Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Tom Collikio, and this is Citizen Chef. On
Speaker 1: this podcast, we're looking at policy and ships in society
Speaker 1: through the food system. This season, we're going over the
Speaker 1: basics of the food system and how food policy affects
Speaker 1: our daily lives. So far, we've talked to experts on immigration, slavery,
Speaker 1: on the high seas, and food assistance programs. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we're talking about an almost hundred and fifty year old idea,
Speaker 1: and that's reparations. I'm Italian American. My grandfather came here
Speaker 1: in nineteen o three when he was three years old.
Speaker 1: My grand my great grandmother father brought him over and
Speaker 1: my great grandfather went back and forth and made a
Speaker 1: few trips while he was actually building a house um
Speaker 1: back in the Lazza, Italy, where where my family is from,
Speaker 1: my father's family is from. And now now I gotta
Speaker 1: I think if if my ancestors were forced to come
Speaker 1: to this country an enslaved, and when they were freed,
Speaker 1: they were must forty acres of fertile soil somewhere, and
Speaker 1: I knew that that going back in my life, in
Speaker 1: my family, we would have been able to build some
Speaker 1: sort of wealth based on these forty acres. If it
Speaker 1: stayed in my family for a couple of generations, this
Speaker 1: would have been how my family built wealth. And if
Speaker 1: that were the case and it were stripped away from
Speaker 1: them after four dred years of slavery, Jim Crow laws,
Speaker 1: and redlining in other forms of discrimination, you better believe
Speaker 1: I would take this personally, and you better believe this
Speaker 1: is something that my family would live with, and this
Speaker 1: is something that my family would think that possibly we
Speaker 1: should we should get something from the government. We talked
Speaker 1: about reparations. I think too often people think it's just
Speaker 1: a pay out, but but what it really is is
Speaker 1: repairing a relationship. And that's the relationship between African Americans
Speaker 1: who were cheated out of land that was promised to them.
Speaker 1: How do you how do you repair that that relationship?
Speaker 1: How do you you know, men, those wounds that that's
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about here. How do you repair relationship?
Speaker 1: You know? How do you make things right after years
Speaker 1: centuries of getting them wrong? And what does a true
Speaker 1: apology look like? So so, why why are we talking
Speaker 1: reparations on on our food podcast? For a lot of reasons,
Speaker 1: And I think we have a confluence of of three
Speaker 1: different things happening. Obviously with the death of George Floyd
Speaker 1: and the and the protests that we're seeing in the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter movement really sort of you know, being
Speaker 1: front and center in our news cycle. And then in
Speaker 1: my opinion, a part of where we're gonna end up
Speaker 1: with the movement is looking at reparations. So reparation is
Speaker 1: becoming also prevalent in our news cycle, um, and I
Speaker 1: believe in election it's going to play a pretty important
Speaker 1: role as well. However, because the effects of racist systems
Speaker 1: can be found in every crevice of American life, we
Speaker 1: have to find where reparations are required in our corner
Speaker 1: of the world. Well, my corner of the world is food.
Speaker 1: So today we'll be talking about what chefs and the
Speaker 1: food industry a black Americans. And because we are talking
Speaker 1: about land, and because we're mostly talking about farmland, and
Speaker 1: because our podcast has to do with food and food sovereignty,
Speaker 1: well this this kind of runs headlong into our conversations
Speaker 1: around food and around current topics. We're gonna jump right
Speaker 1: in here. I had a conversation with chef and historian
Speaker 1: Michael Twitter, and here we go. We we had planned
Speaker 1: on doing an episode on reparations, uh, going back when
Speaker 1: we first you know, started conceiving of the podcast. Um,
Speaker 1: and obviously it takes a very different meaning right now,
Speaker 1: I imagine. And that's why that's why I say I'm
Speaker 1: nervous having this conversation is because um, so often, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, white people like me get it wrong. I'm
Speaker 1: not asking from a position of hey, I need help
Speaker 1: help me as a white person understand this, but there's
Speaker 1: so much we don't understand. And when reading through your
Speaker 1: book and reading through your blog, um, man, I can't
Speaker 1: walk a mile in your shoes. I can't walk in
Speaker 1: your steps because there's there's too much history there, there's
Speaker 1: too much pain there. But I can walk alongside you
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I'm here to do whatever the hell
Speaker 1: I can to to to to to to make things
Speaker 1: better and to be an ally. But man, this is
Speaker 1: it's really fraud. Um. But listen, let's just jump in,
Speaker 1: because why the hell not? So I do want to
Speaker 1: start by by asking a question, and it's actually a
Speaker 1: couple of lines from your from your book, um, and
Speaker 1: it says I think it's in the intro and says
Speaker 1: I began to wonder if I ever really would be
Speaker 1: able to locate myself in human experience? What good is
Speaker 1: it to learn the flow of human history and to
Speaker 1: speak of the dead if their stories don't speak to you?
Speaker 1: What if food history and facts figures and flashpoints? What
Speaker 1: good is your own position as a culinary historian if
Speaker 1: you can't find yourself in the narrative of your food story,
Speaker 1: and if you don't know who you are? So, Michael,
Speaker 1: in your in your journey, Um, who who did you
Speaker 1: find out? Who? Who are you? Who? What is your
Speaker 1: role here? What is as a historian, as a as
Speaker 1: a as a chef, as a as a cook, as
Speaker 1: a someone who writes about food in a way where
Speaker 1: you cannot help but want to cook with you alongside
Speaker 1: you taste the food that you're cooking, and and and
Speaker 1: understand your experience. So so who who are you? Um?
Speaker 1: You know there was the the ah pooh, May he
Speaker 1: rest in peace and power, um one said on The
Speaker 1: Simpsons In response to Homer, Um pooh, how are you?
Speaker 1: He says, I haven't slept. I was kept up by
Speaker 1: the house of my ancestors. That's that's that's my life, um.
