Reparations in the Food World

and that's reparations. I'm Italian American. My grandfather came here in nineteen o three when he was three years old. My grand my great grandmother father brought him over and my great grandfather went back and forth and made a few trips while he was actually building a house um back in the Lazza, Italy, where where my family is from,

my father's family is from. And now now I gotta I think if if my ancestors were forced to come to this country an enslaved, and when they were freed, they were must forty acres of fertile soil somewhere, and I knew that that going back in my life, in my family, we would have been able to build some sort of wealth based on these forty acres. If it stayed in my family for a couple of generations, this

would have been how my family built wealth. And if that were the case and it were stripped away from them after four dred years of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and redlining in other forms of discrimination, you better believe I would take this personally, and you better believe this is something that my family would live with, and this is something that my family would think that possibly we should we should get something from the government. We talked

about reparations. I think too often people think it's just a pay out, but but what it really is is repairing a relationship. And that's the relationship between African Americans who were cheated out of land that was promised to them. How do you how do you repair that that relationship? How do you you know, men, those wounds that that's that's what we're talking about here. How do you repair relationship? You know? How do you make things right after years

centuries of getting them wrong? And what does a true apology look like? So so, why why are we talking reparations on on our food podcast? For a lot of reasons, And I think we have a confluence of of three different things happening. Obviously with the death of George Floyd and the and the protests that we're seeing in the Black Lives Matter movement really sort of you know, being front and center in our news cycle. And then in my opinion, a part of where we're gonna end up

with the movement is looking at reparations. So reparation is becoming also prevalent in our news cycle, um, and I believe in election it's going to play a pretty important role as well. However, because the effects of racist systems can be found in every crevice of American life, we have to find where reparations are required in our corner of the world. Well, my corner of the world is food. So today we'll be talking about what chefs and the

food industry a black Americans. And because we are talking about land, and because we're mostly talking about farmland, and because our podcast has to do with food and food sovereignty, well this this kind of runs headlong into our conversations around food and around current topics. We're gonna jump right in here. I had a conversation with chef and historian Michael Twitter, and here we go. We we had planned on doing an episode on reparations, uh, going back when

we first you know, started conceiving of the podcast. Um, and obviously it takes a very different meaning right now, I imagine. And that's why that's why I say I'm nervous having this conversation is because um, so often, uh, you know, white people like me get it wrong. I'm not asking from a position of hey, I need help help me as a white person understand this, but there's so much we don't understand. And when reading through your book and reading through your blog, um, man, I can't

walk a mile in your shoes. I can't walk in your steps because there's there's too much history there, there's too much pain there. But I can walk alongside you and say, hey, I'm here to do whatever the hell I can to to to to to to make things better and to be an ally. But man, this is it's really fraud. Um. But listen, let's just jump in,

because why the hell not? So I do want to start by by asking a question, and it's actually a couple of lines from your from your book, um, and it says I think it's in the intro and says I began to wonder if I ever really would be able to locate myself in human experience? What good is it to learn the flow of human history and to speak of the dead if their stories don't speak to you?

What if food history and facts figures and flashpoints? What good is your own position as a culinary historian if you can't find yourself in the narrative of your food story, and if you don't know who you are? So, Michael, in your in your journey, Um, who who did you find out? Who? Who are you? Who? What is your

role here? What is as a historian, as a as a as a chef, as a as a cook, as a someone who writes about food in a way where you cannot help but want to cook with you alongside you taste the food that you're cooking, and and and understand your experience. So so who who are you? Um? You know there was the the ah pooh, May he rest in peace and power, um one said on The Simpsons In response to Homer, Um pooh, how are you? He says, I haven't slept. I was kept up by

the house of my ancestors. That's that's that's my life, um. But it's also the new connection with other people. Um. I think I joked with you when we met that you know, I'm like one percent Italian and I and I figured out how that was. One of my family's uh wife folks was part Italian and part English. And um, that kind of like global feeling that you get once you do the whole DNA thing and discover those things in your family tree. Really it's more than just a

