I always think of white people as the ones complaining about raisins in food. So many delicious savory dishes with raisins from the Middle East or India provoke strong reactions from western pallets used to food that only does 1 thing, rather than combining multiple flavours.
White person (UK) here. Honestly, you're overestimating a lot of us.
My own mother will just add curry powder, veg, and chicken chunks to a pot of chicken stock and call that curry. It is an abomination. I haven't eaten it in years and it haunts my nightmares still.
I love raisins in my curries because they actually add depth of flavour but when they're in something like granola, you just know it's filler. Also it ruins the texture if it's in something crunchy because of the sudden squidge and I hate how these little fuckers get stuck in my teeth when they're dry.
Sorry, I think this post unleashed years of raisin resentment. But yeah I completely agree that people who don't like them in curries or other savoury dishes are missing out because that slight sweetness is wonderful.
Back in the middle ages Europeans didn't have access to sugarcane. Because of that, they never even thought to try to breed sugary beets and process those into sugar. The same was true for tree sap or any other possible source of sugar, because why the hell would it even occur to them if they'd never seen sugar?
If a person in the middle ages wanted to make something sweet, their choices were to add honey or to add fruit. Honey was expensive, and the vast majority of the population of Europe were peasants. Honey wasn't something they'd have around all the time. While fruit was way easier to come by, it was only available seasonally. So how do you make a sweet cake in the middle of winter? Dried fruit!
So here's the big kicker about putting raisins in shit: it's been unnecessary for four goddamned centuries. There might be an occasional dish here or there that's been made the same way since before sugar was available, but there's no fucking excuse for it in like 95% of dishes. We live in an age where I - a regular dude who isn't particularly wealthy - can go to the grocery store a mile away and find a dozen kinds of produce that were shipped from the other side of the planet where they're in season. There hasn't been an excuse to ruin perfectly innocent cookies with raisins for hundreds of years.
That's a separate issue that we (meaning humanity, not just America) is still dealing with.
During the second world war chemists figured out how to make cheap fertilizers and pesticides from petroleum. These two innovations shot farm productivity through the roof. Food became more abundant than ever before and therefore became incredibly cheap. Virtually overnight the biggest challenge to people's diets was having too much, not too little.
For the first generation or two living in this historic abundance, they had no way of seeing the coming health threats. Coming off of literally the entire history of life on this planet having too little to eat instead of too much, they weren't with a "more is more" approach. Cost of ingredients was no longer a barrier to adding more sugar, more salt, and more fat. At least in the US, there was a brief "convenience" fad in cuisine in the 11950s, but gears quickly shifted to increasing portion size and improving taste by the brute force addition of more salt and sugar.
Any food where raisins would actually work, dried cranberries or blueberries would be 100x better. This would be things like pastries, bagels, trail mix, etc. Not stuffing, tuna, mac-n-cheese or other savory dishes.
No one ever needs to question if what they just bit into was a rat turd or a fly.
I'm convinced that raisins are only popular because they were a luxury food for our grandparents and they only exist in these dishes because that's what our grandparents thought rich people would do with raisins when they were kids.
Not for me, friend, but I sure hope you enjoy all those things. I had one too many poorly labeled oatmeal raisin cookies as a small child expecting chocolate chips and grew to hate the things. Honestly I'm not really a dried fruit guy except for the occasional crasin.
I've had apple and chicken sausage and I could see it working, but I'd saute the apples with the seasoning and onions so it's not just a big hunk of apple all by itself.
When I make a turkey I put an apple and an onion inside for flavor, along with cinnamon and some sage.
You can make a stuffing with fruit work, but you need a separate recipe than just tossing apple into it. It makes a more sweet and savory dish instead of a hardcore savory one.
The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
The belief that each race has distinct and intrinsic attributes.
I know it's just a dumb meme but how do you think racism starts? My experience is it tends to begin as "just a joke" until it's normalised enough that someone feels comfortable enough to take off the mask and either encourage or perform discrimination and/or violence.
Why tolerate white racism when we don't tolerate any other kinds?