Speaker 1: But it's also the new connection with other people. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I joked with you when we met that
Speaker 1: you know, I'm like one percent Italian and I and
Speaker 1: I figured out how that was. One of my family's
Speaker 1: uh wife folks was part Italian and part English. And um,
Speaker 1: that kind of like global feeling that you get once
Speaker 1: you do the whole DNA thing and discover those things
Speaker 1: in your family tree. Really it's more than just a
Speaker 1: percentage of the paper, you know that. And understanding that
Speaker 1: I am as an African American, I am valid and
Speaker 1: affirmed as I am. I think that I Um, I'm
Speaker 1: very proud to be of African descent, and I'm very
Speaker 1: I'm uplifted by the trips that I've made to West
Speaker 1: Africa at this point of made um seven journeys and
Speaker 1: eight countries. Um. But I guess the point is is
Speaker 1: that I didn't realize that we you know, we we
Speaker 1: get we get talked about. Really, you know, every time
Speaker 1: something happens with us, someone has some smart ship to say,
Speaker 1: so he's my friend. Somebody has something nasty to say
Speaker 1: it's a qualifier, and I'm like, you know what, No,
Speaker 1: we're we're an exceptional people and we're very proud people
Speaker 1: among the many black people of the Black Atlantic UM.
Speaker 1: And I guess you know, when I started out, the
Speaker 1: reason why I said that quote in the book was
Speaker 1: because I was in a field that was mostly white women,
Speaker 1: white women of some privileged wealth and capital. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the females. Definitely, every time I walk in the room,
Speaker 1: I'm the raising and the coogle. You know, I'm just
Speaker 1: not I'm just not in the majority. And then you know,
Speaker 1: they would write about these people in history in a
Speaker 1: sort of titillating fun way and never really placed himself.
Speaker 1: And I said, that must be liberating to be able
Speaker 1: to write about something and cook something and live something
Speaker 1: and not wonder why am I here? Why am I
Speaker 1: in this space doing what I'm doing? And then of
Speaker 1: course there was this constant theme of the black cook
Speaker 1: and the black cook during slavery. I've always been fascinated
Speaker 1: by that. My ancestors from that time period are really
Speaker 1: in me and my African It's really calling to me
Speaker 1: because I guess I felt like, no, I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like I knew they were being forgotten, nameless, you know,
Speaker 1: slapped on boxes, um, given these monikers, and then they
Speaker 1: were gonna fade away. And then you know, in a
Speaker 1: space between white guilt and black trauma, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's just what it is. So I started to decide
Speaker 1: I'm gonna document this stuff. I'm gonna go through it.
Speaker 1: At first it was like paper plates and plastics, booze
Speaker 1: and stuff from the grocery store. And then it was like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't even be rolling like that. You gotta you
Speaker 1: really gotta really do the historical interpreter thing. And then
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, I was just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you can't just talk about the food and a sort
Speaker 1: of like everybody else who you're talking about. You have
Speaker 1: to you have to do it. You have to translate
Speaker 1: what the folk culture into a language that culinary people
Speaker 1: can understand so that they can really grasp what you're
Speaker 1: trying to pass on. Otherwise they're not gonna get it.
Speaker 1: And they can they can perceive, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It could perceive it, but it's not the same language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody wants to tell their stories through food and they
Speaker 1: have to communicate. And because that's that, that's the story
Speaker 1: that people want to hear. They don't want to know
Speaker 1: about a pretty a pretty plate of food. They want
Speaker 1: to know the history behind it. They want to understand
Speaker 1: why you're doing what you do, why you're cooking what
Speaker 1: you're cooking, and so so yeah, trying to understand the
Speaker 1: food that you you grew up cooking beside your your
Speaker 1: grandmother and your mother, um, and then taking a deeper
Speaker 1: dive into why those I mean, the story in your
Speaker 1: book of of Homecoming, I thought, I thought that was,
Speaker 1: you know, this idea of abundance and this food that
Speaker 1: you're going to enjoy it it's your food, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's food that you dream of and it's it's
Speaker 1: food that that means so much, UM, and just the
Speaker 1: idea where you're going there and you're with your people
Speaker 1: and you're having the time of your life and it's
Speaker 1: all about food. And you know, I tell those stories
Speaker 1: when I when I about growing up Italian and how
Speaker 1: I've realized at a certain point that that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: what's on the plate, but it brings people together, right.
Speaker 1: And then once you're together, then you have those discussions
Speaker 1: and whether you're talking politics or whether you're gossip. You
Speaker 1: know this family gossip there you know, going back and
Speaker 1: forth and and so you know, this is what it does.
Speaker 1: And so you know, having that is is you know,
Speaker 1: it is part of history, it is part of who
Speaker 1: you are. So how what what made you start sort
Speaker 1: of taking that deeper dive to to go to Africa
Speaker 1: to really sort of finding um, the the I always say,
Speaker 1: you know, when I went to Europe to learn how
Speaker 1: to you know, cook out the French food or Italian food. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know what I learned there was why not so
Speaker 1: much what but why why you cook? Why certain things
Speaker 1: are what they are? What? What did you what did
Speaker 1: you find on those trips? I guess I guess my
Speaker 1: word to be who who? I like it? You know who?
Speaker 1: I was like, um, so yeah, you get there and
Speaker 1: you see the staples and you go, I knew this
Speaker 1: was coming, but it's nice to know with my own
Speaker 1: two eyes and my mouth and my hands, it's all there.
Speaker 1: But what I didn't know was how many things had
Speaker 1: to be passed down and almost like in secret, Um,
Speaker 1: the most momentous moment for me was tasting on my hand. Okay,
Speaker 1: so like like I'm a I'm a I'm a dude.
Speaker 1: So there I'm not the I'm not the cook women
Speaker 1: and the cooks unless you roast une barbecue meat roast meat.