percentage of the paper, you know that. And understanding that I am as an African American, I am valid and affirmed as I am. I think that I Um, I'm very proud to be of African descent, and I'm very I'm uplifted by the trips that I've made to West Africa at this point of made um seven journeys and eight countries. Um. But I guess the point is is that I didn't realize that we you know, we we

get we get talked about. Really, you know, every time something happens with us, someone has some smart ship to say, so he's my friend. Somebody has something nasty to say it's a qualifier, and I'm like, you know what, No, we're we're an exceptional people and we're very proud people among the many black people of the Black Atlantic UM. And I guess you know, when I started out, the reason why I said that quote in the book was because I was in a field that was mostly white women,

white women of some privileged wealth and capital. Um. One of the females. Definitely, every time I walk in the room, I'm the raising and the coogle. You know, I'm just not I'm just not in the majority. And then you know, they would write about these people in history in a sort of titillating fun way and never really placed himself. And I said, that must be liberating to be able to write about something and cook something and live something and not wonder why am I here? Why am I

in this space doing what I'm doing? And then of course there was this constant theme of the black cook and the black cook during slavery. I've always been fascinated by that. My ancestors from that time period are really in me and my African It's really calling to me because I guess I felt like, no, I didn't feel like I knew they were being forgotten, nameless, you know, slapped on boxes, um, given these monikers, and then they

were gonna fade away. And then you know, in a space between white guilt and black trauma, you know, and that's just what it is. So I started to decide I'm gonna document this stuff. I'm gonna go through it. At first it was like paper plates and plastics, booze and stuff from the grocery store. And then it was like, no, you can't even be rolling like that. You gotta you

really gotta really do the historical interpreter thing. And then a couple of years ago, I was just like, Okay, you can't just talk about the food and a sort of like everybody else who you're talking about. You have to you have to do it. You have to translate what the folk culture into a language that culinary people can understand so that they can really grasp what you're trying to pass on. Otherwise they're not gonna get it. And they can they can perceive, you know what I'm saying.

It could perceive it, but it's not the same language. Yeah, everybody wants to tell their stories through food and they have to communicate. And because that's that, that's the story that people want to hear. They don't want to know about a pretty a pretty plate of food. They want

to know the history behind it. They want to understand why you're doing what you do, why you're cooking what you're cooking, and so so yeah, trying to understand the food that you you grew up cooking beside your your grandmother and your mother, um, and then taking a deeper dive into why those I mean, the story in your book of of Homecoming, I thought, I thought that was, you know, this idea of abundance and this food that you're going to enjoy it it's your food, and it's

it's it's food that you dream of and it's it's food that that means so much, UM, and just the idea where you're going there and you're with your people and you're having the time of your life and it's all about food. And you know, I tell those stories when I when I about growing up Italian and how I've realized at a certain point that that's not necessarily what's on the plate, but it brings people together, right. And then once you're together, then you have those discussions

and whether you're talking politics or whether you're gossip. You know this family gossip there you know, going back and forth and and so you know, this is what it does. And so you know, having that is is you know, it is part of history, it is part of who you are. So how what what made you start sort of taking that deeper dive to to go to Africa to really sort of finding um, the the I always say, you know, when I went to Europe to learn how

to you know, cook out the French food or Italian food. Uh, you know what I learned there was why not so much what but why why you cook? Why certain things are what they are? What? What did you what did you find on those trips? I guess I guess my word to be who who? I like it? You know who? I was like, um, so yeah, you get there and you see the staples and you go, I knew this was coming, but it's nice to know with my own two eyes and my mouth and my hands, it's all there.

But what I didn't know was how many things had to be passed down and almost like in secret, Um, the most momentous moment for me was tasting on my hand. Okay, so like like I'm a I'm a I'm a dude. So there I'm not the I'm not the cook women and the cooks unless you roast une barbecue meat roast meat. It's all the women thinks. So I'm going in and these women are looking at me like weird, like why

is he even in our space? And so I took the spoon and then I took the sauce or whatever, and I put it on my hands and I licked it off, and they all sort of getting very agitated and very excited, and like hey, they started patting me on the back and and hugging me and gissing me on the cheek, and I'm like, what did I do? I just thought there was taste of food though, And then I said it and I started coming out of my mouth, said the way my grandmother and the mother

taught me. And then I realized they were excited because they realized that I had been taught the proper way of generation to generation to generations. So you know, they're like Africa. You look, you look your hand and looking back your hand, and that was they were like, Okay, he's not a black European from America. That's how they think of us until proven otherwise. And then I was like, oh my god, yeah, he's one of us. He's one of us, one of us. He knows what's up um.

