Dawn of the Consumer Foodie Zombies

Salman Rushdie, the grand literary tragi-comic chronicler of America's Romanesque decline, knows America, better than 98 percent of Americans.

As the social and economic structure of our Empire collapses under it's own weight, Americans are losing themselves in new expressions of consumer narcissism, which is their only way to redefine themselves and adjust to the chaos, as oppose to critically looking inside themselves while seeking progressive truths in the library, to make sense of "the mess" to quote Samuel Beckett.    

In the past, such expressions became known as keeping up with The (Dow) Joneses, but in the cowardly New America, keeping up with The Dow Joneses is impossible, because the Joneses   (The 1%)  now stay hidden behind castle walls figuring out how to spirit our money out of America before the final fall, when China cashes in her chips.  

So now, the consumer class ( under the label of foodies) competes over who can afford to dine at the next "in" four ring circus Disney-restaurant.  

A few weeks ago I went to one of these restaurants named Moto aka morocco

 for vastly different reasons. 

MoJoko, is prefabbed for the preprogramed "Foodie" as another avenue to exploit them.   It's been in the making for a while. Weaning children into total and hyper-speed consumption consumerism by replacing Bugs Bunny, Fat Albert, and Bullwinkle with commercial toy characters, like Transformers and My Little Pony (created to sale more crap) then Beverly Hills 20666, Sex in The City, and Seinfield, etc., creating generations of narcissistic consumer zombies.

Night of The Living Dead

In Night of The Living Dead, George Romero's zombies flocked to a suburban shopping mall.  The zombies ,who flock to MoJoko are women in plastic faces frozen with chemicals and tiny back dresses ( with French labels)  mass produced in China for 38 cents per., accompanying men in square toed shoes, shinny suits and enough hair jell for five women. 

If I knew how to text,  everyone was texting at Mojoko, probably letting their social media followers know that they had "arrived" ,  I would've texted a covert message with a picture from the movie The Matrix,  of the those bodies hooked up to hundreds of wires, so the machines could harvest their body heat and chemicals. Foodies are in the same predicament, they just don't know it.

Foodies are preprogramed, so corporations can preform simple marketing wizardry, for instance, taking a historical American food staple like bacon, rebranding it into plastic red, white, and blue hype, and Voilà! A fortune is pumped out of the consumer foodie masses, running around like crazed monkeys drinking bacon soda cola and blowing bubbles with bacon flavored chewing gum.

Then there are the ubiquitous Facebook pictures of "food porn" at term more vile than "Foodie", which  I'm sure an industry of cameras has popped up to "support" this venture.

The servers at Mojoko are diligent and consciences, yet fear lurks in their eyes. They have to be smart to handle the chemicals pumped into the food and to use the various gases. Maybe they're down and out English Lit. Phd's who are just as horrified (   more so than I was) because due to our ravaged and beaten down economy, they have to work there. 

Anthony Fremont 

They looked like they were being held hostage by that creepy six-year-old "Anthony Fremont" kid from that Twilight Zone episode who holds the whole town hostage while a creating a helter skelter alchemy of cartoonish deadly terrors with his mind, similar to the nuclear explosion of food wrongness that I witnessed at Mojoko. 

Dim sum frozen by nitro? Oh, and every thing has nitro in it. I think I heard Donald Duck out back huffing.  It could have been a Saturday Night Live sketch called "Nitro it"

The Smoking Leather Glove

Seriously, a smoking leather glove delivered to your table. What kinda kinkster designed that? Frank Booth, the gas sipping psycho from Blue Velvet? And the accompanying chocolate glove looked like it belong to O. J. Simpson.

American Horror

And the other chef most be Dr. Arden from American Horror Story, because who else would serve orange goop out of a syringe? Well maybe Doctor Frankenstein himself.

Oh the horrors;

infused pasta with fried chicken via chemicals, they got it.

Any why would you destroy good wine in glasses infused by smokey chemicals from lasers?

What is this Israel?  America signed the Anti Chemical weapons convention treaty.

We needed to escape because after a while the gasses produce  a paranoid toxicity. We thought the doors had disappeared. The people were all strangely silent, MoJoko  is not a conversation starter, so we thought they were aliens, about to attack us.

At another bar, I noticed that my tongue stung, from the nitrogen.

file this under "not fun", unless you're a foodie

Will The Black Protest Movement Please Wake Up!

