August 12, 2020 • 47 mins
What do chefs and the food industry owe black Americans? Tom Colicchio talks with chef and historian Michael Twitty about the effects of racist systems on American foodways and how food and culinary history could be addressed through the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Tom Collikio, and this is Citizen Chef. On
this podcast, we're looking at policy and ships in society
through the food system. This season, we're going over the
basics of the food system and how food policy affects
our daily lives. So far, we've talked to experts on immigration, slavery,
on the high seas, and food assistance programs. In this episode,
(00:20):
we're talking about an almost hundred and fifty year old idea,
and that's reparations. I'm Italian American. My grandfather came here
in nineteen o three when he was three years old.
My grand my great grandmother father brought him over and
my great grandfather went back and forth and made a
few trips while he was actually building a house um
(00:44):
back in the Lazza, Italy, where where my family is from,
my father's family is from. And now now I gotta
I think if if my ancestors were forced to come
to this country an enslaved, and when they were freed,
they were must forty acres of fertile soil somewhere, and
I knew that that going back in my life, in
(01:07):
my family, we would have been able to build some
sort of wealth based on these forty acres. If it
stayed in my family for a couple of generations, this
would have been how my family built wealth. And if
that were the case and it were stripped away from
them after four dred years of slavery, Jim Crow laws,
and redlining in other forms of discrimination, you better believe
(01:27):
I would take this personally, and you better believe this
is something that my family would live with, and this
is something that my family would think that possibly we
should we should get something from the government. We talked
about reparations. I think too often people think it's just
a pay out, but but what it really is is
repairing a relationship. And that's the relationship between African Americans
(01:52):
who were cheated out of land that was promised to them.
How do you how do you repair that that relationship?
How do you you know, men, those wounds that that's
that's what we're talking about here. How do you repair relationship?
You know? How do you make things right after years
centuries of getting them wrong? And what does a true
apology look like? So so, why why are we talking
reparations on on our food podcast? For a lot of reasons,
(02:16):
And I think we have a confluence of of three
different things happening. Obviously with the death of George Floyd
and the and the protests that we're seeing in the
Black Lives Matter movement really sort of you know, being
front and center in our news cycle. And then in
my opinion, a part of where we're gonna end up
with the movement is looking at reparations. So reparation is
(02:37):
becoming also prevalent in our news cycle, um, and I
believe in election it's going to play a pretty important
role as well. However, because the effects of racist systems
can be found in every crevice of American life, we
have to find where reparations are required in our corner
of the world. Well, my corner of the world is food.
(02:58):
So today we'll be talking about what chefs and the
food industry a black Americans. And because we are talking
about land, and because we're mostly talking about farmland, and
because our podcast has to do with food and food sovereignty,
well this this kind of runs headlong into our conversations
around food and around current topics. We're gonna jump right
(03:21):
in here. I had a conversation with chef and historian
Michael Twitter, and here we go. We we had planned
on doing an episode on reparations, uh, going back when
we first you know, started conceiving of the podcast. Um,
and obviously it takes a very different meaning right now,
I imagine. And that's why that's why I say I'm
(03:42):
nervous having this conversation is because um, so often, uh,
you know, white people like me get it wrong. I'm
not asking from a position of hey, I need help
help me as a white person understand this, but there's
so much we don't understand. And when reading through your
book and reading through your blog, um, man, I can't
walk a mile in your shoes. I can't walk in
(04:04):
your steps because there's there's too much history there, there's
too much pain there. But I can walk alongside you
and say, hey, I'm here to do whatever the hell
I can to to to to to to make things
better and to be an ally. But man, this is
it's really fraud. Um. But listen, let's just jump in,
because why the hell not? So I do want to
start by by asking a question, and it's actually a
(04:28):
couple of lines from your from your book, um, and
it says I think it's in the intro and says
I began to wonder if I ever really would be
able to locate myself in human experience? What good is
it to learn the flow of human history and to
speak of the dead if their stories don't speak to you?
What if food history and facts figures and flashpoints? What
good is your own position as a culinary historian if
(04:50):
you can't find yourself in the narrative of your food story,
and if you don't know who you are? So, Michael,
in your in your journey, Um, who who did you
find out? Who? Who are you? Who? What is your
role here? What is as a historian, as a as
a as a chef, as a as a cook, as
a someone who writes about food in a way where
(05:11):
you cannot help but want to cook with you alongside
you taste the food that you're cooking, and and and
understand your experience. So so who who are you? Um?
You know there was the the ah pooh, May he
rest in peace and power, um one said on The
Simpsons In response to Homer, Um pooh, how are you?
(05:33):
He says, I haven't slept. I was kept up by
the house of my ancestors. That's that's that's my life, um.
But it's also the new connection with other people. Um.
I think I joked with you when we met that
you know, I'm like one percent Italian and I and
I figured out how that was. One of my family's
(05:56):
uh wife folks was part Italian and part English. And um,
that kind of like global feeling that you get once
you do the whole DNA thing and discover those things
in your family tree. Really it's more than just a
percentage of the paper, you know that. And understanding that
(06:16):
I am as an African American, I am valid and
affirmed as I am. I think that I Um, I'm
very proud to be of African descent, and I'm very
I'm uplifted by the trips that I've made to West
Africa at this point of made um seven journeys and
eight countries. Um. But I guess the point is is
(06:39):
that I didn't realize that we you know, we we
get we get talked about. Really, you know, every time
something happens with us, someone has some smart ship to say,
so he's my friend. Somebody has something nasty to say
it's a qualifier, and I'm like, you know what, No,
we're we're an exceptional people and we're very proud people
(07:01):
among the many black people of the Black Atlantic UM.
And I guess you know, when I started out, the
reason why I said that quote in the book was
because I was in a field that was mostly white women,
white women of some privileged wealth and capital. Um. One
of the females. Definitely, every time I walk in the room,
(07:23):
I'm the raising and the coogle. You know, I'm just
not I'm just not in the majority. And then you know,
they would write about these people in history in a
sort of titillating fun way and never really placed himself.
And I said, that must be liberating to be able
to write about something and cook something and live something
(07:44):
and not wonder why am I here? Why am I
in this space doing what I'm doing? And then of
course there was this constant theme of the black cook
and the black cook during slavery. I've always been fascinated
by that. My ancestors from that time period are really
in me and my African It's really calling to me
because I guess I felt like, no, I didn't feel
(08:04):
like I knew they were being forgotten, nameless, you know,
slapped on boxes, um, given these monikers, and then they
were gonna fade away. And then you know, in a
space between white guilt and black trauma, you know, and
that's just what it is. So I started to decide
(08:25):
I'm gonna document this stuff. I'm gonna go through it.