Speaker 1: It's all the women thinks. So I'm going in and
Speaker 1: these women are looking at me like weird, like why
Speaker 1: is he even in our space? And so I took
Speaker 1: the spoon and then I took the sauce or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I put it on my hands and I licked
Speaker 1: it off, and they all sort of getting very agitated
Speaker 1: and very excited, and like hey, they started patting me
Speaker 1: on the back and and hugging me and gissing me
Speaker 1: on the cheek, and I'm like, what did I do?
Speaker 1: I just thought there was taste of food though, And
Speaker 1: then I said it and I started coming out of
Speaker 1: my mouth, said the way my grandmother and the mother
Speaker 1: taught me. And then I realized they were excited because
Speaker 1: they realized that I had been taught the proper way
Speaker 1: of generation to generation to generations. So you know, they're
Speaker 1: like Africa. You look, you look your hand and looking
Speaker 1: back your hand, and that was they were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's not a black European from America. That's how they
Speaker 1: think of us until proven otherwise. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, yeah, he's one of us. He's one
Speaker 1: of us, one of us. He knows what's up um.
Speaker 1: And that's that's then so they answered is who are they?
Speaker 1: And who am i? Who am i? And then's this
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of technique culture of food. It's
Speaker 1: more like it's more like, um, the circumstances and when
Speaker 1: you eat the food, the season you eat the food,
Speaker 1: the spiritual occasion, um. The feeling, the feeling around the
Speaker 1: food is more important the process of making it. And
Speaker 1: so that energy that you put into it, that soul
Speaker 1: that you put into it, is a key ingredient. This
Speaker 1: the the area. You know. You know, someone who is
Speaker 1: a peaceable person doesn't grow your peppers in Africa. M
Speaker 1: someone who is like from birth aligned with you know,
Speaker 1: the deities that control war and blood and anger, that's
Speaker 1: the one who should grow the peppers. You know. That's
Speaker 1: that's It's like everything is congenital, everything is you know,
Speaker 1: and also from heaven and so there's that and it's
Speaker 1: just like, um, there's the rhythm and it kinesthetics like
Speaker 1: food is. You know, your body goes into it. So
Speaker 1: we joke around and saying in in Southern talk, someone
Speaker 1: put their foot in it. M hm, Well that ship
Speaker 1: is literal in Africa because when you make the locals
Speaker 1: being paced there like it's like it's like in Italy,
Speaker 1: you know, the stopping of the grapes, likeing ting tinging,
Speaker 1: And so so I listened, So I started so I
Speaker 1: stopped looking for techniques and I started listening for the
Speaker 1: sound of it, the feeling in the body, the feeling
Speaker 1: in the room, and and and that really got to me.
Speaker 1: That made me understand why I didn't. I didn't always attach.
Speaker 1: There's the color of the food and the color of
Speaker 1: the ingredients and and just all of that, all that
Speaker 1: mattered so much more than the process. Although that's definitely there.
Speaker 1: It's very deep, and it's there, and there's things you
Speaker 1: gotta know. But I guess for me, another part for
Speaker 1: me was just like I was, I was seeing things
Speaker 1: in reality that I had read about in books from
Speaker 1: two to three years ago. And the fact that people
Speaker 1: preferred to eat food cooked over the wood fire with
Speaker 1: the with the three rocks. That's there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as let's you know, modernizes food. It's almost like you
Speaker 1: have to eat the food that was eaten at the
Speaker 1: time our antestors left the continent got it. So how
Speaker 1: did that change you as a cook? Oh? You know
Speaker 1: what I said, I'll tell people all the time that
Speaker 1: to be black American, the African American and go to
Speaker 1: Africa is to suddenly drop all the awkwardness that she
Speaker 1: felt about being black in America because it because it's
Speaker 1: because it's you. The loudness, the spiciness, the greasiness, the fat,
Speaker 1: frying and air, I mean, all that stuff, all the
Speaker 1: all the it's queerness. Okay, I'm a I'm a queer
Speaker 1: person because I'm because I'm gay. But I'm also a
Speaker 1: queer person because in relationship to normative whiteness, being black
Speaker 1: is queer in America, like being Italian was queer. It was,
Speaker 1: and sometimes there is queer in America, you know, And
Speaker 1: I want to specify that for everybody. Queer in no
Speaker 1: sense means not normative and relationship to power. So when
Speaker 1: you grow up here black, you feel out of Sometimes
Speaker 1: you you're made to feel out of your skin. Doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how much America appropriates blackness or uses blackness, black bodies,
Speaker 1: black labor, black and black entertainment for whatever, you're still
Speaker 1: you're still an outside. You're still an other. And so
Speaker 1: you made me feel like you never quite fit, quite
Speaker 1: fit in, but over there nine in the time, especially
Speaker 1: with the food culture, you feel as a Black American
Speaker 1: that you don't feel awkward anymore. You feel natural. I
Speaker 1: can hear the assholes already saying we'll go back. I
Speaker 1: can hear I can hear it. I gotta answer for him.
Speaker 1: I gotta answer for him. Most of them that say
Speaker 1: that they're already pardon Negro, they've already they've already incorporated blackness, africanness,
Speaker 1: and coloredness and all of all of our all of
Speaker 1: our stuff into their life already, so they can go
Speaker 1: back with me. You know. That's what that was with
Speaker 1: Dick Gregory said that he's He said, you haven't met
Speaker 1: a drug white supremacist, and then he said I have.
Speaker 1: He said, go back to Africa and take me with you.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Yeah. So so you you come
Speaker 1: back and you decide that the best place to to
Speaker 1: to to apply your craft is on plantations. Yeah, could
Speaker 1: take me, take me through that process. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: had already, I had already been doing that kind of work.
Speaker 1: But the problem was, I never forget when I first started.