While electoral politics hasn't always benefited us, The Black community has risen by protest movements. The late Mayor Harold Washington's election spun out of a protest. Under President Obama however, the Black protest movement's been neutered. 

During this Depression /Recession, the Black community has suffered like no other. 
Between foreclosures ( home ownership was the largest source of Black wealth), violence, increased prison incarceration, and unemployment, (decreasing for America, yet rising to 14% for Black America), the Black community is on very tenuous ground.

Yet, during the debates, President Obama didn't once address the sufferings of the Black community, although he did address concerns of women and gays. During the last debate, he was asked about his biggest regret as President. Obama stated, although he pushed through the Dream Act, creating a safe haven for over 900,000 Hispanics who no longer have to fear deportation, he "deeply regretted" not going far enough with immigration reform.  Meanwhile during that debate, negotiations between Hispanic leaders and the Obama campaign over a Hispanic agenda with goals and time tables, backed by a major grassroots organizing effort in the Hispanic community were transpiring, that delivered major votes for Obama, including Republican Florida. 

President Obama didn't targeted the Black community, except for vastly overplaying a fear "shock doctrine"of plantation politics. Republicans were accused of stealing Black votes in mass. And Vice President Joe Biden told Black folks that Mitt Romney would "return Blacks to slavery".  The Black vote  jumped 15%, but unlike the Hispanic community, we got nothing and we were told not to even ask.    

During the first year of Obama's Presidency, the Black community was solely preoccupied with the symbolism of a Black President. Like poor Black women watching soap operas, Black people traded internet pictures of Obama and the first family in the white house like it was currency while the Black community deteriorated.  A few Black voices rose in the wilderness, lead by Dr. Cornel West ( who stumped for President Obama hard during the first presidential election)  and radio personality and producer Tavis Smiley. They raised the issue of Obama's neglect of the poor and especially Black people, which earned them vociferous attacks from the Black community, who labeled them "traitors" and sale-outs. Others like Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon of the Black Agenda Report, urged Black people to vote for the Green Party candidate, pointing out that Blacks had become complete pawns and captives of the Democratic party.

Finally, Blacks began to at least pay attention.  President Obama responded by using progressive Black critics to further distance himself from Black America in a failed attempt to get more blue collar white support. For instance, his infamous response that he was "not the President of Black America, but the President of America". And while engaging in these slash and burn tactics, he used patronage to co-opt  critics like Rev. Al Sharpton, ( famous for his protests)  who came to a meeting with President Obama as a critic and emerged with a national TV show on MSNBC that he then used to attack the President's Black critics, while telling Black people, that now was not the time to complain.

In year three of the Obama Presidency, Black America was wracked by a pandemic of Black on Black crime  in direct correlation with increased desperation and a decrease in social, educational, and economic opportunities. Meanwhile President Obama's continuation and expansion of President Bush's national security and militaristic foreign policy, especially in so called "Third World Nations". This caused Black Nationalist and Internationalist who had gave President Obama a pass on his neglect for America's Black community to also question if the  Black folks had been politically played by our beloved President. 

As the election neared, it became more difficult for President Obama's Black supporters to justify the devastation that they could not help but bare-witness to. So President Obama with his skilled political Chicago machine, drove a sharp wedge between white liberals and Progressive Blacks.

In terms of race, white liberals operate from the majestic holier-than-thou plateau, and are not use to having their motives challenged, especially by Blacks.  At work is a deep fissure of liberal noblesse-oblige towards Black people. They do not feel that they owe a duty towards Black people/society for their inherent white privilege, but feel that because they are liberal, they should receive special recognition and treatment from Black people, because they're "friend of the race ", which they see as a sacrifice 

I'm reminded of a historical heated exchange between James Baldwin and Robert Kennedy. Robert Kennedy asked Black leaders in the arts community to his New York apartment to discuss their views of race in America. Included were also Lorraine Hansberry, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Lena Horne. The meeting ended with Kennedy basically storming out of his own apartment outraged that James Baldwin appeared anti-American and wasn't respectful of what the Kennedy's had done for Black people.  White liberals felt the same way about people like Cornel West, Tavis Smiley and Glen Ford. Inherent in this view was that Obama had to be good for Black people because he was good for white liberals.  Obama gave tax cuts aimed directly at the middle and slightly upper middle class America. Yet a profound number of working class Blacks fell below the income level and Blacks with no income did not qualify as well. White liberals are also the primary beneficiaries of the growing non profit industrial complex and therefore became powerful and vocal advocates of President Obama using the mantra of abortion and gay marriage, to be protected at all costs. Those who wanted radical change were branded as enemies. I suspect that white liberals are fearful that the beginning of real change might be the beginning of the end of white privilege and I don't think they want to give it up.

