If you aren’t familiar with it, Black Greek culture is stunning to witness. The energy, the fervency, the service! 🙌🏽 Some of our brightest and best Kings & Queens hail from these organizations, and they continue to produce greatness with sound principles and esteemed countenances. They are due honor. So, we give it to em!
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, established at Cornell University in December 1906, is the first Black intercollegiate fraternity (the first to have more than one college chapter). With December 4th marking the celebration of their 113th Founder's Day celebration and this being my first post, I found it only befitting to start at the beginning...the letter “A”...the first of all...the oldest and the coldest.
My father wouldn’t stand for me deeming another man favorite over him (he’s my best friend, so I allow that crap🤨), so I must -publicly- say that I selected my “second” favorite Alpha Man as Dr. Cornel West. Go ‘head & look him up because I purposely didn’t post a picture 🙃. You know his face! Trust me. And you should.
Aight, his background is pretty cool. Dr. West (born 1953 in Tulsa, OK 😱 Not too far from my family’s home -Muskogee, OK), is an American philosopher, Academic, educator, activist and advocate for social equality. After graduating Harvard in 1973, he went on to earn a PhD in Philosophy from Princeton. To truly be impressed by the man, though, is to indulge in his teaching on -no...not Bernie- but justice = love, and inclusion.
But with love and justice come truth☝🏽. Y’all remember truth. It’s like a dilation of the pupil -uncomfortable and quite inconvenient, but also necessary if you enjoy clarity. In being a carrier of the torch of truth, Dr. West wrote in the Epilogue of his 1993 ‘Race Matters’ that...
“...if not for the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be 'white' —they would be only Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and others engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity.”
America, real America, is [said to be] and always will be a melting pot of sorts. 🤔 But who tf you think stirred that sucka?! Black hands took great part in making manifest the visions of the glorious South. Without black slaves, there would be no Southern culture and hardly any (white) American culture to speak of. Consciously, they made this contribution in the forced yet impactful works of their hands -gathering together that which was familiar, and that which wasn’t to create something palatable. Subconsciously, they made this effort in giving (at this time) now White Americans -once Europeans- a unified, common identity and common amnesia of their own differences to focus on their....differences...from the Negro.
“Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of Black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the ‘outsider.’ Many whites could look at the social position of blacks and feel that color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not American.”
Ralph Ellison, “What America Would Be Like without Blacks”
Dr. West teaches that structure and values go hand-in-hand. The structure here being an American identity and Southern culture, and the values being social traditions & customs. Grasping that, we see clearly through records of what slavery entailed that Black folk were undoubtedly responsible for constructing & sustaining both a new world and a set of traditions -in behavior, methodology, etc.- which had never been before. Meaning that everyone contributed some aspect of our now moderately shared Southern culture; everybody (settlers & slaves alike) brought something to the potluck, but you know who actually set the table 😏.
In lieu of that, Southern cuisine is nothing short of a conundrum of European, West African (also quasi-Caribbean in gulf coast states, especially Louisiana & Florida), and Native American cooking methods & ingredients pieced together then performed regularly by Black hands.
Soul Food then, being a subcategory to Southern Cuisine, is Black’s own little corner in the kitchen we fixed up. In its essence, it regards any foodway or food item influenced or inspired by African diaspora or Black innovation (presenting afresh that which is familiar). While most southern and popular American dishes are not native to African culture nor the Black-American culture, some of what we know about them and how we prepare them are. African slaves are responsible for having pieced together, stone-by-stone, various cultures and culinary concepts to create whats oft on our tables even now. In this chapter, we’ll explore a bit of that ingenuity in dissecting a plate containing a few of my favorite dishes.
Until next time, I challenge you to live good, to do good and to eat good. But above all else, from deep in my soul, I wish you happy feelin's. See ya in the kitchen!
-Julian B.