Eating While Black

Food Shaming and Race in America

Psyche A. Williams-Forson

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781469668468
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Afroamerikanische Studien

Psyche A. Williams-Forson is one of our leading thinkers about food in America. In Eating While Black, she offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. She shows how mass media, nutrition science, economics, and public policy drive entrenched opinions among both Black and non-Black Americans about what is healthful and right to eat. Distorted views of how and what Black people eat are pervasive, bolstering the belief that they must be corrected and regulated. What is at stake is nothing less than whether Americans can learn to embrace nonracist understandings and practices in relation to food. Sustainable culture—what keeps a community alive and thriving—is essential to Black peoples' fight for access and equity, and food is central to this fight. Starkly exposing the rampant shaming and policing around how Black people eat, Williams-Forson contemplates food's role in cultural transmission, belonging, homemaking, and survival. Black people's relationships to food have historically been connected to extreme forms of control and scarcity—as well as to stunning creativity and ingenuity. In advancing dialogue about eating and race, this book urges us to think and talk about food in new ways in order to improve American society on both personal and structural levels.

CHAPTER 1

It’s a Low-Down, Dirty Shame

Food and Anti-Black Racism

You’re forgettin’ something—all Black people ate scraps.

—Family friend, private conversation

In one study, subjects were placed in a crooked chair in a crooked room and then asked to align themselves vertically. Some perceived themselves as straight only in relation to their surroundings. … Some could be tilted by as much as 35 degrees and report that they were perfectly straight, simply because they were aligned with the images that were equally tilted. … Some managed to get themselves more or less upright regardless of how crooked the surrounding images were.

—Melissa Harris-Perry, “Crooked Room”

It was a brisk February day when I went with my sorority sister to a contemporary soul food luncheon at an African American museum. Knowing my work on African Americans and food studies, she had thought I might be interested in the event, and going together would let us enjoy some sisterly bonding time. The event was held in a good-sized meeting room where the tables were arranged in a U shape in preparation for the day’s lecture. Along with plasticware, at each place setting was a salad made of mixed red and green lettuce, lightly topped with some kind of low-fat dressing, on a purple paper plate. After sitting for a while, the twenty or so attendees were advised to start eating the otherwise-naked lettuce appetizer. As we ate, a young white woman welcomed us and explained that while the Black chef prepared the rest of the meal, she would be speaking to us about the history of soul food. She began by sharing that she and the chef were vegans and that we would be introduced to a more modern and healthier way of cooking soul food. After providing us with the background on our chef for the evening, she launched into her lecture.

Our speaker began telling us about the transatlantic slave trade and how enslaved people arrived in North America. We listened as she then told us something to the effect that the enslaved were fed the poorest cuts of pork, and that that was how African Americans came to eat what is today known as soul food. I sat as patiently as I could. I did not want to interrupt her lecture, but it was filled with so many inaccuracies that I could not remain quiet for long. We had been invited to ask questions throughout the presentation, so eventually I gently interjected and asked where she had gotten her information. She responded that she had gotten it from the internet, though she did not mention any specific sites, nor did she cite any of the numerous credible scholars who had by this time written a great deal on the subject. As she continued, it became clear why most people—Black and non-Black—are wholly uninformed about African American food culture beyond stereotypes and myths.

Knowing a different set of stories about African American foods, my soror and I sat in unbearable tension throughout the remainder of her lecture, until the time came for the final course: a plate of greens. To our left sat an older, well-dressed African American couple. The woman offered the speaker a lot of head nods and took lots of notes, using a napkin as her improvised notepad. As she ate, she loudly complimented the chef by declaring something to the effect that while all the food was good, the greens were the best she had ever had. When the chef finally emerged from the kitchen at the back of the meeting room, she asked him how he had made the vegetables so tasty. She went on to explain that she needed a recipe to substitute for the one from her mother-in-law, since her elder in-law “always” cooked her greens with pork. She further indicated her exasperation with a short wave of her hand, a gesture of dismissal at the repeated culinary offense. After a short chuckle, the chef explained that what we were eating was only partly collard greens; also in the pot were several other leafy vegetables, like dandelion greens, kale, carrot greens, and more. All the greens had been soaked overnight with black truffles, which he had imported from France.¹

There is a lot to unpack in this anecdote. In addition to the speaker’s problematic presentation, there was the attendee’s confession about cooking and eating, and some in-group food shaming. Let us begin with the African American woman who preferred the porkless greens. When she rejected her family’s traditional way of cooking in favor of the mess of greens marinated with black truffles, she was clearly seeking a better taste but also seemingly trying to align herself with those in the room who might be described as eating “right” and “clean” (read, in this context, “vegan” and “white”). A large portion of the audience that day consisted of about twelve young women attending the luncheon as part of a tour group, eleven white and one Black, ranging in age from twenty to thirty. There were approximately six more of us—the African American couple seated beside my sorority sister and me and another set of well-dressed women, one Black and one white. Judging by our ages, attire, and speech, we all represented various professions. But on that day we were all fed from the same table of misinformation that led to food shaming both cross-racially and intraracially, even as we varied by multiple identity markers.