At first it was like paper plates and plastics, booze
and stuff from the grocery store. And then it was like, no,
you can't even be rolling like that. You gotta you
really gotta really do the historical interpreter thing. And then
a couple of years ago, I was just like, Okay,
you can't just talk about the food and a sort
(08:45):
of like everybody else who you're talking about. You have
to you have to do it. You have to translate
what the folk culture into a language that culinary people
can understand so that they can really grasp what you're
trying to pass on. Otherwise they're not gonna get it.
And they can they can perceive, you know what I'm saying.
It could perceive it, but it's not the same language. Yeah,
(09:05):
everybody wants to tell their stories through food and they
have to communicate. And because that's that, that's the story
that people want to hear. They don't want to know
about a pretty a pretty plate of food. They want
to know the history behind it. They want to understand
why you're doing what you do, why you're cooking what
you're cooking, and so so yeah, trying to understand the
food that you you grew up cooking beside your your
(09:28):
grandmother and your mother, um, and then taking a deeper
dive into why those I mean, the story in your
book of of Homecoming, I thought, I thought that was,
you know, this idea of abundance and this food that
you're going to enjoy it it's your food, and it's
it's it's food that you dream of and it's it's
food that that means so much, UM, and just the
(09:51):
idea where you're going there and you're with your people
and you're having the time of your life and it's
all about food. And you know, I tell those stories
when I when I about growing up Italian and how
I've realized at a certain point that that's not necessarily
what's on the plate, but it brings people together, right.
And then once you're together, then you have those discussions
and whether you're talking politics or whether you're gossip. You
(10:12):
know this family gossip there you know, going back and
forth and and so you know, this is what it does.
And so you know, having that is is you know,
it is part of history, it is part of who
you are. So how what what made you start sort
of taking that deeper dive to to go to Africa
to really sort of finding um, the the I always say,
(10:36):
you know, when I went to Europe to learn how
to you know, cook out the French food or Italian food. Uh,
you know what I learned there was why not so
much what but why why you cook? Why certain things
are what they are? What? What did you what did
you find on those trips? I guess I guess my
word to be who who? I like it? You know who?
I was like, um, so yeah, you get there and
(10:58):
you see the staples and you go, I knew this
was coming, but it's nice to know with my own
two eyes and my mouth and my hands, it's all there.
But what I didn't know was how many things had
to be passed down and almost like in secret, Um,
(11:18):
the most momentous moment for me was tasting on my hand. Okay,
so like like I'm a I'm a I'm a dude.
So there I'm not the I'm not the cook women
and the cooks unless you roast une barbecue meat roast meat.
It's all the women thinks. So I'm going in and
(11:38):
these women are looking at me like weird, like why
is he even in our space? And so I took
the spoon and then I took the sauce or whatever,
and I put it on my hands and I licked
it off, and they all sort of getting very agitated
and very excited, and like hey, they started patting me
on the back and and hugging me and gissing me
(11:59):
on the cheek, and I'm like, what did I do?
I just thought there was taste of food though, And
then I said it and I started coming out of
my mouth, said the way my grandmother and the mother
taught me. And then I realized they were excited because
they realized that I had been taught the proper way
of generation to generation to generations. So you know, they're
(12:22):
like Africa. You look, you look your hand and looking
back your hand, and that was they were like, Okay,
he's not a black European from America. That's how they
think of us until proven otherwise. And then I was like,
oh my god, yeah, he's one of us. He's one
of us, one of us. He knows what's up um.
And that's that's then so they answered is who are they?
(12:42):
And who am i? Who am i? And then's this
you know, it's sort of technique culture of food. It's
more like it's more like, um, the circumstances and when
you eat the food, the season you eat the food,
the spiritual occasion, um. The feeling, the feeling around the
(13:02):
food is more important the process of making it. And
so that energy that you put into it, that soul
that you put into it, is a key ingredient. This
the the area. You know. You know, someone who is
a peaceable person doesn't grow your peppers in Africa. M
(13:24):
someone who is like from birth aligned with you know,
the deities that control war and blood and anger, that's
the one who should grow the peppers. You know. That's
that's It's like everything is congenital, everything is you know,
and also from heaven and so there's that and it's
just like, um, there's the rhythm and it kinesthetics like
(13:46):
food is. You know, your body goes into it. So
we joke around and saying in in Southern talk, someone
put their foot in it. M hm, Well that ship
is literal in Africa because when you make the locals
being paced there like it's like it's like in Italy,
you know, the stopping of the grapes, likeing ting tinging,
And so so I listened, So I started so I
stopped looking for techniques and I started listening for the
(14:08):
sound of it, the feeling in the body, the feeling
in the room, and and and that really got to me.
That made me understand why I didn't. I didn't always attach.
There's the color of the food and the color of
the ingredients and and just all of that, all that
mattered so much more than the process. Although that's definitely there.
(14:30):
It's very deep, and it's there, and there's things you
gotta know. But I guess for me, another part for
me was just like I was, I was seeing things
in reality that I had read about in books from
two to three years ago. And the fact that people
preferred to eat food cooked over the wood fire with
(14:52):
the with the three rocks. That's there's no such thing
as let's you know, modernizes food. It's almost like you
have to eat the food that was eaten at the
time our antestors left the continent got it. So how
did that change you as a cook? Oh? You know
what I said, I'll tell people all the time that
(15:13):
to be black American, the African American and go to
Africa is to suddenly drop all the awkwardness that she
felt about being black in America because it because it's
because it's you. The loudness, the spiciness, the greasiness, the fat,
frying and air, I mean, all that stuff, all the
all the it's queerness. Okay, I'm a I'm a queer
(15:36):
person because I'm because I'm gay. But I'm also a
queer person because in relationship to normative whiteness, being black
is queer in America, like being Italian was queer. It was,
and sometimes there is queer in America, you know, And
I want to specify that for everybody. Queer in no
sense means not normative and relationship to power. So when
(15:58):
you grow up here black, you feel out of Sometimes
you you're made to feel out of your skin. Doesn't
matter how much America appropriates blackness or uses blackness, black bodies,
black labor, black and black entertainment for whatever, you're still
you're still an outside. You're still an other. And so
you made me feel like you never quite fit, quite
(16:19):
fit in, but over there nine in the time, especially
with the food culture, you feel as a Black American
that you don't feel awkward anymore. You feel natural. I
can hear the assholes already saying we'll go back. I
can hear I can hear it. I gotta answer for him.