Speaker 1: Someone who I will not name said to me um
Speaker 1: At a museum food person said to me, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know anything about Africa. I said, We're in the South.
Speaker 1: You are right down the road from where slave ships
Speaker 1: actually came into North America. How could you not know this?
Speaker 1: And I just took a deep breath and said, stop,
Speaker 1: don't get mad, just do the work. Just do the
Speaker 1: am work. And so I started with documenting every single
Speaker 1: ingredient that would have been used on any plantation anywhere
Speaker 1: in North America, north American mainland, and documenting where it
Speaker 1: came from the whole spreadsheet. Then I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta get the clothes, and I got get the
Speaker 1: utensil and learn how to use the one, how to
Speaker 1: take care of them, um, all of that, and then
Speaker 1: it was about the feeling. What does it what does
Speaker 1: it mean? And I'm actually tom I'm actually glad. I've
Speaker 1: had negative experiences that that taught me put me in
Speaker 1: the right mindset of just like this is not easy,
Speaker 1: this is not cute, this is not whatever. Like one
Speaker 1: time in the book I talked about how like I
Speaker 1: was at um Strafford Hall Plantation, which was the home
Speaker 1: plantation of the leaves in Virginia, and it was dark
Speaker 1: and there was a big crowd for plantation Christmas. So
Speaker 1: they had me there cooking and talking about the food.
Speaker 1: And it was this huge pot and it was really heavy.
Speaker 1: I mean those pots get to like sixty seventy pounds.
Speaker 1: And it was full of water, water was hot, and
Speaker 1: the fire was hot and it was dark. And I
Speaker 1: spilled some of the water and people laughed at me,
Speaker 1: and I got immediately angry, and it was and then
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, y'all realized that this
Speaker 1: was back in the day. I could have given I
Speaker 1: could have gotten severely punished for even making having a
Speaker 1: human accident a mistake. But then for them, it was
Speaker 1: laughing at me because oh, this black I thinks he
Speaker 1: knows everything and he's stumbling in the kitchen. Well, you
Speaker 1: try to be on the brick floor on for for
Speaker 1: twelve hours, you know, with flat feet, cooking and then
Speaker 1: you know. But but even more than that, people come
Speaker 1: to the kitchen to be like, oh, I know what
Speaker 1: it's like to be um a slave. I'm an evangelical
Speaker 1: Christian in America. Oh god, you know, I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you also point out the book that that
Speaker 1: not only were people punished, but people were putting ovens
Speaker 1: for doing this. Yes, in the Caribbean and Martinique. A
Speaker 1: cook was actually was put in the bake oven, thrown
Speaker 1: in the bake oven and murdered because he burned a cake.
Speaker 1: And the mistress of the plantation sat through dinner smiling
Speaker 1: and laughing and getting drunk and then showed her guests
Speaker 1: the skeleton. And I mean this wasn't of course, this
Speaker 1: wasn't an everyday occurrence, but the cruelty was the point.
Speaker 1: It was constant. But to go, but to go from
Speaker 1: there to Africa was always my dream. But but because
Speaker 1: I wanted people to understand something, I guess our point.
Speaker 1: My point is not that everything was African. But you know,
Speaker 1: Herman Taislings is something very important almost hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: He says, everything that is born Africa remains African in spirit.
Speaker 1: And to get to to get to the other side
Speaker 1: of the ocean, you gotta understand, Yes, there were European
Speaker 1: and Native American and other elements in the cooking, but
Speaker 1: the hands of the black cook were the catalyst. The
Speaker 1: mind of the Black book was the catalyst. And you
Speaker 1: have but people don't even think Africa has a mind.
Speaker 1: There's an intellect, just like there is an Italian cooking
Speaker 1: at French looking and I just want to be able
Speaker 1: to be that translator. Third, through historical documents, through lived experience,
Speaker 1: through people's memories, that that art and philosophy came to
Speaker 1: America through food, not just the taste. Mm hmm, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Hey, this is Citizen Chef and
Speaker 1: I'm Tom Colochio. Let's pick up where we left off
Speaker 1: in my conversation with chef and author Michael Twitter. We're
Speaker 1: talking about how the question of reparations in America intersect
Speaker 1: with policy and cultural food ways, especially in the South.
Speaker 1: What is the debt and how do we pay it back?
Speaker 1: Just from a food standpoint and from a land standpoint,
Speaker 1: what do reparations look like? Um? Uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: know HR forty is is just set up to study it.
Speaker 1: Um If if you were put on that panel to
Speaker 1: study reparations through food lens, what what does that look
Speaker 1: like to you? Oh? First of all, we have to
Speaker 1: correct the violence of hunger, the violence of wasted food.
Speaker 1: We have to correct the violence of food inequality. We
Speaker 1: have to correct the violence of not having land. Why
Speaker 1: why do you refer to as I understand, but just
Speaker 1: for the listener, why do you refer to as violence, um,
Speaker 1: because these are ways to keep people. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a passive aggressive form of war. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody knows about the Black Panthers and it's oh, it's
Speaker 1: scary black panthers, the scatherl scary Black panthers. Yea, they
Speaker 1: were scary because they're giving out food right exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I don't know if you know
Speaker 1: about the fake the fake coloring books, the fake coloring
Speaker 1: books that the CIA put out. This is not this is,
Speaker 1: by the way, y'all, This is not me looking at
Speaker 1: some something crazy. This is these are actual things that exist. Um,
Speaker 1: fake coloring books. For the said, look at these coloring books.
Speaker 1: These black kids are getting with the with the Black Panthers,
Speaker 1: and they emphasize the food program. That was one of
Speaker 1: the things that JACKO Hoover and his and his cronies
Speaker 1: thought was one of the worst things the Black Panthers did.
Speaker 1: It wasn't feed up feed hungry people. You feed kids.