And that's that's then so they answered is who are they? And who am i? Who am i? And then's this you know, it's sort of technique culture of food. It's more like it's more like, um, the circumstances and when you eat the food, the season you eat the food, the spiritual occasion, um. The feeling, the feeling around the food is more important the process of making it. And so that energy that you put into it, that soul that you put into it, is a key ingredient. This

the the area. You know. You know, someone who is a peaceable person doesn't grow your peppers in Africa. M someone who is like from birth aligned with you know, the deities that control war and blood and anger, that's the one who should grow the peppers. You know. That's that's It's like everything is congenital, everything is you know, and also from heaven and so there's that and it's just like, um, there's the rhythm and it kinesthetics like

food is. You know, your body goes into it. So we joke around and saying in in Southern talk, someone

put their foot in it. M hm, Well that ship is literal in Africa because when you make the locals being paced there like it's like it's like in Italy, you know, the stopping of the grapes, likeing ting tinging, And so so I listened, So I started so I stopped looking for techniques and I started listening for the sound of it, the feeling in the body, the feeling in the room, and and and that really got to me. That made me understand why I didn't. I didn't always attach.

There's the color of the food and the color of the ingredients and and just all of that, all that mattered so much more than the process. Although that's definitely there. It's very deep, and it's there, and there's things you gotta know. But I guess for me, another part for me was just like I was, I was seeing things in reality that I had read about in books from two to three years ago. And the fact that people preferred to eat food cooked over the wood fire with

the with the three rocks. That's there's no such thing as let's you know, modernizes food. It's almost like you have to eat the food that was eaten at the time our antestors left the continent got it. So how did that change you as a cook? Oh? You know what I said, I'll tell people all the time that to be black American, the African American and go to Africa is to suddenly drop all the awkwardness that she felt about being black in America because it because it's

because it's you. The loudness, the spiciness, the greasiness, the fat, frying and air, I mean, all that stuff, all the all the it's queerness. Okay, I'm a I'm a queer person because I'm because I'm gay. But I'm also a queer person because in relationship to normative whiteness, being black is queer in America, like being Italian was queer. It was, and sometimes there is queer in America, you know, And I want to specify that for everybody. Queer in no

sense means not normative and relationship to power. So when you grow up here black, you feel out of Sometimes you you're made to feel out of your skin. Doesn't matter how much America appropriates blackness or uses blackness, black bodies, black labor, black and black entertainment for whatever, you're still

you're still an outside. You're still an other. And so you made me feel like you never quite fit, quite fit in, but over there nine in the time, especially with the food culture, you feel as a Black American that you don't feel awkward anymore. You feel natural. I can hear the assholes already saying we'll go back. I can hear I can hear it. I gotta answer for him.

I gotta answer for him. Most of them that say that they're already pardon Negro, they've already they've already incorporated blackness, africanness, and coloredness and all of all of our all of our stuff into their life already, so they can go back with me. You know. That's what that was with Dick Gregory said that he's He said, you haven't met a drug white supremacist, and then he said I have. He said, go back to Africa and take me with you.

So there you go. Yeah. So so you you come back and you decide that the best place to to to to apply your craft is on plantations. Yeah, could take me, take me through that process. Okay, So I had already, I had already been doing that kind of work. But the problem was, I never forget when I first started. Someone who I will not name said to me um At a museum food person said to me, well, I don't know anything about Africa. I said, We're in the South.