I gotta answer for him. Most of them that say
(16:41):
that they're already pardon Negro, they've already they've already incorporated blackness, africanness,
and coloredness and all of all of our all of
our stuff into their life already, so they can go
back with me. You know. That's what that was with
Dick Gregory said that he's He said, you haven't met
a drug white supremacist, and then he said I have.
(17:04):
He said, go back to Africa and take me with you.
So there you go. Yeah. So so you you come
back and you decide that the best place to to
to to apply your craft is on plantations. Yeah, could
take me, take me through that process. Okay, So I
(17:26):
had already, I had already been doing that kind of work.
But the problem was, I never forget when I first started.
Someone who I will not name said to me um
At a museum food person said to me, well, I
don't know anything about Africa. I said, We're in the South.
You are right down the road from where slave ships
(17:48):
actually came into North America. How could you not know this?
And I just took a deep breath and said, stop,
don't get mad, just do the work. Just do the
am work. And so I started with documenting every single
ingredient that would have been used on any plantation anywhere
in North America, north American mainland, and documenting where it
(18:11):
came from the whole spreadsheet. Then I was like, Okay,
I gotta get the clothes, and I got get the
utensil and learn how to use the one, how to
take care of them, um, all of that, and then
it was about the feeling. What does it what does
it mean? And I'm actually tom I'm actually glad. I've
had negative experiences that that taught me put me in
the right mindset of just like this is not easy,
(18:34):
this is not cute, this is not whatever. Like one
time in the book I talked about how like I
was at um Strafford Hall Plantation, which was the home
plantation of the leaves in Virginia, and it was dark
and there was a big crowd for plantation Christmas. So
they had me there cooking and talking about the food.
And it was this huge pot and it was really heavy.
I mean those pots get to like sixty seventy pounds.
(18:56):
And it was full of water, water was hot, and
the fire was hot and it was dark. And I
spilled some of the water and people laughed at me,
and I got immediately angry, and it was and then
I was like, I was like, y'all realized that this
was back in the day. I could have given I
could have gotten severely punished for even making having a
human accident a mistake. But then for them, it was
(19:20):
laughing at me because oh, this black I thinks he
knows everything and he's stumbling in the kitchen. Well, you
try to be on the brick floor on for for
twelve hours, you know, with flat feet, cooking and then
you know. But but even more than that, people come
to the kitchen to be like, oh, I know what
it's like to be um a slave. I'm an evangelical
Christian in America. Oh god, you know, I think. Yeah,
(19:44):
I think you also point out the book that that
not only were people punished, but people were putting ovens
for doing this. Yes, in the Caribbean and Martinique. A
cook was actually was put in the bake oven, thrown
in the bake oven and murdered because he burned a cake.
And the mistress of the plantation sat through dinner smiling
and laughing and getting drunk and then showed her guests
(20:07):
the skeleton. And I mean this wasn't of course, this
wasn't an everyday occurrence, but the cruelty was the point.
It was constant. But to go, but to go from
there to Africa was always my dream. But but because
I wanted people to understand something, I guess our point.
My point is not that everything was African. But you know,
(20:31):
Herman Taislings is something very important almost hundred years ago.
He says, everything that is born Africa remains African in spirit.
And to get to to get to the other side
of the ocean, you gotta understand, Yes, there were European
and Native American and other elements in the cooking, but
the hands of the black cook were the catalyst. The
mind of the Black book was the catalyst. And you
(20:53):
have but people don't even think Africa has a mind.
There's an intellect, just like there is an Italian cooking
at French looking and I just want to be able
to be that translator. Third, through historical documents, through lived experience,
through people's memories, that that art and philosophy came to
(21:13):
America through food, not just the taste. Mm hmm, Yeah,
we'll be right back. Hey, this is Citizen Chef and
I'm Tom Colochio. Let's pick up where we left off
in my conversation with chef and author Michael Twitter. We're
talking about how the question of reparations in America intersect
(21:33):
with policy and cultural food ways, especially in the South.
What is the debt and how do we pay it back?
Just from a food standpoint and from a land standpoint,
what do reparations look like? Um? Uh, you know, I
know HR forty is is just set up to study it.
Um If if you were put on that panel to
(21:55):
study reparations through food lens, what what does that look
like to you? Oh? First of all, we have to
correct the violence of hunger, the violence of wasted food.
We have to correct the violence of food inequality. We
have to correct the violence of not having land. Why
why do you refer to as I understand, but just
(22:16):
for the listener, why do you refer to as violence, um,
because these are ways to keep people. Um, it's it's
it's a passive aggressive form of war. I mean, you know,
everybody knows about the Black Panthers and it's oh, it's
scary black panthers, the scatherl scary Black panthers. Yea, they
were scary because they're giving out food right exactly exactly.
(22:38):
And then you know, I don't know if you know
about the fake the fake coloring books, the fake coloring
books that the CIA put out. This is not this is,
by the way, y'all, This is not me looking at
some something crazy. This is these are actual things that exist. Um,
fake coloring books. For the said, look at these coloring books.
These black kids are getting with the with the Black Panthers,
(23:01):
and they emphasize the food program. That was one of
the things that JACKO Hoover and his and his cronies
thought was one of the worst things the Black Panthers did.
It wasn't feed up feed hungry people. You feed kids.
Right before they realized kids were going to school without
getting meal, and that's why they started doing it. And
that's that's dangerous for some reason. Yes, it's dangerous. Because
(23:24):
the hand that feeds you, m m, you don't bite
the hand that feeds you. You Also, we also know,
now you and I both know that a child that
is nourished can think better, can go to school and
achieve an education. Better kid doesn't have to worry about
their mind, isn't all worrying about what next meal is
gonna come from or how where they gonna live tomorrow.
(23:47):
And so it's that kind of thing, that kind of power.
I mean, it's like this, and Um, when I was
two thousand twelve, when I did the Southern's Comfort Door,
I went to the River Road African American Museum and
there's this plaque on a wall from nineteen twelves celebrating
this community of black Creole farmers that took the share
croppers in the area and said, look y'all don't have
(24:09):
to go into debt going eating you know, the plantation
owners fooding, buying rashes from him. You can get good
quality food from our from our fields without shame. Come
and get it, and we'll all farm the land together.
And all I could think was they answered the question
of what of how to tackle a food desert in
nineteen twelve without black Twitter, without Facebook, without Instagram, without Snapchat.