President Obama has now been reelected, we shall see if the Black community fails to hold him accountable to our community who remains at the bottom of the well. Hopefully we have learned that in the final analysis we are alone.   

My Toiling for democracy, Chicago Style/ Bridgeport/ Galatoire's Restaurant/ Chicken Clemenceau

 For the last two and a half months, I’ve been toiling for "democracy", Chicago style.

Admittedly, I was able to quickly replenish my educational, Midwest escape funds, with a bit for a mini vacation, by humbling myself in service of those who divide and keep my community dependent. While my closets friends celebrated my "powerful position".

When I started, “my” team distrusted me as I did them. Until they saw I was the more disciplined, to the point were I got called in by our superior for leaving a status report at his office and c.c.-ing them via email. Smiling, he said "son this aint college, we don’t write, we discuss face to face, like men.”

As, the man alone on the ground, I worked harder than them and after a while they had no problem admitting this. I learned to trust them, to get what I needed to set up polling places  “walking-around” operations and, the most challenging, a monitoring system.  Because the real bosses don’t want to be played by no brown natives. And when I needed security, it arrived quickly.

I proved myself.  No cash disappeared, no double-dealings and, I was reliable. A real worker my supervisor called me. The mistakes I made amused him, earning me nick names like The priest, professor, scooter, and my favorite, Baby

Adlai (Stevenson). And, I only made these mistakes once.

Chinese Teen brutally Beaten and robbed in Bridgeport. The Ring Leader was the son
of a Cook County Sheriff

The most interesting dynamic was “my” team, Bridgeport's next generation of leadership; a fireman and a cop leap frogging up their ranks, and a city hall worker already slated for elected office. They had known each other since the sandbox.

 This was their first big test to see if they could handle themselves politically outside "the neighborhood".  First, they were uncomfortable dealing with the colorful Black west side denizens and were reliant on me. I had a previous strong history on the westside. But with this, I was just freelancing for a check. they were proving themselves to show they could run the "business", as they called it. 

Out of respect for me we started meeting at a certain all Black bar on the westside to go over our numbers and goals instead of their "neighborhood" bar after a drunk racist bumped into me twice, every time apologizing by saying "sorry Mr. Obama". When he bumped me a third time, I politely stood up and said "third time's a charm". He got in my face saying I couldn't take a joke. I looked to the cop who finally began to rise. But before he even got up,  the drunk was quickly being escorted ( screaming that this was his neighborhood) out the bar by an off duty sergeant. The sergeant passed us on the way back to his seat, looked at the cop and said directly to him “they gave you the badge now be the badge” The cop said “yes sir” clearly chastised. The fireman told me who the sergeant was later. just because I asked him.  

Besides for that we never mentioned that night as we found our rhythm in a large and unpredictable community with lots of players known and unknown, so much so that our supervisor named us the Westside Barbershop Quartet. Then they started inviting me to stuff. A touch foot ball game that was way to early on a Sunday and in Bridgeport.  Whenever I joked about the dangerousness of Bridgeport for a Black man, they joked about the white sportscaster who was beat up in Bridgeport too. Then the cop told me all I had to do is show his card to police or simply use his name with any of the neighborhood toughs as they have close community.  I just smiled and said I prefer not to be behind enemy lines even with a hall pass.

Then it was a bachelor's party at a strip club with free drinks. The only thing I had to pay for were my own lap dances. I declined not mentioning that I don’t do strip clubs. Then came the basement porker game. I declined because I don’t play cards. I also kept picturing the movie "Good Fellas" where the guy walks down to the basement expecting a party, only to get executed by the guy behind him.

When I turned down that invitation, the cop said that I didn’t want to hang out with them because they were from Bridgeport. So with out thinking, I invited them over to my house for dinner, cigars, and scotch, when the polls closed on election night to listen to the early returns. I didn’t think they would accept, but they immediately did.

