Where are the Minority Chefs?

I have worked as a chef in Chicago for over 20 years and I have always worked with Hispanic, Black and Caucasian chefs, more Hispanic than Caucasian, and always mostly men. There is no shortage of Hispanics working in kitchens all over the city, cooking a wide range of food stuffs including Sushi.

Food television is not as full with minority chefs as the kitchens happen to be, there is a sprinkling of Black chefs, and not much more in way for Hispanic. Why is this?  We are doing the heavy lifting and earning the skills to make things pop, fry, and sizzle, so I know having the skill isn't the problem. Yet in still, the Italian chef, the White Southern chef, the French chef, are all the standard image of what a chef is, and most of the time they are male as well.

While we may not be able to lift as much weight as the fellow, we do hold up our share of the work in a production kitchen and I would like to see more representation of our efforts. There is no shortage of food outlets that are black run and often black owned in a city like Chicago. I have served dignitaries that were surprised at the amount of minority representation at the venue, and expressed as much.

While the average black population in this country is about 13% of the overall population, we do make up a much higher number of working chefs in this city and our Hispanic compadres may actually make up a bigger percentage of the kitchen staff. It would be nice to see more of us in the media as chefs. Whenever there is a cooking show, television series, or movie about chefs, there is a whitewashing of the kitchen, unless they are in the kitchen of an Asian restaurant, then the whole staff is Asian and does not speak English.

Am I asking too much? I don't think so. And while waiting for the media to catch up to our reality, I won't be holding my breath. And I am not the only one asking the question.... http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/black-chefs/

In this article, they mention not only that there is a rise in minority enrollment into culinary schools but that there is a lack of managing or executive minority chefs. So in outlets where a multitude of different people work together, few of them are in lead positions.

Are we Jim Crow kitchens? Are we continuing prejudices in our industry? Or am I expecting to much? Isn't it accurate to expect to see a shift in the kitchen management and media representation reflect the populous? We are graduating and training up fantastic chefs of all races and genders so how long, or when, will we see a superstar minority female chef? I am not saying that their isn't any to use as inspiration, Carla Hall comes to mind, but I ask who else?