(24:34):
And they did it in the face of the clan,
the nights of the white Chamelia and air at law
enforcement and the plantation aristocracy which still existed. So what
are we doing wrong? There's a question, I asked myself.
Another element of reparations in this area is education. Why
(24:54):
is it? Where where is the culinary school that has
has a two semester class, not one, a two semester
class on African African foods of the world on the
continent and then the diaspora. Because we know, you and
I both know every time they learned about Brazilian food,
Southern food, Caribbean food, they're learning about they're learning partially
(25:18):
about Africa. Why not make that a singular thing or
two partner in terms of classes. You know what I'm saying,
you do this when you do this one, I mean
it's it's to to watch to watch a black or
brown kid go to culinary school and go I didn't
learn about native food. I learned about no African food.
You know, I barely learned about Latinos food what that means?
(25:43):
And then what what what it actually is not just
the the ingredients techniques and blah blah blahah recipes. But
but you know, more than that history history, it also
means reparations, the terms of land land. Stop giving away
this damn land these developers give it to, you know,
give it to folks who want to farm and produce
(26:06):
or keep it natural. Just keep it natural because near
the part of our story, it's not just always messing
with the earth. It's also engaging with foraging, fishing, hunting,
raising livestock. It's you know, those are those are things
that preserve our culture as well as just do that.
To me, reparations looks like all of that, all of that,
(26:27):
and then more so so, it's it's completely taking back
the food system. Yes, and re africanizing it. Re africanizing
the food system. I like that, But that would that
would sound so scary to so many people. Why shouldn't
that be scary? The first things? First, I mean, I
(26:47):
want to ask anyone who's who thinks I don't know
about that should ask themselves why my last name is
Twitter and not enjoy m hm. Should ask themselves why
my beer goes out of why I'm beer in my
hair go out of my face like this and not curly.
There's so many there's so many aspects of black identity
(27:08):
in America and then and in the America's plural because
you know, we're in a ship show in Brazil, we're
in a ship showing part of the Caribbean, because we're
still in those colonial and slavery forces. Like people people
never even asked himself, what would it be like to
wake up tomorrow and not have the family name that's
been passed out in my family for that for hundreds
(27:30):
of years. What would it be like if my child
did not look like me because um of some I
was some viciousness, right, What would it be like if
if if I couldn't tell you who I was beyond
a certain point because it was taken from me. So
if I can live this life of four dredn one
(27:52):
years h you know, your your centric life, you can
you can come with me to the multimillion year old
African life and understand, Oh my god, that's part of
who we are. Yes, you know, blackness is not a bubble.
You are a part of blackness. To the same way
(28:14):
I've signed on to be part of Italian, part of Mexican,
part Chinese, part Korean, in this multicultural society we have.
If you, Tammy, if you don't understand what a bloody
gift it is to be in this global era, in
a multicultural society, you don't know how to be an American.
And it's a shame that those of us who who
(28:36):
have had the most to lose African and African and
Indigenous people have to teach that to the rest. Everybody, right,
got me preaching? And why not? I'll let that. I'll
let that set in. Uh, just think in here for
a second. Um, I want to ask you about um
(29:00):
uh again. I want to go back to your to
your book, UM the Cooking Gene and Um, there was
a quote. I'm a a fan of your your writing.
Obviously I'm a fan of what you're writing about. But
the pros itself I just found fine to be so
h it's so descriptive. Point where where when you when
you m write about your kitchen, I feel like I'm
(29:23):
sitting in your kitchen. Um, when you write about again
like homecoming, I feel I'm at that table when you
write about your experience. And this is what I love
about about your writing. I could almost put myself in
the experience. Although I know I know that I can't
get completely get there, but the writing does that, and
that's that's what good writing usually does. And so but
(29:44):
you you wrote um in your book and you were
talking about literacy um, and you were talking I think
the quote is, uh, we could write down our own stories,
we had to tell them to others, and this caused
facts and words to be bent. I wonder what our
history ever looked like if every man and woman could
have written down or passed down and written account their
all lives. Is this yeah, because you know, I'm there's
(30:05):
so many details. It's a lot of times, especially with
our food history and our culture. It's like even among
our own people, um, in America, I mean, everybody buys
into the same narrative. You could tell in thirty seconds
they came they were still in from Africa. They came
to America. The white people threw some ship at them,
(30:26):
through some slap at them. They remixed it. They were
geniuses created soul food. And that's all you need to know.
They don't know that everybody have collar greens, for example,
or that there's like sixty different type of color greens,
and that things were very regional. Hyper you know, hyper
specific to the climate, the area that you win, or
even that the type of enslaved Africans when ethnic of
(30:49):
the came from. So, for example, as an Italian American,
there's a big difference between people who came from northern
and central Italy to America and those that came from
the south. And the language is the dialects that they
brought from Sicily, Naples and Calabria versus other parts of Italy,
and where they settled and what kind of jobs do
they do, all that all that matters in black food history,
(31:12):
in Southern fndustry American food history as well. So I'm
actually it's it's it's kind of horrible because you get
to the point where you realize that you've got to
leave a legacy and you can't tell everything, but you
can leave the brute. You can leave the blueprint behind,
you know. That's what I you know to Raise Nelson
(31:32):
is actually responsible for the the format of this book.
Where she talked to me one day she said, we're
both we both come from black folks from South Carolina.
We only know so much about where we come from.
I want you to write us a blueprint so we
can find our way on our own. Yeah, that's what
I best. My goal is to make a blueprint, and
that's a blueprint to be to be used by by
(31:55):
other people to to find their way as well. Oh look,
I had it. When I first heard this project, I
had a young man he was he was a little
bit younger than me, when we weren't that far apart
in age, and I did a part I did a
speech in a college in Pennsylvania, and he comes up
to me and he says, hey, Michael, I want you
to know that um in two days, I'm leaving for Italy.
(32:19):
And he said, I saw your journey down south, and
he said, I want to do the same thing with
my family and says, my family from is Granted, New York.
And he says, I always loved my grandmother's food and
my family and traditions, but I don't really know where
they came from, not what that life was like back
in Italy. And so I didn't even think about that
until I started following your journey. So I'm getting on
(32:39):
a plane two days. I don't know what happened to him,
but for me, that was that was validating in the
sense of I know that my journey is universal. Do
white people know that? Do white people know that I'm
speaking to them as well, that I am not leaving
them out of the conversation, that if they are not
the conversation, I'm not doing this right. And Black folks, yes,
(33:01):
I am centering us, but I want you to do something.
