Ed is havin' a young 'un. This is now how posts on this blog start, I see. And instead of investigating/whining about some part of society that bugs us for inscrutable reasons, we now have the noble duty to warn Ed's young foetus about parts of society that bug us for inscrutable reasons. Warning is much nobler than whining, right?
So, let's begin, shall we? Why don't you hop up on Uncle Joe's lap, young foetus, and listen to a tale filled with dread, wonder, and, ultimately, actually, neither of those two.
Today's exercise in edification will attempt to answer this question: What is ethnicity? As an analogy/delay tactic, I will put off that question, and ask another: What is a vegetable? By way of contrast, and in order to completely lose my entire audience before the end of the third paragraph, I will first ask one more question: What is a fruit?
What Is a Fruit?
This one's the easy one. A fruit, saith Merriam-Webster, is a ripened ovary of a seed plant and its contents. Done. QED. Cogito ergo sum. We all know dozens of examples: apples, oranges, bananas. Weirder ones like kiwifruit, pomegranates, and starfruit are nonetheless easily recognizable as fruit: hard outside, fleshy/juicy inside, and seeds. So, there you go - that's fruit.
Next, we move on to....wait, what's that, little foetus? Isn't a tomato really a fruit? Oh, little one - you have so much to learn about this wonderful world! A tomato's a vegetable, of course. Which leads me to my next question:
What Is a.....hmm? little one? You say a tomato is hard outside, juicy inside, with seeds? Well, sure, but it's still a vegetable, which as you might have guessed was my next ques.... Say what? You brought your personal botanist over? My, but you are an impertinent little foetus! And your botanist says that a tomato is a ripened ovary of the tomato plant? Well, if that's true, then that would make a tomato a fruit, and....what's that botanist? It is? Well, if you go by that definition, then so are cucumbers, green peppers, green peas, and...and...wow. Okay. So lots of things we call vegetables are biologically fruits. Interesting. That now leads me, much more tentatively than before, to my next question:
What Is a Vegetable?
This one, it turns out, is actually easier to answer. A vegetable is something green that we eat as a side dish at dinner. Ha ha, right? But not really - that is almost exactly what our dictionary friends say. M-W calls it a usually herbaceous plant grown for an edible part that is usually eaten as part of a meal.
But that's just the dictionary; let's see what our botanist friend has to say. Oh, dear botanist friend, can you tell me what a vegetable is? You know, scientifically? Now, don't be shy - I may not be a trained scientist, but I'm sure you can put it in layman's terms, right? So, go ahead. Please. I'm not....hey! Where are you going? Little foetus, your friend just ran away! I guess it's up to me. And I say that in the end, a vegetable is a plant that people call, or use as, a vegetable. So a tomato is a vegetable after all. And a cucumber. And lettuce, and carrots, and mushrooms. That makes me feel much better.
Now we can move on to the actual question of the blog, which is....now what? Mushrooms aren't plants, they're funguses? So what? Oh - I said that vegetables were plants. Fine. Vegetables are plants and funguses that we call veg....yes? Yes, I've had sushi wrapped in seaweed. Yes, I'd call seaweed a vegetable. But seaweed isn't a plant, it's algae? Wonderful. Next you'll tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too! Ha! (please don't tell me there are bacteria and animals that are vegetables, too....)
Oh boy, I'm feeling a little woozy. I think I have to make this a two-part post. Off my lap, tiny proto-half-Ed, and back in utero for you!
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So, scientifically, a fruit is the structure of the plant that contains seeds and a vegetable doesn't exist (as a scientific concept). So fruits and vegetables only exist as a concept relative to humans as non-animal/bacterial entities that humans eat. But fruits are also defined relative to vegetables, i.e. plant parts that contain seeds that aren't vegetables? So I guess fruits are first defined scientifically and then as thing humans eat and then as a function of not being a vegetable. But what about herbs? I could really use a Venn diagram.
Vegetables are like pornography: You know it when you see it, and it is sexually arousing. No, really, I'm comfortable with a more relative, loosey-goosey definition of vegetables as plants you eat that aren't sweet and have the set of nutrients characteristic to the fruit/vegetable area. Herbs don't have those nutrients, as far as I know, so aren't vegatables. Carrots are not sweet enough to be fruits, so they're vegetables. Corn is not really a vegetable, because it doesn't have much in the way of nutrients. Mushrooms aren't vegetables because they're not plants. They're their own thing. And so forth.
I don't know much stock I'd put in the nutrient aspect of it. I think corn is pretty clearly a vegetable. If you go to a store, they put the frozen corn right between the frozen peas and spinach. And I don't know how nutritious iceberg lettuce is, but it's obviously a vegetable, too.
As for mushrooms, I've always considered them a vegetable. I've also always considered them gross, and the fact that they're a fungus and not a plant doesn't help make them more palatable, but I'd still call them veggies, because that's how people use them. Same goes for seaweed/kelp.
We do have other categories for non-animal foodstuffs. Herbs and spices, grains, starchy things - I think most of the time these guys would get excluded from the fruit/vegetable umbrella, even though they all come from plants.
I am going to use my own experience with a young 'un to address the question of ethnicity: lesson 1 for white people: Find a black person and explain. Omit this critical step of child rearing and you may find yourself hastily ushering your pronoun-confused child out of the hotel where he has just said of the desk clerk, "see? It has a black face."
My ex-boyfriend had a story about being confused about black people when he was a toddler and embarrassing his mother. The only black person he had ever seen was Bill Cosby on TV and so when he went to a baseball game and saw a black man in real life he started yelling "Look, it's BIll Cosby"!
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