This is nothing to be proud of no more than we are proud of our other sins and foibles. Sorry, I don’t believe that…I am more of the Avenue Q type-everybody’s-you guessed it-a little bit racist. No sound bite can begin to peel back the layers of this issue. Obviously I am not encouraging you to use the word further, but I am not going to hide behind ideals when the realities of our struggles with identity as a nation are clear. Power in language is not a one way street. I am not in agreement with esteemed journalist Bob Herbert who said “brothers shouldn’t use it either.” I think women have a right to the word “b….” gay men have a right to the word “queer” or “f…” and it’s up to people with oppressive histories to decide when and where the use of certain pejorative terms is appropriate. I’m not defending that or saying its right-because it’s that word-and the same racist venom that drove my grandparents into the Great Migration almost 70 years ago.
When you said, “of course,” I wasn’t flabbergasted, I was rather, relieved…In fact we Black Southerners have an underground saying, “better the Southern white man than the Northern one, because at least you know where he stands…” but Paula I knew what you meant, and I knew where you were coming from.
So just like those old spaghetti sauce ads, yes, America, racism-“it’s in there” even when we were prefer it not be. That Cheerio’s had to shut down the comments section says that the idea of inter-human relationships outside of one’s color bracket is for many hiding behind a computer screen-a sign of the apocalypse. Take for example the completely un-Christian and inhuman rage at Cheerios for their simple and very American ad showing a beautiful biracial girl talking to her white mother and pouring cereal on the chest of her Black father. To be part of the national surprise towards you saying the word “nigger” in the past (I am a cultural and culinary historian and so therefore I am using the word within context…) is at best naïve and at worst, an attempt to hide the pervasiveness of racism, specifically anti-Black racism in certain currents of American culture-not just Southern. So I speak to you as a fellow Southerner, a cousin if you will, not as a combatant. In the words of scholar Mechal Sobel, this was “a world they made together,” but beyond that, it is a world we make together. Sweet tea runs in our blood, in fact is our blood…What I understand to be true, a lot of your critics don’t…which is, as Southerners our ancestors co-created the food and hospitality and manners which you were born to 66 years ago and I, thirty-six.
You and I are both human, we are both Americans, we are both quite “healthily” built, and yet none of these labels is more profound for me than the fact we are both Southern. I am currently engaged in a project I began in 2011 called The Cooking Gene Project-my goal to examine family and food history as the descendant of Africans, Europeans and Native Americans-enslaved people and enslavers-from Africa to America and from Slavery to Freedom. (Well not so mad about Smithfield-not the most ethical place to shill for, eh, Paula?) Of course honey, I’d kill for one of your worst days as I could rest myself on the lanai, the veranda, the portico (okay that was really tongue in cheek), the porch.whatever…as long as its breezy and mosquito-free. So it’s been a tough week for you… believe me you I know something about tough weeks being a beginning food writer and lowly culinary historian.
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