Speaker 1: Right before they realized kids were going to school without
Speaker 1: getting meal, and that's why they started doing it. And
Speaker 1: that's that's dangerous for some reason. Yes, it's dangerous. Because
Speaker 1: the hand that feeds you, m m, you don't bite
Speaker 1: the hand that feeds you. You Also, we also know,
Speaker 1: now you and I both know that a child that
Speaker 1: is nourished can think better, can go to school and
Speaker 1: achieve an education. Better kid doesn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: their mind, isn't all worrying about what next meal is
Speaker 1: gonna come from or how where they gonna live tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And so it's that kind of thing, that kind of power.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like this, and Um, when I was
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, when I did the Southern's Comfort Door,
Speaker 1: I went to the River Road African American Museum and
Speaker 1: there's this plaque on a wall from nineteen twelves celebrating
Speaker 1: this community of black Creole farmers that took the share
Speaker 1: croppers in the area and said, look y'all don't have
Speaker 1: to go into debt going eating you know, the plantation
Speaker 1: owners fooding, buying rashes from him. You can get good
Speaker 1: quality food from our from our fields without shame. Come
Speaker 1: and get it, and we'll all farm the land together.
Speaker 1: And all I could think was they answered the question
Speaker 1: of what of how to tackle a food desert in
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve without black Twitter, without Facebook, without Instagram, without Snapchat.
Speaker 1: And they did it in the face of the clan,
Speaker 1: the nights of the white Chamelia and air at law
Speaker 1: enforcement and the plantation aristocracy which still existed. So what
Speaker 1: are we doing wrong? There's a question, I asked myself.
Speaker 1: Another element of reparations in this area is education. Why
Speaker 1: is it? Where where is the culinary school that has
Speaker 1: has a two semester class, not one, a two semester
Speaker 1: class on African African foods of the world on the
Speaker 1: continent and then the diaspora. Because we know, you and
Speaker 1: I both know every time they learned about Brazilian food,
Speaker 1: Southern food, Caribbean food, they're learning about they're learning partially
Speaker 1: about Africa. Why not make that a singular thing or
Speaker 1: two partner in terms of classes. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: you do this when you do this one, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's to to watch to watch a black or
Speaker 1: brown kid go to culinary school and go I didn't
Speaker 1: learn about native food. I learned about no African food.
Speaker 1: You know, I barely learned about Latinos food what that means?
Speaker 1: And then what what what it actually is not just
Speaker 1: the the ingredients techniques and blah blah blahah recipes. But
Speaker 1: but you know, more than that history history, it also
Speaker 1: means reparations, the terms of land land. Stop giving away
Speaker 1: this damn land these developers give it to, you know,
Speaker 1: give it to folks who want to farm and produce
Speaker 1: or keep it natural. Just keep it natural because near
Speaker 1: the part of our story, it's not just always messing
Speaker 1: with the earth. It's also engaging with foraging, fishing, hunting,
Speaker 1: raising livestock. It's you know, those are those are things
Speaker 1: that preserve our culture as well as just do that.
Speaker 1: To me, reparations looks like all of that, all of that,
Speaker 1: and then more so so, it's it's completely taking back
Speaker 1: the food system. Yes, and re africanizing it. Re africanizing
Speaker 1: the food system. I like that, But that would that
Speaker 1: would sound so scary to so many people. Why shouldn't
Speaker 1: that be scary? The first things? First, I mean, I
Speaker 1: want to ask anyone who's who thinks I don't know
Speaker 1: about that should ask themselves why my last name is
Speaker 1: Twitter and not enjoy m hm. Should ask themselves why
Speaker 1: my beer goes out of why I'm beer in my
Speaker 1: hair go out of my face like this and not curly.
Speaker 1: There's so many there's so many aspects of black identity
Speaker 1: in America and then and in the America's plural because
Speaker 1: you know, we're in a ship show in Brazil, we're
Speaker 1: in a ship showing part of the Caribbean, because we're
Speaker 1: still in those colonial and slavery forces. Like people people
Speaker 1: never even asked himself, what would it be like to
Speaker 1: wake up tomorrow and not have the family name that's
Speaker 1: been passed out in my family for that for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years. What would it be like if my child
Speaker 1: did not look like me because um of some I
Speaker 1: was some viciousness, right, What would it be like if
Speaker 1: if if I couldn't tell you who I was beyond
Speaker 1: a certain point because it was taken from me. So
Speaker 1: if I can live this life of four dredn one
Speaker 1: years h you know, your your centric life, you can
Speaker 1: you can come with me to the multimillion year old
Speaker 1: African life and understand, Oh my god, that's part of
Speaker 1: who we are. Yes, you know, blackness is not a bubble.
Speaker 1: You are a part of blackness. To the same way
Speaker 1: I've signed on to be part of Italian, part of Mexican,
Speaker 1: part Chinese, part Korean, in this multicultural society we have.
Speaker 1: If you, Tammy, if you don't understand what a bloody
Speaker 1: gift it is to be in this global era, in
Speaker 1: a multicultural society, you don't know how to be an American.
Speaker 1: And it's a shame that those of us who who
Speaker 1: have had the most to lose African and African and
Speaker 1: Indigenous people have to teach that to the rest. Everybody, right,
Speaker 1: got me preaching? And why not? I'll let that. I'll
Speaker 1: let that set in. Uh, just think in here for
Speaker 1: a second. Um, I want to ask you about um
Speaker 1: uh again. I want to go back to your to
Speaker 1: your book, UM the Cooking Gene and Um, there was
Speaker 1: a quote. I'm a a fan of your your writing.