The experience reminds me of Melissa Harris-Perry’s discussion of “the crooked room” experiment, in which participants sat in a crooked chair in a crooked room and then were asked to align themselves vertically. The contortions to which they subjected themselves in order to sit upright are synonymous with the ways in which some African Americans try to avoid being shamed by insisting to others that they themselves eat healthily. On the face of it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with changing how one eats to obtain better health. There is also nothing necessarily wrong with deciding to eat in ways that follow trends to signal a particular kind of cultural capital. There is, however, something slightly askew when participating in these choices means overthrowing and discarding cultural traditions and practices in favor of information derived from distortions, myths, and stereotypes. Writing in the context of African American women’s political action, Harris-Perry explains, “African American women are standing in a room skewed by stereotypes that deny their humanity and distort them into ugly caricatures of their true selves. As they struggle to find the upright in this crooked room, they are beset by the emotional, physiological, and political consequences of race and gender shaming. This shaming has tangible, even disastrous consequences. … One way black women have demonstrated their agency under difficult circumstances is by crafting alternative images of themselves.”²

That day (and maybe on other days as well), our African American luncheon companion seemed to be crafting an alternative image of herself as someone who strives to eat healthier and in a more modern way. After all, no one likes to be wrong or to feel like they have a shortcoming. And no one likes to feel like their knowledge of anything is subordinate to someone else’s, especially when they are shamed into feeling this way. And yet, this is a part of the work done by shaming, whether deliberate or not. Psychologist June Price Tangney explains,

People feel shame and guilt for all manner of failures and transgressions, but the difference is when people feel shame, they feel badly about themselves; when people feel guilt, they feel badly about a specific behavior. So this shameful feeling about the self is associated with a sense of shrinking, of being small, with a sense of worthlessness and powerlessness and with a sense of being exposed. Feelings of guilt about a specific behavior are more closely linked to a sense of tension and remorse and regret over the bad thing done, and feelings of guilt, this kind of tension and remorse and regret, seems to prompt reparative action, confessing, apologizing, undoing the harm that was done rather than hiding and denying.³

We came to this event for a soul food tasting and a lecture from which we had hoped to learn something new, but we were more or less sold a version of the African American culinary single story: traditional soul food is bad. Clearly, some attendees agreed that we should be eager and willing to try a more modern way of cooking certain staple foods (which are still revered and eaten by many in the South) in order to free ourselves from the failure of bad eating. This is instructive when coupled with the fact that a young white woman told the audience she was a vegan. It meant the stage was set for a number of food-centered performances to emerge, denial and defensiveness among them. Participants may have felt duped into feeling ashamed about cooking with meat products, as if that were the ultimate culinary transgression. The speaker that day presented a distorted view of African American foodways, and many in the audience bought into this illusion. Pork was vilified, and cooking with pork was made out to be similar to eating the scraps discarded on plantations. I wish I could have told them how I once attended a mostly white southern meeting that was themed “The Year of the Hog,” wherein every part of the animal, including the ears, was served one way or the other, on plates of delicate china.

But the African American attendee who wanted to change her ways of cooking and eating is not alone. Over the years, I have had numerous encounters with professional women, some African American but many more white, who make it a point to convey that they eat under the rubric of one label or another—vegetarian, pescatarian, vegan—but rarely do they acknowledge being carnivores. It is almost as if people are eager to say, “Look at me! I’m a good person because I eat ‘healthy’ and ‘clean.’” When I hear statements like this, whether implied or overt, I have to resist asking if that means the rest of us are “bad” because we “eat dirty.”⁴ This kind of bifurcated thinking comes out in the most interesting places. Take, for instance, the time Eric Schlosser, the noted journalist and author of Fast-Food Nation, visited the University of Maryland campus. During his lecture, he explained how his investigations into fast-food and meatpacking have put him in the crosshairs of some leaders in both industries. Schlosser suggested that it was merely his goal to encourage people to know where their food comes from and to be wise in choosing “food from providers who uphold ethical practices.”⁵ Overall, Schlosser’s discussion was very interesting. But the part I found most compelling was the question-and-answer period. Several women went to the mic and gave testimonials on how the journalist’s books and insights had prompted them to change their way of eating. At least three women were African American, and they ranged in age from around twenty to much older. They stated that as a result of being exposed to his ideas, they either became vegans or simply stopped eating meat. One of these women explained that prior to reading his book, she had frequently drunk strawberry milkshakes. After reading it, she decided she could no longer down a drink that contained artificial flavors and no actual strawberries. What was most interesting about this moment in Schlosser’s discussion was his response. He not only registered surprise but also implied that her actions were extreme. He admitted that he himself did not “eat clean.” Rather, he explained, he ate meat, including hamburgers, but he tried really hard to eat from restaurants that he knew engaged in ethical and responsible practices such as paying a living wage, offering health care to their workers, and so on.