 So I got cigars, scotch, and spent three days wondering what to cook. I knew that they annually went to New Orleans for Mardi Grass. New Orleans had been our first bonding moment during our first ackward lunch in Bridegport, which our supervisor mandated for us to “get to know” each other. I wanted to go to Chinatown, where I knew I’d be safe. They all voted for a Bridgeport restaurant, damn well knowing my feelings. Our supervisor shrugged his shoulders, and said “sorry kid, I’m promoting democracy and you guys are a team. I flat out objected when they wanted to meet in the evening, and the supervisor sided with me, but still chided me by saying I had better things to do with all those Hollywood people in Logan Square.

 I decided on a dish called Chicken Clemenceau, a famous Creole-French classic.  I chose it because the cop majored in U.S. history and was interested in World War II.  Chicken Clemenceau is named after the French political leader, George Clemenceau, who saved the French from defeat in WWI by forging unity between the Allies, for the first time in history, under one supreme commander, which is what also won the WWII.

Today Chicken Clemenceau is an endangered dish. It used to be served in all the most elite restaurants in Nola, but now at best appears during the colder months. However, at Galatoire's Restaurant in the French Quarter, it's still one of the most popular dishes since 1920.

Galatoire's Restaurant is legendary in Nola, established in 1905. Before 1999 it refused reservations so patrons stood  in lines that snaked down Bourbon Street, with no exceptions. Galatoire's actually publicized a true demonstrate of acceptable behavior, citing a busy Friday when then President Ronald Reagan placed a called to the restaurant for U.S. Senator Bennett Johnston, who was inline waiting for a table. Senator Johnston stepped inside took the call and returned to his place in line. 

I was unable to find any connection between Clemenceau and New Orleans accepted that the dish is a hodgepodge of the most unlikely ingredients, canned peas, chicken, fried potatoes, garlic, mushrooms, artichoke harts and ham, I used bacon because I don’t like ham.  I thought this dish highly symbolic of us.

Either this dish would be truly amazing or horrid and who better else to test it on than three dudes from Bridgeport?

It was a deep evening. I'm skilled in the kitchen, but I cook for either women, groups of good friends, or family. I've never cooked for a group of white young politicians who I was still deeply weary of and deeply divided because of race, from Bridgeport no the less.

But I’ve learned the hard way. Life can bring us to places where we never wanted or thought we would be. But they are crossroads that we can capitalize on if we put the effort in. And for some of us, especially during these time, certainties are few, so we need to advantage when they present themselves.

When they arrived and saw my global home with African masks on the walls, lot's of art, books, globes and cacti every were, they were silent, which I broke by saying, I take it this isn’t what you expected. The Fireman who spoke less than all of them and is the youngest said, “I expected at least a Michael Jordan Poster.  I told him I was a Knicks Fan.

Immediately handed me a bag. When I opened it I didn’t feel bad about cooking for them and could see they appreciated the invite. They brought a bottle of Macallan 18 ( year old) Traditional Scotch and they six Ashton Special Aged Maduro #60, Cigars which I knew out classed what I had. This was before I even checked the prices online. They left the scotch with me and the unsmoked cigars.

Dinner was quite but fun. I kept thinking of Allies negotiating after WWII, which is in a sense what we were doing, negotiating, seeing if us natural enemies born into these rolls, could be friends. I felt comfortable with them as we smoke cigars, drank scotch, and talked candidly about my former intern years ago who has brain damaged from being beating by the son of a powerful politically connected Bridgeport mobster. They know the son well. One of them said that it "fucked" them up too, and never could talk about. The boy who was most involved, beside the mobster's son, and agreed to be the main witness against him was shot to death right before the trial in a supposed robbery gone bad. Another witness who had nothing to do with the beating but was a witness, immediately fled after the shooting and turned himself in 18 months after the trial.

As I was seeing them out. I said my best friends owns a bar with in walking distance, I offered them to be my guest next time.

The fireman said next time I should come to a bar that they hang out at, in three weeks, which I agreed to do. I'm hoping it's not in Bridgeport, but if it is, I think the Bridgeport's next generation will get me in and out safety as that's what friends do.

Chauncey Devega, Black America's Blogger and Chief/ Leader of The Political Talking Nappy Heads/ Respectable Black People Past and Present.