I'm not rehashing some easy, unnew ones, uncomplicated myths that
we can just glide by. No, this is gonna make
everybody either piste off, inspired and in love or I'm
not doing this right. Mhm. Is there an American cuisine? Absolutely?
(33:26):
And what whately? What I mean obviously we can go
through region by region, but but what do you think
the roots of of of American cuisine is. I think
it's I think it's layers. I think we have to
understand things aren't things are in layers because they're different.
I'm a I'm a lover of American history, you know,
especially lover of Africa and African American history. But um,
(33:48):
I gotta tell you that it's not one thing. And yes,
there's regions and there's all of that. Um that's important.
But I guess for me, the roots of the cuisine
are um indigenous and and African. Um. If I had
to boil it down to five groups, I would say,
(34:10):
you have to talk about indigenous people, you have to
talk about Africans, you have to talk about UM. I
call it the the the Iberian world and the Americas.
So yeah, I don't want to call it Latin, Latin
or Latino. I just want to call it that. You know,
(34:30):
when the Spanish and Portuguese came to the Americas and
interacted with Native and African people, they came with a
food agenda because they were food lovers, and they set
up a food environment that approximated what they had. UM.
You know, I would say that you can't talk about
Americ cuisine without talking about Italians on their own, and
(34:53):
then you know with and with them the Greek Southern
Mediterranean people, and you talked talking about without East East Asia.
You know, UM because and I say that because other
groups have of course built their food culture in America
on the roots that were established by these you know,
immigrant communities and they're just communities. But but you know
(35:17):
it is I say that, you know, one of the
answers I have to appropriation, which we can get into
and cultural sharing, is that if you're from the Pacific Northwest.
You grew up with, you know, Pacific rim food and
in the in the natural food of the Pacific West,
those beautiful cherries and wild fruits and all of that,
and native ingredients and the fish and all that. That's
(35:37):
that's what you're rooted in. It doesn't matter what color
background you are. That region feeds who you are. If
you know, you know, you know when somebody's from a
place and they love that place because they're rooted in
those food traditions. Um so yeah, I mean American American
food is and layers. It's a global, it's indigenous, it's colonial,
and by colonial, I do not mean nice little colonial
(35:59):
buckles on the shoes. I mean colonial is in Oh
my god, this is terrific and it's and it's and
it's also divisive. American food, by its very nature is
is divisive. And we have to understand this. It's divisive.
You don't hear anybody else more than Americans arguing more
about um, the precision of recipes based on state, region, place,
(36:25):
and also Americans racialize food more than anybody else. So
I think we have to really have to wrestle with
that that we we have a food tradition that's very uh,
chauvinistic and divisive, even though it's incredibly beautiful. And you're right,
so you said something really important there because when people
and I've always thought about this in terms of what
(36:46):
I do. I cook what I call American food, it's
really some influences from from Italy and France because that's
kind of how I grew up cooking. But uh, and
I would say sometimes like people don't say that to
go out for American food if they want to go
out for French food or Italian food or maybe Greek food.
When they start saying we want to go out for
(37:06):
African food, when white people start saying that, maybe that's
when it starts to sink in. You know, maybe that's
what we need to start hearing. And obviously it needs
to be taught. Listen, we need to start in schools
and teach history. I mean, I I screwed up royally
in naming a restaurant um a couple of years back.
Um Uh. It was in an old historical building. There
(37:28):
were two publishers named Faller and Wells in the building
UM and they published Journalism of Phrenology. I had no
idea what that meant in terms of, you know, how
would affect black people. I had no idea what rabbit
(37:49):
hole I was going down. I was never taught. And
for me, I was like, you know what, I I
gotta be a little more, take a little more responsibility,
and do the work because I stopped short. I thought
I did the work, but I stopped short. And so
it's it's uh, it was just eye opening to it.
I was leading into the idea of teaching history in
(38:12):
school and we're leaving out huge pieces of it. Yeah,
and and so again going back to what what your
your blueprint, it's a blueprint of really really anyone to
take that journey and find history. But also realizing that
there's a huge part of American history that has left
off and it's not enough to have Black History Month.
It's not enough. But but but you know what, you
(38:34):
know what I would I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
absolve you of your journey, because your journey and that
was important looking drops resolution here. No no no no
no no no no no no no. I know you're
not because you're taking responsibility, you're owning it. But I'm
but I'm gonna but I'm gonna say something to you
about it because I think that, um, this cultural literacy
(38:56):
problem effects us both. Okay, because I respect the fact
you have. You know, the person you describe who was
working for you had a really in depth sort of
like engagement with awareness. But bromn, I know a lot
(39:19):
of well educated negroes that don't that don't that wouldn't
know the difference anymore than you. Because listen, and this,
this is why people get upset. Not people, excuse me,
let me be specific. White people who do are kind
(39:40):
of caught unaware. They get upset because they go, well,
I didn't know that, Well this wasn't this. Why does
it matter? Why you bring politics in this, why you
bring race into it, whereas those of us who are
on this other path are going. If you don't know
how insidious and how woven in this is to the
(40:01):
basic fabric um, not just American but Western society period,
then yeah, you're missing the point. I mean, it's to me,
it's like to be aware of these things, to be
aware of these connections is really to have to confront oneself.
You have to in other words, you have to part
(40:22):
of the educational process isn't just knowing the facts, It's
only what the facts mean to you. What are they,
what do they actually on on the ground mean? I mean,
I I'm collecting American history textbooks right now, and not
one of these damn cook textbooks, except for maybe the
one is coming, not one of them talks about how
important cotton was to the American economy to the European
(40:46):
economy too. Yes, exactly know the fact that there's like
people think of, oh, so I've heard it. I've heard
a thousand times. Yeah, I know that you had a
shitty like you're picking cotton downs out or something, but
then you actual free, no excuses, And I said, no, no, no,
that cotton represented two thirds of the American economy and
the processing of that cotton exportation, that cotton man, the
(41:08):
European neighbor gonna come here to a better life, get land,
have opportunities. So no, no, no, no, no. Tobacco paid
for the the American Revolution via France and paid our debts.
And then when the French and the Germans went into revolution,
there was the planners of the Upper South started growing
(41:29):
wheat and corn because Europe wasn't even growing gray anymore.
It was. It was a constantly revolution in the war.