Speaker 1: Obviously I'm a fan of what you're writing about. But
Speaker 1: the pros itself I just found fine to be so
Speaker 1: h it's so descriptive. Point where where when you when
Speaker 1: you m write about your kitchen, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in your kitchen. Um, when you write about again
Speaker 1: like homecoming, I feel I'm at that table when you
Speaker 1: write about your experience. And this is what I love
Speaker 1: about about your writing. I could almost put myself in
Speaker 1: the experience. Although I know I know that I can't
Speaker 1: get completely get there, but the writing does that, and
Speaker 1: that's that's what good writing usually does. And so but
Speaker 1: you you wrote um in your book and you were
Speaker 1: talking about literacy um, and you were talking I think
Speaker 1: the quote is, uh, we could write down our own stories,
Speaker 1: we had to tell them to others, and this caused
Speaker 1: facts and words to be bent. I wonder what our
Speaker 1: history ever looked like if every man and woman could
Speaker 1: have written down or passed down and written account their
Speaker 1: all lives. Is this yeah, because you know, I'm there's
Speaker 1: so many details. It's a lot of times, especially with
Speaker 1: our food history and our culture. It's like even among
Speaker 1: our own people, um, in America, I mean, everybody buys
Speaker 1: into the same narrative. You could tell in thirty seconds
Speaker 1: they came they were still in from Africa. They came
Speaker 1: to America. The white people threw some ship at them,
Speaker 1: through some slap at them. They remixed it. They were
Speaker 1: geniuses created soul food. And that's all you need to know.
Speaker 1: They don't know that everybody have collar greens, for example,
Speaker 1: or that there's like sixty different type of color greens,
Speaker 1: and that things were very regional. Hyper you know, hyper
Speaker 1: specific to the climate, the area that you win, or
Speaker 1: even that the type of enslaved Africans when ethnic of
Speaker 1: the came from. So, for example, as an Italian American,
Speaker 1: there's a big difference between people who came from northern
Speaker 1: and central Italy to America and those that came from
Speaker 1: the south. And the language is the dialects that they
Speaker 1: brought from Sicily, Naples and Calabria versus other parts of Italy,
Speaker 1: and where they settled and what kind of jobs do
Speaker 1: they do, all that all that matters in black food history,
Speaker 1: in Southern fndustry American food history as well. So I'm
Speaker 1: actually it's it's it's kind of horrible because you get
Speaker 1: to the point where you realize that you've got to
Speaker 1: leave a legacy and you can't tell everything, but you
Speaker 1: can leave the brute. You can leave the blueprint behind,
Speaker 1: you know. That's what I you know to Raise Nelson
Speaker 1: is actually responsible for the the format of this book.
Speaker 1: Where she talked to me one day she said, we're
Speaker 1: both we both come from black folks from South Carolina.
Speaker 1: We only know so much about where we come from.
Speaker 1: I want you to write us a blueprint so we
Speaker 1: can find our way on our own. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I best. My goal is to make a blueprint, and
Speaker 1: that's a blueprint to be to be used by by
Speaker 1: other people to to find their way as well. Oh look,
Speaker 1: I had it. When I first heard this project, I
Speaker 1: had a young man he was he was a little
Speaker 1: bit younger than me, when we weren't that far apart
Speaker 1: in age, and I did a part I did a
Speaker 1: speech in a college in Pennsylvania, and he comes up
Speaker 1: to me and he says, hey, Michael, I want you
Speaker 1: to know that um in two days, I'm leaving for Italy.
Speaker 1: And he said, I saw your journey down south, and
Speaker 1: he said, I want to do the same thing with
Speaker 1: my family and says, my family from is Granted, New York.
Speaker 1: And he says, I always loved my grandmother's food and
Speaker 1: my family and traditions, but I don't really know where
Speaker 1: they came from, not what that life was like back
Speaker 1: in Italy. And so I didn't even think about that
Speaker 1: until I started following your journey. So I'm getting on
Speaker 1: a plane two days. I don't know what happened to him,
Speaker 1: but for me, that was that was validating in the
Speaker 1: sense of I know that my journey is universal. Do
Speaker 1: white people know that? Do white people know that I'm
Speaker 1: speaking to them as well, that I am not leaving
Speaker 1: them out of the conversation, that if they are not
Speaker 1: the conversation, I'm not doing this right. And Black folks, yes,
Speaker 1: I am centering us, but I want you to do something.
Speaker 1: I'm not rehashing some easy, unnew ones, uncomplicated myths that
Speaker 1: we can just glide by. No, this is gonna make
Speaker 1: everybody either piste off, inspired and in love or I'm
Speaker 1: not doing this right. Mhm. Is there an American cuisine? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: And what whately? What I mean obviously we can go
Speaker 1: through region by region, but but what do you think
Speaker 1: the roots of of of American cuisine is. I think
Speaker 1: it's I think it's layers. I think we have to
Speaker 1: understand things aren't things are in layers because they're different.
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a lover of American history, you know,
Speaker 1: especially lover of Africa and African American history. But um,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you that it's not one thing. And yes,
Speaker 1: there's regions and there's all of that. Um that's important.
Speaker 1: But I guess for me, the roots of the cuisine
Speaker 1: are um indigenous and and African. Um. If I had
Speaker 1: to boil it down to five groups, I would say,
Speaker 1: you have to talk about indigenous people, you have to
Speaker 1: talk about Africans, you have to talk about UM. I
Speaker 1: call it the the the Iberian world and the Americas.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't want to call it Latin, Latin
Speaker 1: or Latino. I just want to call it that. You know,
Speaker 1: when the Spanish and Portuguese came to the Americas and
Speaker 1: interacted with Native and African people, they came with a
Speaker 1: food agenda because they were food lovers, and they set
Speaker 1: up a food environment that approximated what they had. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I would say that you can't talk about
Speaker 1: Americ cuisine without talking about Italians on their own, and
Speaker 1: then you know with and with them the Greek Southern
Speaker 1: Mediterranean people, and you talked talking about without East East Asia.