The hard part of blogging for me is having to step away and feeling that I failed to keep my promise to grow this blog and become a better writer by being consistent. I know the only way to be a real writer is to write.

My absence wasn't long, but  it came exactly when I got an important "blog-shout -out" from Black America's "Blogger and Chief ", the irrepressible ( packing more flavor than a pack of Starbusts) Chauncey Devega, creator of the Black "pop" political blog, "Wear Are Respectable Negroes",  

http://wearerespectablenegroes.blogspot.com. 

After his mention,  my blog views jumped from 30 in one day, to 240 the next. But I've been following this dude for a while in the contextual emergence of what I  call "The Political Talking Nappy Heads" cause we got "naps", yo. 

Why else do you think Black scientists in the late 1960's invented the steel Afro-Pick? To get them naps out! 

Any way, as newspapers become further marginalized into irrelevancy by our non-reading reality TV based society, blogs are  the growing source of news and information, which is both good and bad.  Chauncey Devega is one of the positives. In fact he's so popular, he got his readers to fund his trip to a Sci-Fi convention. I attempted to poor icy green "hater-aide" on him, but he's too good of a cyber-dancer to be tagged so easily an gently exposed me for hating with cause, touché!

Any way, I've learned to play nice with my blogger elders, which has produces some amazing conversations in the gilded cyber parlor of those, upright respectable negroes. Although I'm the voice of the urban T.S. Eliot hollowed souls, "eyes you dare not meet in a dream" who dope fiend lean in front of Rorthchild's Liquors on Chicago's westside, part of the growing urban "Wasted Lands" of inner city America.

Below is the Wednesday, October 17, 2012  blog topic by Devega, my comment that started it, and an excerpt of Devega's, response.  

*warning viewer discretion is advised.  If you actually visit the sight, to read Devega's full post of October 17, beware, there is a video of a Black man cooking-up fried chicken in his drawls*  

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"Would a Member of the Black Bourgeoisie Fry Chicken in His Underwear?"

( As you can see the Post is pure Devega )  

"What does it mean to be a member of the black bourgeoisie? Is this an aspirational title? Is it measured by profession, trade, or economic resources?

I embrace the idea that we should all engage in acts of critical self-reflection when appropriate. Our conversation about Obama's performance in last night's debate where he mercilessly beat upon Mitt Romney, and the latter provided many options for a far more thorough thrashing than he received, prompted the following observation from one of our frequent commenters (the aptly named) Invisible Man:

"Our President is the manifestation of Black Bourgeoisie Politics and you are the messenger. White liberals need/ promote Black Bourgeoisie politics because it attacks (and you are a intellectual pit bull at this) Republicans and the right wing who are a direct threat to them and the small Black Bourgeoisie class."

I appreciate this formulation because 1) it strokes my ego and furthers a fiction that my commentaries are read by the gatekeepers and "powers that be" who have yet to send a brother a check; and 2) it suggests that there is a coincidence/coordination of strategy and tactics by critics in the black counter-public of the Right-wing's nefarious political agenda................continued"

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The irony is the term "respectable" is the political currency of the Black middle and Bourgeoisie class.  Devega knows this, as he knows what the term Bourgeoise means, the word was in his blog header but seems to have disappeared when I looked for it today. Devega plays coy a lot, just as he pretends that his he isn't a political media go-to source to inflame and confound the right wingers, while doing what would be described by my Aunt Mert as "stirring some stuff up and keeping it going"

But I do think the word "Respectability" is worthy of some time as Devega uses it for a reason.

Respectability, as it relates to Black people, historically arose to demonstrate to white America that recently freed Black people, respected, accepted, and shared white political and social values post-reconstruction, and would behave to uphold them. 

This included holding no grudges from slavery. Whites generally considered slavery a best-practice for civilizing Black people, and  were not apologetic for it.  Respectability was also Black acceptance of the widespread violence, intimidation, fraud, and white supremacists violence, that reversed all gains of the Reconstruction Era, returning Black people to poverty, exploitation, disenfranchisement and Jim Crow segregation, as the only way for both races to live in "harmony" in America, as a large segment of whites wanted Blacks completely banished from America by violence if necessary.   