You are right down the road from where slave ships actually came into North America. How could you not know this? And I just took a deep breath and said, stop, don't get mad, just do the work. Just do the am work. And so I started with documenting every single ingredient that would have been used on any plantation anywhere in North America, north American mainland, and documenting where it

came from the whole spreadsheet. Then I was like, Okay, I gotta get the clothes, and I got get the utensil and learn how to use the one, how to take care of them, um, all of that, and then it was about the feeling. What does it what does it mean? And I'm actually tom I'm actually glad. I've had negative experiences that that taught me put me in the right mindset of just like this is not easy,

this is not cute, this is not whatever. Like one time in the book I talked about how like I was at um Strafford Hall Plantation, which was the home plantation of the leaves in Virginia, and it was dark and there was a big crowd for plantation Christmas. So they had me there cooking and talking about the food. And it was this huge pot and it was really heavy. I mean those pots get to like sixty seventy pounds. And it was full of water, water was hot, and

the fire was hot and it was dark. And I spilled some of the water and people laughed at me, and I got immediately angry, and it was and then I was like, I was like, y'all realized that this was back in the day. I could have given I could have gotten severely punished for even making having a human accident a mistake. But then for them, it was laughing at me because oh, this black I thinks he

knows everything and he's stumbling in the kitchen. Well, you try to be on the brick floor on for for twelve hours, you know, with flat feet, cooking and then you know. But but even more than that, people come to the kitchen to be like, oh, I know what it's like to be um a slave. I'm an evangelical Christian in America. Oh god, you know, I think. Yeah, I think you also point out the book that that not only were people punished, but people were putting ovens

for doing this. Yes, in the Caribbean and Martinique. A cook was actually was put in the bake oven, thrown in the bake oven and murdered because he burned a cake. And the mistress of the plantation sat through dinner smiling and laughing and getting drunk and then showed her guests the skeleton. And I mean this wasn't of course, this wasn't an everyday occurrence, but the cruelty was the point. It was constant. But to go, but to go from

there to Africa was always my dream. But but because I wanted people to understand something, I guess our point. My point is not that everything was African. But you know, Herman Taislings is something very important almost hundred years ago. He says, everything that is born Africa remains African in spirit. And to get to to get to the other side of the ocean, you gotta understand, Yes, there were European and Native American and other elements in the cooking, but

the hands of the black cook were the catalyst. The mind of the Black book was the catalyst. And you have but people don't even think Africa has a mind. There's an intellect, just like there is an Italian cooking at French looking and I just want to be able to be that translator. Third, through historical documents, through lived experience, through people's memories, that that art and philosophy came to America through food, not just the taste. Mm hmm, Yeah,

we'll be right back. Hey, this is Citizen Chef and I'm Tom Colochio. Let's pick up where we left off in my conversation with chef and author Michael Twitter. We're talking about how the question of reparations in America intersect with policy and cultural food ways, especially in the South. What is the debt and how do we pay it back? Just from a food standpoint and from a land standpoint, what do reparations look like? Um? Uh, you know, I know HR forty is is just set up to study it.

Um If if you were put on that panel to study reparations through food lens, what what does that look like to you? Oh? First of all, we have to correct the violence of hunger, the violence of wasted food. We have to correct the violence of food inequality. We have to correct the violence of not having land. Why why do you refer to as I understand, but just for the listener, why do you refer to as violence, um, because these are ways to keep people. Um, it's it's

it's a passive aggressive form of war. I mean, you know, everybody knows about the Black Panthers and it's oh, it's scary black panthers, the scatherl scary Black panthers. Yea, they were scary because they're giving out food right exactly exactly. And then you know, I don't know if you know about the fake the fake coloring books, the fake coloring books that the CIA put out. This is not this is, by the way, y'all, This is not me looking at

some something crazy. This is these are actual things that exist. Um, fake coloring books. For the said, look at these coloring books. These black kids are getting with the with the Black Panthers, and they emphasize the food program. That was one of the things that JACKO Hoover and his and his cronies thought was one of the worst things the Black Panthers did. It wasn't feed up feed hungry people. You feed kids. Right before they realized kids were going to school without

getting meal, and that's why they started doing it. And that's that's dangerous for some reason. Yes, it's dangerous. Because the hand that feeds you, m m, you don't bite the hand that feeds you. You Also, we also know, now you and I both know that a child that is nourished can think better, can go to school and achieve an education. Better kid doesn't have to worry about their mind, isn't all worrying about what next meal is gonna come from or how where they gonna live tomorrow.

