SOS: ComAlt, Seminar Pre-Writing Week 3

25 April 2017

Word Count: 404

Passages:

“White folks always discovering something… but after we give it up. By the time they got to the bugaloo, we were doing the ‘tighten up.’ By the time they got to pigs feet, black people were giving up swine” (Smart-Grosvenor 1970: 41).

“Although Blacks were able to establish a foothold in Southern agriculture post-Emancipation, rural Blacks were virtually uprooted from farming over the next several decades” (Elsheikh 2016: 4).

“Hispanics are relatively recent arrivals on the migrant scene. Decades ago, local African Americans usually performed the same low-paying, excruciating work. In some areas, they stayed after the agricultural jobs moved away” (Estabrook 2012: 47).

News Media Context:

AMERICA’S MOST POLITICAL FOOD: The founder of a popular South Carolina barbecue restaurant was a white supremacist. Now that his children have taken over, is it O.K. to eat there?

“Before the Civil War, enslaved men often cooked these civic meals. They prepared their own feasts, too, either sanctioned by their owners or organized on the quiet. Much of the planning for the rebellions organized by Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner took place at barbecues. After emancipation, black men continued to be some of the country’s leading pitmasters, catering enormous spreads that featured everything from barbecued hogs, shoats, chickens, and lambs to stuffed potatoes, stewed corn, cheese relish, puddings, coffee, and cigars.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/24/americas-most-political-food

Discussion:

While reading this week’s texts, I was consistently struck by various ways in which the white elite of the United States has stolen black sovereignty since the emancipation of slavery. Through my reading I found the perpetuation of black oppression in the form of cultural and culinary appropriation, government land grabbing and regulation, and labor exploitation.

In the midst of delicious-looking traditional Southern and Jamaican recipes in Vibration Cooking, I found myself wanting to cook these dishes – I imagined myself recreating the stews and cakes (banana pudding in particular) with excitement. Then I came across Smart-Grosvenor’s comment about white people “discovering” black cultural memes and claiming them for the white-governed mainstream, and immediately felt caught. Although I was never intending to claim the recipes as my own, I realized how easy it was to appropriate the food and culture that came from a shared struggle that I have no real way of identifying with, or understanding the significance of.

Since the time of slavery, black people in America have been creating soulful, and innovative culture. This resilience continues to be undermined by the dominating white men power. It isn’t just culture and food that have been appropriated by whites, but actual land as well. Elsheikh writes of the Southern agriculture being virtually taken from “post-Emancipation rural Blacks.” As I read of this the irony sickened me, considering pre-Emancipation it was the work and agricultural practice of slave labor that allowed our agricultural economy to thrive.

In addition to land grabbing and appropriating culture, white land and capital owners have continued to exploit the physical labor of people of color even after slavery was abolished, as Estabrook points out when he reveals in Tomatoland that African Americans once held the poisonous farmworker (slave) position in Florida – work that is now primarily done by Mexican migrants.

After reading these texts it is clear that these are just a few food-related ways in which people of color have been and continue to be oppressed by the daunting duo of American government and corporations. Knowing that there are almost an infinite amount of ways in which this oppression plays out in today’s society, I become extremely frustrated and confused by people who claim racism isn’t real or prevalent anymore. How do you explain the insidious nature of today’s racism to people who don’t get it? How do you stop the institutions and systems that intend to secretly oppress?

Citations:

Collins, Lauren. (24 April 2017). “AMERICA’S MOST POLITICAL FOOD: The founder of a popular South Carolina barbecue restaurant was a white supremacist. Now that his children have taken over, is it O.K. to eat there?” Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/24/americas-most-political-food

Elsheikh, Elsadig. (2016). “Race and Corporate Power in the US Food System: Examining the Farm Bill.” Retrieved from https://foodfirst.org/publication/race-and-corporate-power-in-the-us-food-system-examining-the-farm-bill/

Estabrook, Barry. (2012). Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Smart-Grosvenor, Vertamae. (1970). Vibration Cooking: Or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.