The politics of respectability was also about Black people countering widely disseminated myths created by white people that Black people were naturally sexually- therefore a constant threat to white women and daughters-deviant, shiftless, and criminal minded. And equally important, that "uppity" northern Black's demand for equality was a real threat to the southern way of life, already uphinged by the the liberation of Blacks in the first place. 

It could be easily argued that the politics of respectability was an important survival mechanism during a time of complete white terror and domination. Black towns were burned to the ground and it’s citizens lynched for the smallest sign of “disrespect” toward white a person, such as not stepping aside fast enough to allow a white person (especially a women) to pass first on a public street. 

Robert Norrell makes a strong case for this in his biography of  Booker T. Washington entitled Up from History The Life of Booker T. Washington.

The problem with Black respectability today is, for the Black middle class, it’s still anchored in a dark space of deep historical psychological damaged, like the need of a poor Black child

to kill for the most expensive pair of gym shoes or a poor Black congregation to make sure their pastor has the latest BMW car. 

The symbolism of President Obama and his family have become the greatest manifestation of the yearning for Black Respectability amongst the Black middle and bourgeoisie class, so much that in order not to "tarnish" the image, they unlike every other interest group, have asked for nothing, nor voiced complaints when the needs of our community got overlooked or harmed by the President's policies. They even allowed the Black community to be used by President Obama as political fodder for white votes and respect that he never even got. In short we have been in an abusive relationship with the First Black President yet The Black middle and bourgeoisie class continue not to complain, yet attack Black progressives when we do.

Finally I'm coming out the closet. Yes I eat Chitlins, and I'm Proud!

A few days ago, October 11th, marked "International Coming Out Day", celebrating brave individuals who publicly identify as either Lesbian, Transgendered, Bisexual or Gay.  I'm happy for them.

 I am especially proud of those in the Black community who participated or embraced a friend or loved one who came out. 
Still, too many Down-Low Brothers are spreading the AIDS Virus because of cowardliness, but also due to the Black Community's ramped and childish homophobia. I continue to make amends for my previous acts of stupid homophobia, by aggressively denouncing any homophobic word or actions on the spot.  

But tonight, Im gonna do a little "coming out" of my own. 

I eat Chitterlings. 

Black folk call them chitlins and I'm cooking up a pot ( to be served with grits) as I type this confession. 

"Chitlins" have always had a dual relationship in America, especially Black America,  yet animal innards remain a delicacy world wide, from Asia to Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. Haggis is the national dish of Scotland, which is innards stuffed with sheep heart, liver and lungs. The finest French restaurants serve tripe, (andouillettes), which is also their name in New Orleans. The name Chitterlings is itself a middle high German word.

 In America, chitlins were relegated to Blacks during chattel slavery, and like the blues, we made something positive of it. Black captives preformed every act of hard labor for white society,  including killing hogs. In the cooler weather around the holidays, the removal and preparations of chitlins became both ritual and a delicacy of the Black captives.  One of the endless horrors of chattel slavery was the miserly food rations provided to the Black captives.   To survive, after toiling from sun up to sun down in the fields, they had to grow their own gardens, fish, and trap wild game, or starve. After killing the hog, they could take only the chitlins. After the rest of the meat was delivered to the white captors, the chitlins were cooked in a large kettle over fire and eaten out doors. The cleaning took hours, so stories were told, along with singing and dancing.

After emancipation, chitlins became problematic. More Blacks were against eating them, especially those who moved north.  Chitlins became a symbol of the humiliations, horrors, and suffering of chattel slavery, and poverty afterwords.  But during the Great Depression, rural white southerners began to eat them. Some openly, enjoying them in groups at barns and gas station garages. The smell haunts houses long after the savories are gone. They even formed clubs, like the Royal Order of Chitlin Eaters of Nashville and The Happy Chitlin Eaters of Raleigh. In some places, they took on names like Southern Oysters.

  Black people,  however continued to use the term pejoratively.  During Jim Crow segregation, Black northern musicians and comics toured "The Chitlin Circuit", which were southern predominantly Black owned clubs and juke joints that generally were little more than shacks in tin can alley communities, that sold rock gut spirits, beer, and soul food, including chitlins. Traveling the Chitlin Circuit was perilous. Most hotels, motels, and restaurants refused service to Blacks. Whites were also particularly hostile to Black outsiders, branding them as part of the civil rights movement. The goal of these artists was to work the Chitlin Circuit long enough to be discovered by some of the bigger clubs in Harlem that had all Black musicians, but were also segregated.   

