On Paula Deen, the Big House Kitchen and Where Them Hoecakes Really Came From

Amidst the media uproar over a discrimination lawsuit against TV chef and entrepreneur Paula Deen - Did she say the n-word? Is she a racist? Well, duh - comes the clear calm voice of Michael Twitty, a black Jewish chef, writer and fellow Southerner whose Cooking Gene Project explores the food history of slaves and enslavers. Rejecting "the national surprise towards you saying the word 'nigger' (as) an attempt to hide the pervasiveness of racism," he focuses on the "culinary injustice" of plantation museums where the renowned food "came from Black men and women truly slaving away...dying multiple deaths of anonymity and cultural amnesia." "Systemic racism in the world of Southern food and public discourse not your past epithets are what really piss me off."

Read more