Speaker 1: You know, UM because and I say that because other
Speaker 1: groups have of course built their food culture in America
Speaker 1: on the roots that were established by these you know,
Speaker 1: immigrant communities and they're just communities. But but you know
Speaker 1: it is I say that, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: answers I have to appropriation, which we can get into
Speaker 1: and cultural sharing, is that if you're from the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: You grew up with, you know, Pacific rim food and
Speaker 1: in the in the natural food of the Pacific West,
Speaker 1: those beautiful cherries and wild fruits and all of that,
Speaker 1: and native ingredients and the fish and all that. That's
Speaker 1: that's what you're rooted in. It doesn't matter what color
Speaker 1: background you are. That region feeds who you are. If
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you know when somebody's from a
Speaker 1: place and they love that place because they're rooted in
Speaker 1: those food traditions. Um so yeah, I mean American American
Speaker 1: food is and layers. It's a global, it's indigenous, it's colonial,
Speaker 1: and by colonial, I do not mean nice little colonial
Speaker 1: buckles on the shoes. I mean colonial is in Oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is terrific and it's and it's and
Speaker 1: it's also divisive. American food, by its very nature is
Speaker 1: is divisive. And we have to understand this. It's divisive.
Speaker 1: You don't hear anybody else more than Americans arguing more
Speaker 1: about um, the precision of recipes based on state, region, place,
Speaker 1: and also Americans racialize food more than anybody else. So
Speaker 1: I think we have to really have to wrestle with
Speaker 1: that that we we have a food tradition that's very uh,
Speaker 1: chauvinistic and divisive, even though it's incredibly beautiful. And you're right,
Speaker 1: so you said something really important there because when people
Speaker 1: and I've always thought about this in terms of what
Speaker 1: I do. I cook what I call American food, it's
Speaker 1: really some influences from from Italy and France because that's
Speaker 1: kind of how I grew up cooking. But uh, and
Speaker 1: I would say sometimes like people don't say that to
Speaker 1: go out for American food if they want to go
Speaker 1: out for French food or Italian food or maybe Greek food.
Speaker 1: When they start saying we want to go out for
Speaker 1: African food, when white people start saying that, maybe that's
Speaker 1: when it starts to sink in. You know, maybe that's
Speaker 1: what we need to start hearing. And obviously it needs
Speaker 1: to be taught. Listen, we need to start in schools
Speaker 1: and teach history. I mean, I I screwed up royally
Speaker 1: in naming a restaurant um a couple of years back.
Speaker 1: Um Uh. It was in an old historical building. There
Speaker 1: were two publishers named Faller and Wells in the building
Speaker 1: UM and they published Journalism of Phrenology. I had no
Speaker 1: idea what that meant in terms of, you know, how
Speaker 1: would affect black people. I had no idea what rabbit
Speaker 1: hole I was going down. I was never taught. And
Speaker 1: for me, I was like, you know what, I I
Speaker 1: gotta be a little more, take a little more responsibility,
Speaker 1: and do the work because I stopped short. I thought
Speaker 1: I did the work, but I stopped short. And so
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, it was just eye opening to it.
Speaker 1: I was leading into the idea of teaching history in
Speaker 1: school and we're leaving out huge pieces of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so again going back to what what your
Speaker 1: your blueprint, it's a blueprint of really really anyone to
Speaker 1: take that journey and find history. But also realizing that
Speaker 1: there's a huge part of American history that has left
Speaker 1: off and it's not enough to have Black History Month.
Speaker 1: It's not enough. But but but you know what, you
Speaker 1: know what I would I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: absolve you of your journey, because your journey and that
Speaker 1: was important looking drops resolution here. No no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no no no no. I know you're
Speaker 1: not because you're taking responsibility, you're owning it. But I'm
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna but I'm gonna say something to you
Speaker 1: about it because I think that, um, this cultural literacy
Speaker 1: problem effects us both. Okay, because I respect the fact
Speaker 1: you have. You know, the person you describe who was
Speaker 1: working for you had a really in depth sort of
Speaker 1: like engagement with awareness. But bromn, I know a lot
Speaker 1: of well educated negroes that don't that don't that wouldn't
Speaker 1: know the difference anymore than you. Because listen, and this,
Speaker 1: this is why people get upset. Not people, excuse me,
Speaker 1: let me be specific. White people who do are kind
Speaker 1: of caught unaware. They get upset because they go, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, Well this wasn't this. Why does
Speaker 1: it matter? Why you bring politics in this, why you
Speaker 1: bring race into it, whereas those of us who are
Speaker 1: on this other path are going. If you don't know
Speaker 1: how insidious and how woven in this is to the
Speaker 1: basic fabric um, not just American but Western society period,
Speaker 1: then yeah, you're missing the point. I mean, it's to me,
Speaker 1: it's like to be aware of these things, to be
Speaker 1: aware of these connections is really to have to confront oneself.
Speaker 1: You have to in other words, you have to part
Speaker 1: of the educational process isn't just knowing the facts, It's
Speaker 1: only what the facts mean to you. What are they,
Speaker 1: what do they actually on on the ground mean? I mean,
Speaker 1: I I'm collecting American history textbooks right now, and not
Speaker 1: one of these damn cook textbooks, except for maybe the
Speaker 1: one is coming, not one of them talks about how
Speaker 1: important cotton was to the American economy to the European
Speaker 1: economy too. Yes, exactly know the fact that there's like
Speaker 1: people think of, oh, so I've heard it. I've heard
Speaker 1: a thousand times. Yeah, I know that you had a
Speaker 1: shitty like you're picking cotton downs out or something, but
Speaker 1: then you actual free, no excuses, And I said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that cotton represented two thirds of the American economy and
Speaker 1: the processing of that cotton exportation, that cotton man, the
Speaker 1: European neighbor gonna come here to a better life, get land,
Speaker 1: have opportunities. So no, no, no, no, no. Tobacco paid
Speaker 1: for the the American Revolution via France and paid our debts.