So so if you don't know those three facts, right,
three or four facts, then you think that the black
experience is ancillary to whiteness, and it's not. It's central,
no more no different than me having to understand that
(41:52):
when Europeans decimated their resources between the fourteen and seventeen centuries,
they then had to figure out either we're gonna get
some massive review what we're doing, or we have to
go other places in colonize. We have, you know, the
last last comment on that, we have to know how
(42:12):
interpersonal and interconnected our stories are. You know, I can't
there's no way that I can appreciate you without the
contextual fullness. And so it has to be more than
just places and dates and times and and and our trivia.
It has to be meaningful and you have to feel it.
(42:34):
M hmm. Yeah. But again that's that's what I imagine
is so hard for for so many people. Yeah, you
look the original sin of of of our country and
slaveries that sin, and then they have to go back
and say, man, not only did we, you know, build
(42:55):
our country on the bodies of enslaved people, but they
actually made the country. They they they they, and people
don't want they don't they don't want to give that up.
And I think, you know, even liberal people I think
look at and go, well, yeah, okay, I get it,
I I you know, and it all sounds good and
let's move on. No, I can't move on because unless
(43:17):
you actually admit to that, there's no moving on, right
And and that's that's where that's where I think the
change when we're talking right now of obviously with George
Floyd's death and people that just changed it in the air,
and and COVID also exposed so many you know, uh
for the fragility of our country and our economic system
and our food system, and so, you know, can we
(43:38):
find a better way, But it has to start with actually,
you know, acknowledging that. And until we do that, there
is no moving forward. And people don't want to be vulnerable. Yeah,
that's that's right, that's right. They don't want to be vulnerable.
They don't want to seed power. You know something. I
think you said something about that one time, and let's
see it. I see so many battake is why car
(44:00):
give does he do say it? He just said something
about seating some damn power, because that's honestly, what's what's up.
And it's not and it's not that you've given them
at all. About we're just saying I can I can afford. Yeah,
And I'm not talking about I'm not talking about fame
or position or platform. You just stuck about white. As
you said, I can afford to see some of this whiteness.
(44:24):
And it's not gonna make me any different. It's not
gonna it's not gonna change my life, but I can
change a lot of other people's lives, you know. And
and and that's that's where I think the conversation needs
to go. And I'm i'm uh, you know, if I'm
hearing from from so many of my friends, just sit
back and listen. Do the work. You don't need to
have the answers. Don't even think you have the answers.
(44:46):
And UM, I got I gotta say this conversation. I was,
I was, I was nervous coming in, um, and I
feel so much better after having it. And and I
don't say that from wanting you to make me feel
better about myself. I having voices like you out there,
and and I really believe that you can heal so
much through food and using food as the context. Bye bye.
(45:10):
By your reclaiming history, telling history, having people understand the experience,
having people like you doing it, I think gets as
closer to understanding acceptance, you know, changing changing some minds
and changing changing you know, our experience here in this country,
because something's got to give. Thank you, um and and
I think, uh um, you know, I just you know,
(45:34):
you're you're not afraid. I'm just I'm just happy to
spend this last I think we're going on an hour
now with you. So um, thanks man, this was great,
great conversation. I appreciate it. We're the hardest thing I
do is when I interpret slavery, sometimes people don't understand.
And I mean a lot of times there's it's a
fellow people of colored And I think, why are you
(45:56):
read traumatizing as might read traumatizing you. I'm showing you
the way to heal yourself is a steer your past,
your president in your future right in the eyes, and
don't blink, hug your ancestor and hug your descendant, and
hug yourself and heal and move. We we we we
(46:17):
have to because you know something we're cooking the kids
with dead people. The funniest thing I remember for when
you did Donna with Omar was I was joking about
you know when you're when you're when you're white, your
your people stay did and you go. Not when you're Italian.
So yeah, they show up, they do, they show up,
(46:38):
They really do, all right, Michael Pleasure, pleasure talking to you,
Thank you folks, thank you family, Stay safe and absolutely
you'll do again. A very special thanks to Chef Michael Twitty.
And it's always a shout out to a place to table.
Citizen Chef is a production of I Heart Media. Christopher
Howseiotis is our executive producer, Jescelyn Shields is our searcher,
(47:00):
and Gabrielle Collins is our producer and editor. Don't forget
to write us and we'll catch the next episode mhm
Hi, I'm Tom Collikio, and this is Citizen Chef. On
this podcast, we're looking at policy and ships in society
through the food system. This season, we're going over the
basics of the food system and how food policy affects
our daily lives. So far, we've talked to experts on immigration, slavery,
on the high seas, and food assistance programs. In this episode,
(00:20):
we're talking about an almost hundred and fifty year old idea,
and that's reparations. I'm Italian American. My grandfather came here
in nineteen o three when he was three years old.
My grand my great grandmother father brought him over and
my great grandfather went back and forth and made a
few trips while he was actually building a house um
(00:44):
back in the Lazza, Italy, where where my family is from,
my father's family is from. And now now I gotta
I think if if my ancestors were forced to come
to this country an enslaved, and when they were freed,
they were must forty acres of fertile soil somewhere, and
I knew that that going back in my life, in
(01:07):
my family, we would have been able to build some
sort of wealth based on these forty acres. If it
stayed in my family for a couple of generations, this
would have been how my family built wealth. And if
that were the case and it were stripped away from
them after four dred years of slavery, Jim Crow laws,
and redlining in other forms of discrimination, you better believe
(01:27):
I would take this personally, and you better believe this
is something that my family would live with, and this
is something that my family would think that possibly we
should we should get something from the government. We talked
about reparations. I think too often people think it's just
a pay out, but but what it really is is
repairing a relationship. And that's the relationship between African Americans
(01:52):
who were cheated out of land that was promised to them.
How do you how do you repair that that relationship?
How do you you know, men, those wounds that that's
that's what we're talking about here. How do you repair relationship?
You know? How do you make things right after years
centuries of getting them wrong? And what does a true
apology look like? So so, why why are we talking
reparations on on our food podcast? For a lot of reasons,
(02:16):
And I think we have a confluence of of three
different things happening. Obviously with the death of George Floyd
and the and the protests that we're seeing in the
Black Lives Matter movement really sort of you know, being
front and center in our news cycle. And then in
my opinion, a part of where we're gonna end up
with the movement is looking at reparations. So reparation is
(02:37):
becoming also prevalent in our news cycle, um, and I
believe in election it's going to play a pretty important
role as well. However, because the effects of racist systems
can be found in every crevice of American life, we
have to find where reparations are required in our corner
of the world. Well, my corner of the world is food.