And so it's that kind of thing, that kind of power. I mean, it's like this, and Um, when I was two thousand twelve, when I did the Southern's Comfort Door, I went to the River Road African American Museum and there's this plaque on a wall from nineteen twelves celebrating this community of black Creole farmers that took the share croppers in the area and said, look y'all don't have to go into debt going eating you know, the plantation owners fooding, buying rashes from him. You can get good

quality food from our from our fields without shame. Come and get it, and we'll all farm the land together. And all I could think was they answered the question of what of how to tackle a food desert in nineteen twelve without black Twitter, without Facebook, without Instagram, without Snapchat. And they did it in the face of the clan, the nights of the white Chamelia and air at law enforcement and the plantation aristocracy which still existed. So what

are we doing wrong? There's a question, I asked myself. Another element of reparations in this area is education. Why is it? Where where is the culinary school that has has a two semester class, not one, a two semester class on African African foods of the world on the continent and then the diaspora. Because we know, you and I both know every time they learned about Brazilian food, Southern food, Caribbean food, they're learning about they're learning partially

about Africa. Why not make that a singular thing or two partner in terms of classes. You know what I'm saying, you do this when you do this one, I mean it's it's to to watch to watch a black or brown kid go to culinary school and go I didn't learn about native food. I learned about no African food. You know, I barely learned about Latinos food what that means? And then what what what it actually is not just

the the ingredients techniques and blah blah blahah recipes. But but you know, more than that history history, it also means reparations, the terms of land land. Stop giving away this damn land these developers give it to, you know, give it to folks who want to farm and produce or keep it natural. Just keep it natural because near the part of our story, it's not just always messing with the earth. It's also engaging with foraging, fishing, hunting,

raising livestock. It's you know, those are those are things that preserve our culture as well as just do that. To me, reparations looks like all of that, all of that, and then more so so, it's it's completely taking back the food system. Yes, and re africanizing it. Re africanizing the food system. I like that, But that would that would sound so scary to so many people. Why shouldn't

that be scary? The first things? First, I mean, I want to ask anyone who's who thinks I don't know about that should ask themselves why my last name is Twitter and not enjoy m hm. Should ask themselves why my beer goes out of why I'm beer in my hair go out of my face like this and not curly.

There's so many there's so many aspects of black identity in America and then and in the America's plural because you know, we're in a ship show in Brazil, we're in a ship showing part of the Caribbean, because we're still in those colonial and slavery forces. Like people people never even asked himself, what would it be like to wake up tomorrow and not have the family name that's been passed out in my family for that for hundreds

of years. What would it be like if my child did not look like me because um of some I was some viciousness, right, What would it be like if if if I couldn't tell you who I was beyond a certain point because it was taken from me. So if I can live this life of four dredn one years h you know, your your centric life, you can you can come with me to the multimillion year old African life and understand, Oh my god, that's part of who we are. Yes, you know, blackness is not a bubble.

You are a part of blackness. To the same way I've signed on to be part of Italian, part of Mexican, part Chinese, part Korean, in this multicultural society we have. If you, Tammy, if you don't understand what a bloody gift it is to be in this global era, in a multicultural society, you don't know how to be an American. And it's a shame that those of us who who have had the most to lose African and African and Indigenous people have to teach that to the rest. Everybody, right,

got me preaching? And why not? I'll let that. I'll let that set in. Uh, just think in here for a second. Um, I want to ask you about um uh again. I want to go back to your to your book, UM the Cooking Gene and Um, there was a quote. I'm a a fan of your your writing. Obviously I'm a fan of what you're writing about. But the pros itself I just found fine to be so h it's so descriptive. Point where where when you when you m write about your kitchen, I feel like I'm

sitting in your kitchen. Um, when you write about again like homecoming, I feel I'm at that table when you write about your experience. And this is what I love about about your writing. I could almost put myself in the experience. Although I know I know that I can't get completely get there, but the writing does that, and

