sell their food. In particular, the food truck purveyors, who are all said to be white, wear turbans and fake novelty mustaches, and play Indian music in the background (see this Travel Channel spotlight of the food truck). This led DC local Drew Franklin to issue an “Open Letter to the ‘Fojol’ Bro-dawgs” on Facebook, in which he charged that those behind the food truck are “brazenly insulting of others’ cultures,” “over-the-top racist,” “worthy ambassadors of poor taste,” “faux-mustachioed goons,” and “well-meaning (if woefully misguided) white boys with a contemptible sense of humor.” Franklin determines that the Fojol Bros. approach is “not cool,” “decidedly uncool,” “unacceptable,” and “an embarrassment to my city.” An online petition subsequently emerged, declaring that the purveyors’ presentation amounts to a “stereotype and mockery,” and imploring visitors to make clear that they “are not OK with their Orientalist and racist appropriation of South Asian and East African cultures.” As of today, the petition has been signed by over 1,000 people — a not insignificant number. A writer with the Washington City Paper — which I read regularly when I lived in DC — agrees with the critics, calling the ethnic aesthetic of the Fojol Bros. “unsettling and offensive and lazy all at once.”
As a Sikh of Indian descent whose members of my immediate and extended family wear turbans and have beards, as someone whose civil rights work and entry into academia was triggered by post-9/11 discrimination against Muslims, Sikhs and South Asians, and as someone who has written about the post-9/11 experiences of Sikhs