(02:58):
So today we'll be talking about what chefs and the
food industry a black Americans. And because we are talking
about land, and because we're mostly talking about farmland, and
because our podcast has to do with food and food sovereignty,
well this this kind of runs headlong into our conversations
around food and around current topics. We're gonna jump right
(03:21):
in here. I had a conversation with chef and historian
Michael Twitter, and here we go. We we had planned
on doing an episode on reparations, uh, going back when
we first you know, started conceiving of the podcast. Um,
and obviously it takes a very different meaning right now,
I imagine. And that's why that's why I say I'm
(03:42):
nervous having this conversation is because um, so often, uh,
you know, white people like me get it wrong. I'm
not asking from a position of hey, I need help
help me as a white person understand this, but there's
so much we don't understand. And when reading through your
book and reading through your blog, um, man, I can't
walk a mile in your shoes. I can't walk in
(04:04):
your steps because there's there's too much history there, there's
too much pain there. But I can walk alongside you
and say, hey, I'm here to do whatever the hell
I can to to to to to to make things
better and to be an ally. But man, this is
it's really fraud. Um. But listen, let's just jump in,
because why the hell not? So I do want to
start by by asking a question, and it's actually a
(04:28):
couple of lines from your from your book, um, and
it says I think it's in the intro and says
I began to wonder if I ever really would be
able to locate myself in human experience? What good is
it to learn the flow of human history and to
speak of the dead if their stories don't speak to you?
What if food history and facts figures and flashpoints? What
good is your own position as a culinary historian if
(04:50):
you can't find yourself in the narrative of your food story,
and if you don't know who you are? So, Michael,
in your in your journey, Um, who who did you
find out? Who? Who are you? Who? What is your
role here? What is as a historian, as a as
a as a chef, as a as a cook, as
a someone who writes about food in a way where
(05:11):
you cannot help but want to cook with you alongside
you taste the food that you're cooking, and and and
understand your experience. So so who who are you? Um?
You know there was the the ah pooh, May he
rest in peace and power, um one said on The
Simpsons In response to Homer, Um pooh, how are you?
(05:33):
He says, I haven't slept. I was kept up by
the house of my ancestors. That's that's that's my life, um.
But it's also the new connection with other people. Um.
I think I joked with you when we met that
you know, I'm like one percent Italian and I and
I figured out how that was. One of my family's
(05:56):
uh wife folks was part Italian and part English. And um,
that kind of like global feeling that you get once
you do the whole DNA thing and discover those things
in your family tree. Really it's more than just a
percentage of the paper, you know that. And understanding that
(06:16):
I am as an African American, I am valid and
affirmed as I am. I think that I Um, I'm
very proud to be of African descent, and I'm very
I'm uplifted by the trips that I've made to West
Africa at this point of made um seven journeys and
eight countries. Um. But I guess the point is is
(06:39):
that I didn't realize that we you know, we we
get we get talked about. Really, you know, every time
something happens with us, someone has some smart ship to say,
so he's my friend. Somebody has something nasty to say
it's a qualifier, and I'm like, you know what, No,
we're we're an exceptional people and we're very proud people
(07:01):
among the many black people of the Black Atlantic UM.
And I guess you know, when I started out, the
reason why I said that quote in the book was
because I was in a field that was mostly white women,
white women of some privileged wealth and capital. Um. One
of the females. Definitely, every time I walk in the room,
(07:23):
I'm the raising and the coogle. You know, I'm just
not I'm just not in the majority. And then you know,
they would write about these people in history in a
sort of titillating fun way and never really placed himself.
And I said, that must be liberating to be able
to write about something and cook something and live something
(07:44):
and not wonder why am I here? Why am I
in this space doing what I'm doing? And then of
course there was this constant theme of the black cook
and the black cook during slavery. I've always been fascinated
by that. My ancestors from that time period are really
in me and my African It's really calling to me
because I guess I felt like, no, I didn't feel
(08:04):
like I knew they were being forgotten, nameless, you know,
slapped on boxes, um, given these monikers, and then they
were gonna fade away. And then you know, in a
space between white guilt and black trauma, you know, and
that's just what it is. So I started to decide
(08:25):
I'm gonna document this stuff. I'm gonna go through it.
At first it was like paper plates and plastics, booze
and stuff from the grocery store. And then it was like, no,
you can't even be rolling like that. You gotta you
really gotta really do the historical interpreter thing. And then
a couple of years ago, I was just like, Okay,
you can't just talk about the food and a sort
(08:45):
of like everybody else who you're talking about. You have
to you have to do it. You have to translate
what the folk culture into a language that culinary people
can understand so that they can really grasp what you're
trying to pass on. Otherwise they're not gonna get it.
And they can they can perceive, you know what I'm saying.
It could perceive it, but it's not the same language. Yeah,
(09:05):
everybody wants to tell their stories through food and they
have to communicate. And because that's that, that's the story
that people want to hear. They don't want to know
about a pretty a pretty plate of food. They want
to know the history behind it. They want to understand
why you're doing what you do, why you're cooking what
you're cooking, and so so yeah, trying to understand the
food that you you grew up cooking beside your your
(09:28):
grandmother and your mother, um, and then taking a deeper
dive into why those I mean, the story in your
book of of Homecoming, I thought, I thought that was,
you know, this idea of abundance and this food that
you're going to enjoy it it's your food, and it's
it's it's food that you dream of and it's it's
food that that means so much, UM, and just the
(09:51):
idea where you're going there and you're with your people
and you're having the time of your life and it's
all about food. And you know, I tell those stories
when I when I about growing up Italian and how
I've realized at a certain point that that's not necessarily
what's on the plate, but it brings people together, right.
And then once you're together, then you have those discussions
and whether you're talking politics or whether you're gossip. You
(10:12):
know this family gossip there you know, going back and
forth and and so you know, this is what it does.
And so you know, having that is is you know,
it is part of history, it is part of who
you are. So how what what made you start sort
of taking that deeper dive to to go to Africa
to really sort of finding um, the the I always say,
(10:36):
you know, when I went to Europe to learn how
to you know, cook out the French food or Italian food. Uh,
you know what I learned there was why not so
much what but why why you cook? Why certain things
are what they are? What? What did you what did
you find on those trips? I guess I guess my
word to be who who? I like it? You know who?
I was like, um, so yeah, you get there and
(10:58):
you see the staples and you go, I knew this
was coming, but it's nice to know with my own
two eyes and my mouth and my hands, it's all there.
But what I didn't know was how many things had
to be passed down and almost like in secret, Um,
(11:18):
the most momentous moment for me was tasting on my hand. Okay,
so like like I'm a I'm a I'm a dude.