When I was a kid my Aunt Mert cooked chitlins at her home in the Englewood neighborhood. My mother who grow up at the end of the very same block, joined in the preperation. My Grandfather who loved chitlins still lived there, along with my uncle, who did not.  And all of the Drakes, Aunt Mert, Uncle Mike, their one daughter and three boys, loved my Grandfather who they called Mr. Palmer. But none of them, except my Aunt, ate chitlins so they had to put up with the smell for food they didn't like. They all therefore left the house for the day.

Red bucket white top that required 5 hours of cleaning

In those days, chitlins came mostly uncleaned in a standard white top red buck, took around three hours to cook, and five to clean. They had be cut into pieces and the waste scrubbed off each piece least germs unleash a plethora of sicknesses. I loved being at my aunts house. As a baby, while my mother worked, she use to watch over me along with her youngest son/my cousin Markus, who died all to young before she passed, years ago.

As my Aunt Mert and my Mom cleaned and cooked the chitlins, I would listen to my aunt- who did most of the talking- gossip and reminisces  about "down south". My Aunt would laugh, play music, sing and dance. I remember her crooning to my mother, "Baby I Need Your Loving" by the Four Tops. Mert was a stout and tall women with a marvelous voice who could light up the dance floor, as she did that fall day on the linoleum kitchen floor.

As they cooked I would also walk down the street to explore my Grandfathers, old, dark, junkie, cigar smoke filled, and mysterious house, that my mother, other aunt, and uncles grew up in.  My Grandfather did not like a lot of people including members of his own family, but he loved and doted on me. He always had candy at the ready, although some might be stale, but I never minded. And he loved chitlins

Although I only had them once a year, my father tried hard to stop me from eating chitlins. One year, after a long lecture about how bad they were, he offered me twenty dollars if I never ate them again. I asked If I didn't eat them next year, could I have the twenty dollars?  He said,  I might eat them the year after, so I had to wait till I was twenty-one. I wasn't even thirteen so I refused. When my mother and I left him, she still never made chitlins.

Chitlins are still a stigma. I never admitted liking them, until now. Yet when I graduated from college, I made them. I was dating a women from a Black Muslim background and knew not to ask her to join me. So one Saturday, I brought the red bucket and frankly almost gave up after the first four hours. I knew at that time that my Aunt's preparation of chitlins for us was a labor of love and probably related to her growing up in Alabama.

What I didn't know was, a chitlin revolution had occurred. The red bucket of chitlins are about six bucks. Now machine cleaned chitlins are available for eight dollars, requiring minimal cleaning.  Hand cleaned chitlins sale for  thirteen dollars, requiring no cleaning. The Red Bucket Option has far more chitlins, but for safety and connivence, I go with the hand cleaned. Just to be safe I still go over them twice.

Only My mother knew of my secrete.

In Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man, published in 1952, there is a potent scene about the complexity of chitlins in Black America. After being unfairly dismissed from an all Black southern agricultural college by the haughty but influential school principal Dr. Bledsoe ( modeled after Booker T. Washington),  the novels protagonist, fantasizes about getting revenge by exposing a secrete chitlin passion,

"I saw myself advancing upon Bledsoe . . . and suddenly whipping out a foot or two of chitterlings, raw, uncleaned, and dripping sticky circles on the floor as I shake them in his face, shouting: "Bledsoe, you're a shameless chitterling eater! I accuse you of relishing hog bowels! Ha! And not only do you eat them, you sneak and eat them in private when you think you're unobserved! You're a sneaking chitterling lover!"

My chitlins are ready now, and the grits will take another few minutes. Once again I am now publicly coming out.

 I. Love. Chitlins.

  

I also love them because eating them connects me to my ancestors   who endured the unspeakable acts of chattel slavery and as a race struggled through it. I am proud to eat what they ate. I am proud that my Aunt Mertha demonstrated her deep love for me and my Grandfather by cooking them when they required eight hours of labor, and included my Mother in this ritual. I am proud that I could feel how deeply my Grandfather, who grew up desperately poor, loved me and was proud that I shared his love for chitlins.

 My Aunt Mert and Grandfalther are no longer in physical form. But by partaking in this ritual, I can feel strongly connected to them. 

I am blessed in this way.