that's that's what good writing usually does. And so but you you wrote um in your book and you were talking about literacy um, and you were talking I think the quote is, uh, we could write down our own stories, we had to tell them to others, and this caused facts and words to be bent. I wonder what our history ever looked like if every man and woman could have written down or passed down and written account their all lives. Is this yeah, because you know, I'm there's

so many details. It's a lot of times, especially with our food history and our culture. It's like even among our own people, um, in America, I mean, everybody buys into the same narrative. You could tell in thirty seconds they came they were still in from Africa. They came to America. The white people threw some ship at them, through some slap at them. They remixed it. They were geniuses created soul food. And that's all you need to know.

They don't know that everybody have collar greens, for example, or that there's like sixty different type of color greens, and that things were very regional. Hyper you know, hyper specific to the climate, the area that you win, or even that the type of enslaved Africans when ethnic of the came from. So, for example, as an Italian American, there's a big difference between people who came from northern and central Italy to America and those that came from

the south. And the language is the dialects that they brought from Sicily, Naples and Calabria versus other parts of Italy, and where they settled and what kind of jobs do they do, all that all that matters in black food history, in Southern fndustry American food history as well. So I'm actually it's it's it's kind of horrible because you get to the point where you realize that you've got to leave a legacy and you can't tell everything, but you

can leave the brute. You can leave the blueprint behind, you know. That's what I you know to Raise Nelson is actually responsible for the the format of this book. Where she talked to me one day she said, we're both we both come from black folks from South Carolina. We only know so much about where we come from. I want you to write us a blueprint so we can find our way on our own. Yeah, that's what I best. My goal is to make a blueprint, and that's a blueprint to be to be used by by

other people to to find their way as well. Oh look, I had it. When I first heard this project, I had a young man he was he was a little bit younger than me, when we weren't that far apart in age, and I did a part I did a speech in a college in Pennsylvania, and he comes up to me and he says, hey, Michael, I want you to know that um in two days, I'm leaving for Italy.

And he said, I saw your journey down south, and he said, I want to do the same thing with my family and says, my family from is Granted, New York. And he says, I always loved my grandmother's food and my family and traditions, but I don't really know where they came from, not what that life was like back in Italy. And so I didn't even think about that until I started following your journey. So I'm getting on

a plane two days. I don't know what happened to him, but for me, that was that was validating in the sense of I know that my journey is universal. Do white people know that? Do white people know that I'm speaking to them as well, that I am not leaving them out of the conversation, that if they are not the conversation, I'm not doing this right. And Black folks, yes, I am centering us, but I want you to do something. I'm not rehashing some easy, unnew ones, uncomplicated myths that

we can just glide by. No, this is gonna make everybody either piste off, inspired and in love or I'm not doing this right. Mhm. Is there an American cuisine? Absolutely? And what whately? What I mean obviously we can go through region by region, but but what do you think the roots of of of American cuisine is. I think it's I think it's layers. I think we have to understand things aren't things are in layers because they're different. I'm a I'm a lover of American history, you know,

especially lover of Africa and African American history. But um, I gotta tell you that it's not one thing. And yes, there's regions and there's all of that. Um that's important. But I guess for me, the roots of the cuisine are um indigenous and and African. Um. If I had to boil it down to five groups, I would say, you have to talk about indigenous people, you have to talk about Africans, you have to talk about UM. I call it the the the Iberian world and the Americas.

So yeah, I don't want to call it Latin, Latin or Latino. I just want to call it that. You know, when the Spanish and Portuguese came to the Americas and interacted with Native and African people, they came with a food agenda because they were food lovers, and they set

up a food environment that approximated what they had. UM. You know, I would say that you can't talk about Americ cuisine without talking about Italians on their own, and then you know with and with them the Greek Southern Mediterranean people, and you talked talking about without East East Asia. You know, UM because and I say that because other groups have of course built their food culture in America on the roots that were established by these you know,