Speaker 1: And then when the French and the Germans went into revolution,
Speaker 1: there was the planners of the Upper South started growing
Speaker 1: wheat and corn because Europe wasn't even growing gray anymore.
Speaker 1: It was. It was a constantly revolution in the war.
Speaker 1: So so if you don't know those three facts, right,
Speaker 1: three or four facts, then you think that the black
Speaker 1: experience is ancillary to whiteness, and it's not. It's central,
Speaker 1: no more no different than me having to understand that
Speaker 1: when Europeans decimated their resources between the fourteen and seventeen centuries,
Speaker 1: they then had to figure out either we're gonna get
Speaker 1: some massive review what we're doing, or we have to
Speaker 1: go other places in colonize. We have, you know, the
Speaker 1: last last comment on that, we have to know how
Speaker 1: interpersonal and interconnected our stories are. You know, I can't
Speaker 1: there's no way that I can appreciate you without the
Speaker 1: contextual fullness. And so it has to be more than
Speaker 1: just places and dates and times and and and our trivia.
Speaker 1: It has to be meaningful and you have to feel it.
Speaker 1: M hmm. Yeah. But again that's that's what I imagine
Speaker 1: is so hard for for so many people. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: look the original sin of of of our country and
Speaker 1: slaveries that sin, and then they have to go back
Speaker 1: and say, man, not only did we, you know, build
Speaker 1: our country on the bodies of enslaved people, but they
Speaker 1: actually made the country. They they they they, and people
Speaker 1: don't want they don't they don't want to give that up.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, even liberal people I think
Speaker 1: look at and go, well, yeah, okay, I get it,
Speaker 1: I I you know, and it all sounds good and
Speaker 1: let's move on. No, I can't move on because unless
Speaker 1: you actually admit to that, there's no moving on, right
Speaker 1: And and that's that's where that's where I think the
Speaker 1: change when we're talking right now of obviously with George
Speaker 1: Floyd's death and people that just changed it in the air,
Speaker 1: and and COVID also exposed so many you know, uh
Speaker 1: for the fragility of our country and our economic system
Speaker 1: and our food system, and so, you know, can we
Speaker 1: find a better way, But it has to start with actually,
Speaker 1: you know, acknowledging that. And until we do that, there
Speaker 1: is no moving forward. And people don't want to be vulnerable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's right, that's right. They don't want to be vulnerable.
Speaker 1: They don't want to seed power. You know something. I
Speaker 1: think you said something about that one time, and let's
Speaker 1: see it. I see so many battake is why car
Speaker 1: give does he do say it? He just said something
Speaker 1: about seating some damn power, because that's honestly, what's what's up.
Speaker 1: And it's not and it's not that you've given them
Speaker 1: at all. About we're just saying I can I can afford. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about I'm not talking about fame
Speaker 1: or position or platform. You just stuck about white. As
Speaker 1: you said, I can afford to see some of this whiteness.
Speaker 1: And it's not gonna make me any different. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna it's not gonna change my life, but I can
Speaker 1: change a lot of other people's lives, you know. And
Speaker 1: and and that's that's where I think the conversation needs
Speaker 1: to go. And I'm i'm uh, you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: hearing from from so many of my friends, just sit
Speaker 1: back and listen. Do the work. You don't need to
Speaker 1: have the answers. Don't even think you have the answers.
Speaker 1: And UM, I got I gotta say this conversation. I was,
Speaker 1: I was, I was nervous coming in, um, and I
Speaker 1: feel so much better after having it. And and I
Speaker 1: don't say that from wanting you to make me feel
Speaker 1: better about myself. I having voices like you out there,
Speaker 1: and and I really believe that you can heal so
Speaker 1: much through food and using food as the context. Bye bye.
Speaker 1: By your reclaiming history, telling history, having people understand the experience,
Speaker 1: having people like you doing it, I think gets as
Speaker 1: closer to understanding acceptance, you know, changing changing some minds
Speaker 1: and changing changing you know, our experience here in this country,
Speaker 1: because something's got to give. Thank you, um and and
Speaker 1: I think, uh um, you know, I just you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're not afraid. I'm just I'm just happy to
Speaker 1: spend this last I think we're going on an hour
Speaker 1: now with you. So um, thanks man, this was great,
Speaker 1: great conversation. I appreciate it. We're the hardest thing I
Speaker 1: do is when I interpret slavery, sometimes people don't understand.
Speaker 1: And I mean a lot of times there's it's a
Speaker 1: fellow people of colored And I think, why are you
Speaker 1: read traumatizing as might read traumatizing you. I'm showing you
Speaker 1: the way to heal yourself is a steer your past,
Speaker 1: your president in your future right in the eyes, and
Speaker 1: don't blink, hug your ancestor and hug your descendant, and
Speaker 1: hug yourself and heal and move. We we we we
Speaker 1: have to because you know something we're cooking the kids
Speaker 1: with dead people. The funniest thing I remember for when
Speaker 1: you did Donna with Omar was I was joking about
Speaker 1: you know when you're when you're when you're white, your
Speaker 1: your people stay did and you go. Not when you're Italian.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they show up, they do, they show up,
Speaker 1: They really do, all right, Michael Pleasure, pleasure talking to you,
Speaker 1: Thank you folks, thank you family, Stay safe and absolutely
Speaker 1: you'll do again. A very special thanks to Chef Michael Twitty.
Speaker 1: And it's always a shout out to a place to table.
Speaker 1: Citizen Chef is a production of I Heart Media. Christopher
Speaker 1: Howseiotis is our executive producer, Jescelyn Shields is our searcher,
Speaker 1: and Gabrielle Collins is our producer and editor. Don't forget
Speaker 1: to write us and we'll catch the next episode mhm