“It’s an imagination, it’s not the actual Middle East they’re embracing,” Seekatz says. “It reinforced the stereotypes.”
Towns named “Mecca,” “Oasis,” “Arabia,” and “Thermal” unspooled along the valley floor, Seekatz says. Streets were given names such as “Luxor,” “Baghdad,” and “Cairo.” “Date gardens”—roadside attractions often featuring palm trees, Arabian-themed architecture, “authentic” Bedouin tents and, of course, dates—dotted the highway. In the 1920s, Seekatz says, plans were drawn for an Arabian-themed resort to be called “The Walled Oasis of Biskra,” after the Algerian city Biskra.
“It was going to be like a Chinatown, where tourists would come and imagine they were in North Africa,” she says. “And because there was no population of North Africans or Middle Easterners they had Native Americans stand in. And they put on costumes and led camels from the train station.”
Most of the project was derailed by the Depression. The
Coachella Valley History Museum is now the keeper of much of the historic photos and kitsch from that time.
But perhaps the crowning effort of the industry was the
annual date festival. Launched in 1921 in the town of Indio, the festival featured Middle East-inspired sets, camel and ostrich races, an Arabian Nights pageant, and a contest to crown a Queen Scheherazade. In the years after World War II, Seekatz says the whole community would dress up for the tourists—your waitress might be in billowing pants and a genie cap; your ticket taker at the Aladdin Theater might sport a fez. Few people dress up these days, Seekatz says, but the pageant continues—with some changes.
The Hills Brothers Company, fruit importers, altered the date market with their massive marketing campaign. Prior to their advertisements many Americans viewed dates as a sticky, bug infested mess. Hill Brothers unveiled advertisements that suggested the romance of the Middle East could be eaten in a date. This recipe book from 1928 was sent to customers to educate them on how to use dates in their everyday meals, while also invoking the mystery of the so called Orient. COURTESY SARAH SEEKATZ
“It’s a musical now,” Seekatz says. “They re-word modern hits. Instead of ‘
All the Single Ladies,’ it’s ‘All the Persian Ladies.’”
It’s not the 1920s anymore, and Americans are less tolerant of stereotypes and potentially insulting cultural depictions. In cooperation with Arab-American leaders, Coachella Valley High School—long known as “the Arabs”—recently
changed its team name to the “Mighty Arabs” and its Arab mascot from a brutal looking caricature to a more elegant figure. And growers say there has always been a healthy—and real— exchange between American and Middle East growers.
For decades, scientists and growers on both sides have exchanged breakthroughs. Students have done home-stays with growers to learn about new technologies. And American growers have even sent offshoots back to the Middle East to help repopulate date orchards decimated by pests.
Today’s growers have abandoned the Middle East marketing theme, catering instead to health-conscious consumers. For the last few years, Anderson says, Bard Valley growers have spent more than a million dollars annually to create the “Nature’s Delight” brand name and to position dates as “nature’s power fruit.” The result? A doubling of U.S. sales over the last five years, he says.
Anderson credits the growing American Muslim population, retailers’ embrace of the market and an aggressive marketing campaign by growers. “All of those things are really helping our business domestically,” he says.
Michele Kayal is the co-founder of American Food Roots. Follow her on Twitter @hyphenatedchef.
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