immigrant communities and they're just communities. But but you know it is I say that, you know, one of the answers I have to appropriation, which we can get into and cultural sharing, is that if you're from the Pacific Northwest. You grew up with, you know, Pacific rim food and in the in the natural food of the Pacific West, those beautiful cherries and wild fruits and all of that, and native ingredients and the fish and all that. That's

that's what you're rooted in. It doesn't matter what color background you are. That region feeds who you are. If you know, you know, you know when somebody's from a place and they love that place because they're rooted in those food traditions. Um so yeah, I mean American American food is and layers. It's a global, it's indigenous, it's colonial, and by colonial, I do not mean nice little colonial buckles on the shoes. I mean colonial is in Oh my god, this is terrific and it's and it's and

it's also divisive. American food, by its very nature is is divisive. And we have to understand this. It's divisive. You don't hear anybody else more than Americans arguing more about um, the precision of recipes based on state, region, place, and also Americans racialize food more than anybody else. So I think we have to really have to wrestle with that that we we have a food tradition that's very uh,

chauvinistic and divisive, even though it's incredibly beautiful. And you're right, so you said something really important there because when people and I've always thought about this in terms of what I do. I cook what I call American food, it's really some influences from from Italy and France because that's

kind of how I grew up cooking. But uh, and I would say sometimes like people don't say that to go out for American food if they want to go out for French food or Italian food or maybe Greek food. When they start saying we want to go out for African food, when white people start saying that, maybe that's when it starts to sink in. You know, maybe that's what we need to start hearing. And obviously it needs to be taught. Listen, we need to start in schools

and teach history. I mean, I I screwed up royally in naming a restaurant um a couple of years back. Um Uh. It was in an old historical building. There were two publishers named Faller and Wells in the building UM and they published Journalism of Phrenology. I had no idea what that meant in terms of, you know, how would affect black people. I had no idea what rabbit

hole I was going down. I was never taught. And for me, I was like, you know what, I I gotta be a little more, take a little more responsibility, and do the work because I stopped short. I thought I did the work, but I stopped short. And so it's it's uh, it was just eye opening to it. I was leading into the idea of teaching history in school and we're leaving out huge pieces of it. Yeah, and and so again going back to what what your your blueprint, it's a blueprint of really really anyone to

take that journey and find history. But also realizing that there's a huge part of American history that has left off and it's not enough to have Black History Month. It's not enough. But but but you know what, you know what I would I'm not gonna I'm not gonna absolve you of your journey, because your journey and that was important looking drops resolution here. No no no no no no no no no no no. I know you're

not because you're taking responsibility, you're owning it. But I'm but I'm gonna but I'm gonna say something to you about it because I think that, um, this cultural literacy problem effects us both. Okay, because I respect the fact you have. You know, the person you describe who was working for you had a really in depth sort of like engagement with awareness. But bromn, I know a lot of well educated negroes that don't that don't that wouldn't

know the difference anymore than you. Because listen, and this, this is why people get upset. Not people, excuse me, let me be specific. White people who do are kind of caught unaware. They get upset because they go, well, I didn't know that, Well this wasn't this. Why does it matter? Why you bring politics in this, why you bring race into it, whereas those of us who are

on this other path are going. If you don't know how insidious and how woven in this is to the basic fabric um, not just American but Western society period, then yeah, you're missing the point. I mean, it's to me, it's like to be aware of these things, to be aware of these connections is really to have to confront oneself. You have to in other words, you have to part of the educational process isn't just knowing the facts, It's only what the facts mean to you. What are they,

what do they actually on on the ground mean? I mean, I I'm collecting American history textbooks right now, and not one of these damn cook textbooks, except for maybe the one is coming, not one of them talks about how important cotton was to the American economy to the European economy too. Yes, exactly know the fact that there's like people think of, oh, so I've heard it. I've heard

a thousand times. Yeah, I know that you had a shitty like you're picking cotton downs out or something, but then you actual free, no excuses, And I said, no, no, no, that cotton represented two thirds of the American economy and the processing of that cotton exportation, that cotton man, the European neighbor gonna come here to a better life, get land, have opportunities. So no, no, no, no, no. Tobacco paid for the the American Revolution via France and paid our debts.

