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1. Because it’s stupid and silly.

2. Because you’re fucking goofy for thinking this is cool.

3. Because cookout meat is precious and sacred and not meant to be shared with interlopers, gentrifiers, and Travis Fucking Kelce.


4. Because the bar for what constitutes “cookout invites” is lower than Rush Limbaugh’s life expectancy.

5. Because inviting every white person who just happens to just not be a terrible person makes us seem thirsty as fuck.


6. Because this cookout invite energy is never reciprocated. We don’t get public invites to the pierogi casserole potluck campout or whatever the fuck when we do kind things for them, so let’s just keep our cookouts separate but equal.

7. BECAUSE INVITING WHITE PEOPLE TO THE COOKOUT NEGATES ONE OF THE PRIME REASONS FOR HAVING ALL-BLACK GATHERINGS AND THAT’S TO BE IN A SAFE AND UNDERSTANDING SPACE TO DISCUSS, DEBATE, DECONSTRUCT, AND TALK SHIT ABOUT THE ECOSYSTEM OF PECULIAR BEHAVIORS KNOWN AS “THAT’S SOME WHITE PEOPLE SHIT.”

8. Because it took five years of Powerpoint presentations, chart readings, peer-reviewed studies, and dream interpretations to convince Uncle Frankie to also buy some gluten-free buns for the meat and now we have to ask him to make rare steaks for Brad from accounting, too? Frankie already has high blood pressure and now you want to give him a stroke?

9. Because there are many other ways to show appreciation for a white person who happens to be cool—thousands of activities for you and said cool white person that don’t involve lightening my take-home plate, motherfucker.


10. Because it reinforces the idea that merely performing blackness—listening to black music, knowing how to do black dances, being sexually attracted to black women, etc—is an act of antiracism, when it’s just proof you have Spotify.