Perhaps these points—Schlosser’s response to the testimonials and his own admission—were lost on others in the audience, but I found this part of the program both captivating and alarming. The curious part was the ease with which the African American women openly admitted their culinary transformation. As each approached the mic to confess her culinary sins, she did so appearing confident that she was on the right track and thus would be celebrated for marching to the right beat. The alarming part was that they had done what society said was right and then were implicitly shamed for doing so. I do not doubt that these women’s lives may have changed for the better, but there was something disappointing about seeing their confessions go uncelebrated. They had rejected their tastes and desires for what they perceived as the “right” way of eating, only to be told they were drastic in their decision-making. This seems to be the epitome of trying to right the crooked chair in the crooked room. No matter how much African American women try to situate their tilted chair by twisting themselves and even precariously balancing on only one or two legs (in this case, making and then testifying about their healthy food changes), they will never be able to get the chair balanced (that is, receive positive reinforcement or acknowledgment) because the playing field itself is unlevel.

In both the Schlosser Q and A and the luncheon at the museum, it was African American women who appeared to be deceived. Sharing their actions with others did not result in public praise but rather in lack of acknowledgment, dismissal, and, to some extent in the Schlosser event, rebuke. Nonetheless, in each case, these Black women created their alternative stories by carving out new culinary spaces for themselves, presumably where their health and well-being were improved. And this is not new. Black people—women in particular—have been creating alternative stories and abiding in crooked rooms all our lives, despite the shame and its accompanying guilt. Both of these emotions are exactly why the African American D.C. Metro employee discussed in the introduction admonished her ridiculer, “Worry about yourself.”

Despite living in the crooked room, African Americans try to operate efficiently in uneven and unlevel environments that are laced with stereotypes, myths, and systemic barriers that often breed shame. Eurie Dahn refers to this state of being as a “visual dynamic.” She says that in the early twentieth century, “shame [was] a force in shaping the content of public discourse concerning race.” We see this visual dynamic most vividly in African American newspapers and literature of the period. On display was an internalized and externalized racial shame. Class-based instructions on proper behavior, etiquette, and comportment told African Americans how to be accepted in the eyes of white society. At the same time, white society continued to see African Americans as inferior. In his September 1933 essay “On Being Ashamed of Oneself: An Essay on Race Pride,” W. E. B. Du Bois suggests “the Negro” is still overwhelmingly ashamed of him/herself because of differences in wealth, education, and social standing. He proposes that upper-class African Americans are ashamed of the “mass of untrained and uncultured colored folk and even of trained but ill-mannered people and groups of impoverished workers.” The fear that all African Americans would be lumped together and judged accordingly was an unwanted burden. Du Bois goes on to suggest that “organized economic and social action” are two ways of overcoming this shame.⁶ Through emphasis on racial uplift, sexual morality, and ethics, middle- and upper-class African Americans sought to control and police the bodies and actions of those they considered their “lesser” brothers and sisters. This practice of intraracial or internalized surveillance has not necessarily abated but instead has joined interracial (externalized) judgments that make many African Americans constant targets of bodily discipline.

The visual dynamic of shame is often set off by bodily surveillance of African Americans, a practice as old as our presence in the colonies.⁷ Angela Hattery and Earl Smith argue that chattel slavery is the genesis for the “story of policing Black bodies” because watching and studying African cultures, lifeways, and movements aided enslavers in being able to capture them.⁸ During the Middle Passage, many captured Africans experienced starvation—self-imposed as much as forced—vitamin deficiencies, and even death. Given these and other psychological, emotional, and physical traumas during the journey, many of those who survived the ordeal arrived malnourished.⁹ Slave narratives, for example, provide useful details about life on the plantation. The young, in particular, were made to eat from troughs, often without spoons. Robert Shepherd, in recounting his experiences on a Georgia plantation, said that their crumbled cornbread and buttermilk was served in a trough that “would be a sight … ’cause us never stopped to wash our hands, and ’fore us had been eatin’ more dan a minute or two what was in de trough would look lak de re...