And then when the French and the Germans went into revolution, there was the planners of the Upper South started growing wheat and corn because Europe wasn't even growing gray anymore. It was. It was a constantly revolution in the war. So so if you don't know those three facts, right, three or four facts, then you think that the black

experience is ancillary to whiteness, and it's not. It's central, no more no different than me having to understand that when Europeans decimated their resources between the fourteen and seventeen centuries, they then had to figure out either we're gonna get some massive review what we're doing, or we have to go other places in colonize. We have, you know, the last last comment on that, we have to know how

interpersonal and interconnected our stories are. You know, I can't there's no way that I can appreciate you without the contextual fullness. And so it has to be more than just places and dates and times and and and our trivia. It has to be meaningful and you have to feel it. M hmm. Yeah. But again that's that's what I imagine

is so hard for for so many people. Yeah, you look the original sin of of of our country and slaveries that sin, and then they have to go back and say, man, not only did we, you know, build our country on the bodies of enslaved people, but they actually made the country. They they they they, and people don't want they don't they don't want to give that up. And I think, you know, even liberal people I think look at and go, well, yeah, okay, I get it, I I you know, and it all sounds good and

let's move on. No, I can't move on because unless you actually admit to that, there's no moving on, right And and that's that's where that's where I think the change when we're talking right now of obviously with George Floyd's death and people that just changed it in the air, and and COVID also exposed so many you know, uh for the fragility of our country and our economic system and our food system, and so, you know, can we find a better way, But it has to start with actually,

you know, acknowledging that. And until we do that, there is no moving forward. And people don't want to be vulnerable. Yeah, that's that's right, that's right. They don't want to be vulnerable. They don't want to seed power. You know something. I think you said something about that one time, and let's see it. I see so many battake is why car give does he do say it? He just said something about seating some damn power, because that's honestly, what's what's up.

And it's not and it's not that you've given them at all. About we're just saying I can I can afford. Yeah, And I'm not talking about I'm not talking about fame or position or platform. You just stuck about white. As you said, I can afford to see some of this whiteness. And it's not gonna make me any different. It's not gonna it's not gonna change my life, but I can change a lot of other people's lives, you know. And and and that's that's where I think the conversation needs

to go. And I'm i'm uh, you know, if I'm hearing from from so many of my friends, just sit back and listen. Do the work. You don't need to have the answers. Don't even think you have the answers. And UM, I got I gotta say this conversation. I was, I was, I was nervous coming in, um, and I feel so much better after having it. And and I don't say that from wanting you to make me feel better about myself. I having voices like you out there, and and I really believe that you can heal so

much through food and using food as the context. Bye bye. By your reclaiming history, telling history, having people understand the experience, having people like you doing it, I think gets as closer to understanding acceptance, you know, changing changing some minds and changing changing you know, our experience here in this country, because something's got to give. Thank you, um and and I think, uh um, you know, I just you know,

you're you're not afraid. I'm just I'm just happy to spend this last I think we're going on an hour now with you. So um, thanks man, this was great, great conversation. I appreciate it. We're the hardest thing I do is when I interpret slavery, sometimes people don't understand. And I mean a lot of times there's it's a fellow people of colored And I think, why are you

read traumatizing as might read traumatizing you. I'm showing you the way to heal yourself is a steer your past, your president in your future right in the eyes, and don't blink, hug your ancestor and hug your descendant, and hug yourself and heal and move. We we we we have to because you know something we're cooking the kids with dead people. The funniest thing I remember for when you did Donna with Omar was I was joking about you know when you're when you're when you're white, your

your people stay did and you go. Not when you're Italian. So yeah, they show up, they do, they show up, They really do, all right, Michael Pleasure, pleasure talking to you, Thank you folks, thank you family, Stay safe and absolutely you'll do again. A very special thanks to Chef Michael Twitty. And it's always a shout out to a place to table. Citizen Chef is a production of I Heart Media. Christopher Howseiotis is our executive producer, Jescelyn Shields is our searcher,

and Gabrielle Collins is our producer and editor. Don't forget to write us and we'll catch the next episode mhm