Eater: The White Lies of Craft Culture

[Elessar78]

In the face of al the racial tension swirling around, here's an interesting take with regards to food and southern culture. Internet guys and guys in white polos and tiki (couldn't you get a more anglo untensil of light?) torches complain wrongly about the eradication of white and southern culture. But it's a good perspective to have that a lot of southern culture was inextricably intertwined and more literally built by hands of color. Like some old college buddies when discussing Zinn's a People's History of the United States—"this is all revisionist garbage". Maybe. 

 

It's not that "white" culture isn't important. It is. But at least in this country, let's not miss the point but it's always been a part of American culture. 

 

Southern architecture alone, of both luxe and modest scale, evinces not only the aesthetic influences of African-descended cultures — classic “Southern” shotgun house design has origins in early African and Haitian communities formed in New Orleans — but, as structures, they exist as living testimony to learned hands and specialized building techniques. Besides field laborers, planter and urban communities both depended on proficient carpenters, blacksmiths, gardeners, stable hands, seamstresses, and cooks; the America of the 1700s and 1800s was literally crafted by people of color.

 

Part of this hidden history includes the revelation that six slaves were critical to the operation of George Washington’s distillery, and that the eponymous Jack Daniel learned to make whiskey from an enslaved black man named Nathan “Nearest” Green. As Clay Risen reported for the New York Times last year, contrary to the predominant narrative that views whiskey as an ever “lily-white affair,” black men were the minds and hands behind American whiskey production. “In the same way that white cookbook authors often appropriated recipes from their black cooks, white distillery owners took credit for the whiskey,” he writes. Described as “the best whiskey maker that I know of” by his master, Dan Call, Green taught young Jack Daniel how to run a whiskey still. When Daniel later opened his own distillery, he hired two of Green’s sons.

 

 

https://www.eater.com/2017/8/17/16146164/the-whiteness-of-artisanal-food-craft-culture

[LadySkinsFan]

Without black cooks, there wouldn't be BBQ. 

 

We have much to be thankful for from our Black brothers and sisters.

[Riggo-toni]

Without blacks, we wouldn't have blues, or its descendants rock and jazz.

[nonniey]

42 minutes ago, LadySkinsFan said:

Without black cooks, there wouldn't be BBQ. 

 

We have much to be thankful for from our Black brothers and sisters.

My sister-in-law's boyfriend is best cook I've ever come across. Never had barbecue cooked that well anywhere. He just does it for pleasure and doesn't do it professionally. Told him he should.