Mirror Mirror

If we are what we eat, than we must see what we eat as representative of ourselves.
The apple pie and turkey sandwich on white bread with the crusts cut off appeal to all mainstream Americans.
Americans may be represented by these food items, and when Americans see these food items, they are pleased.  They are likely to purchase these items and/or order them at a restaurant.
Super markets and restaurants carry items such as apple pie and turkey sandwiches because they know that Americans like these things and they will sell well.
The consumer looks for a bit of him/herself on the plate and is pleased when the reflection is as expected.

A slice of apple pie may be available to all Americans at a price of under two dollars.  However, a language textbook, another consumer item, can cost upwards of $100.  The price of these luxury items means that they are representative of consumers who have some padding in their pockets.

Taylor-Mendes remarks that language textbooks, being the luxury item that they are, represent the goal population:  the top 20% of society.  Those who purchase the textbooks absorb the pictures sprawled throughout the texts as models of the target language-culture.  These pictures speak louder than words in many cases, as the language learners may not have the level to understand the letters on the pages, but can read into the images.  The thousands of words, the values of the pictures, speak to the book users of inequality, racial separation, imbalance of power, and unearned white privilege.

The idea of race being divided by continent is one of pre-colonial, pre-mass travel movements.  Considering someone of Japanese descent who is born and raised in Ohio as marginal and therefore not worth picturing in a textbook as one of the many faces of America is the same sort of false pretenses that certain teachers in the previous chapter of Hinkel use to tell students that their narratives are not appropriate.  That their identity does not count as American because their accent or skin color is judged as being of another continent.  That for these students, the USA is not home, the other continent is their home.

All of this reeks of inacceptance and ignorance.

I feel Taylor-Mendes' approach is very interesting.  Her delving into this critical issue with her select group of students and teachers, with her method of guiding questions, opens the reader to see between the lines and pixels of the widely-accepted textbooks.