So there I'm not the I'm not the cook women
and the cooks unless you roast une barbecue meat roast meat.
It's all the women thinks. So I'm going in and
(11:38):
these women are looking at me like weird, like why
is he even in our space? And so I took
the spoon and then I took the sauce or whatever,
and I put it on my hands and I licked
it off, and they all sort of getting very agitated
and very excited, and like hey, they started patting me
on the back and and hugging me and gissing me
(11:59):
on the cheek, and I'm like, what did I do?
I just thought there was taste of food though, And
then I said it and I started coming out of
my mouth, said the way my grandmother and the mother
taught me. And then I realized they were excited because
they realized that I had been taught the proper way
of generation to generation to generations. So you know, they're
(12:22):
like Africa. You look, you look your hand and looking
back your hand, and that was they were like, Okay,
he's not a black European from America. That's how they
think of us until proven otherwise. And then I was like,
oh my god, yeah, he's one of us. He's one
of us, one of us. He knows what's up um.
And that's that's then so they answered is who are they?
(12:42):
And who am i? Who am i? And then's this
you know, it's sort of technique culture of food. It's
more like it's more like, um, the circumstances and when
you eat the food, the season you eat the food,
the spiritual occasion, um. The feeling, the feeling around the
(13:02):
food is more important the process of making it. And
so that energy that you put into it, that soul
that you put into it, is a key ingredient. This
the the area. You know. You know, someone who is
a peaceable person doesn't grow your peppers in Africa. M
(13:24):
someone who is like from birth aligned with you know,
the deities that control war and blood and anger, that's
the one who should grow the peppers. You know. That's
that's It's like everything is congenital, everything is you know,
and also from heaven and so there's that and it's
just like, um, there's the rhythm and it kinesthetics like
(13:46):
food is. You know, your body goes into it. So
we joke around and saying in in Southern talk, someone
put their foot in it. M hm, Well that ship
is literal in Africa because when you make the locals
being paced there like it's like it's like in Italy,
you know, the stopping of the grapes, likeing ting tinging,
And so so I listened, So I started so I
stopped looking for techniques and I started listening for the
(14:08):
sound of it, the feeling in the body, the feeling
in the room, and and and that really got to me.
That made me understand why I didn't. I didn't always attach.
There's the color of the food and the color of
the ingredients and and just all of that, all that
mattered so much more than the process. Although that's definitely there.
(14:30):
It's very deep, and it's there, and there's things you
gotta know. But I guess for me, another part for
me was just like I was, I was seeing things
in reality that I had read about in books from
two to three years ago. And the fact that people
preferred to eat food cooked over the wood fire with
(14:52):
the with the three rocks. That's there's no such thing
as let's you know, modernizes food. It's almost like you
have to eat the food that was eaten at the
time our antestors left the continent got it. So how
did that change you as a cook? Oh? You know
what I said, I'll tell people all the time that
(15:13):
to be black American, the African American and go to
Africa is to suddenly drop all the awkwardness that she
felt about being black in America because it because it's
because it's you. The loudness, the spiciness, the greasiness, the fat,
frying and air, I mean, all that stuff, all the
all the it's queerness. Okay, I'm a I'm a queer
(15:36):
person because I'm because I'm gay. But I'm also a
queer person because in relationship to normative whiteness, being black
is queer in America, like being Italian was queer. It was,
and sometimes there is queer in America, you know, And
I want to specify that for everybody. Queer in no
sense means not normative and relationship to power. So when
(15:58):
you grow up here black, you feel out of Sometimes
you you're made to feel out of your skin. Doesn't
matter how much America appropriates blackness or uses blackness, black bodies,
black labor, black and black entertainment for whatever, you're still
you're still an outside. You're still an other. And so
you made me feel like you never quite fit, quite
(16:19):
fit in, but over there nine in the time, especially
with the food culture, you feel as a Black American
that you don't feel awkward anymore. You feel natural. I
can hear the assholes already saying we'll go back. I
can hear I can hear it. I gotta answer for him.
I gotta answer for him. Most of them that say
(16:41):
that they're already pardon Negro, they've already they've already incorporated blackness, africanness,
and coloredness and all of all of our all of
our stuff into their life already, so they can go
back with me. You know. That's what that was with
Dick Gregory said that he's He said, you haven't met
a drug white supremacist, and then he said I have.
(17:04):
He said, go back to Africa and take me with you.
So there you go. Yeah. So so you you come
back and you decide that the best place to to
to to apply your craft is on plantations. Yeah, could
take me, take me through that process. Okay, So I
(17:26):
had already, I had already been doing that kind of work.
But the problem was, I never forget when I first started.
Someone who I will not name said to me um
At a museum food person said to me, well, I
don't know anything about Africa. I said, We're in the South.
You are right down the road from where slave ships
(17:48):
actually came into North America. How could you not know this?
And I just took a deep breath and said, stop,
don't get mad, just do the work. Just do the
am work. And so I started with documenting every single
ingredient that would have been used on any plantation anywhere
in North America, north American mainland, and documenting where it
(18:11):
came from the whole spreadsheet. Then I was like, Okay,
I gotta get the clothes, and I got get the
utensil and learn how to use the one, how to
take care of them, um, all of that, and then
it was about the feeling. What does it what does
it mean? And I'm actually tom I'm actually glad. I've
had negative experiences that that taught me put me in
the right mindset of just like this is not easy,
(18:34):
this is not cute, this is not whatever. Like one
time in the book I talked about how like I
was at um Strafford Hall Plantation, which was the home
plantation of the leaves in Virginia, and it was dark
and there was a big crowd for plantation Christmas. So
they had me there cooking and talking about the food.
And it was this huge pot and it was really heavy.
I mean those pots get to like sixty seventy pounds.
(18:56):
And it was full of water, water was hot, and
the fire was hot and it was dark. And I
spilled some of the water and people laughed at me,
and I got immediately angry, and it was and then
I was like, I was like, y'all realized that this
was back in the day. I could have given I
could have gotten severely punished for even making having a
human accident a mistake. But then for them, it was
(19:20):
laughing at me because oh, this black I thinks he
knows everything and he's stumbling in the kitchen. Well, you
try to be on the brick floor on for for
twelve hours, you know, with flat feet, cooking and then
you know. But but even more than that, people come
to the kitchen to be like, oh, I know what
it's like to be um a slave. I'm an evangelical
Christian in America. Oh god, you know, I think. Yeah,
(19:44):
I think you also point out the book that that
not only were people punished, but people were putting ovens
for doing this. Yes, in the Caribbean and Martinique. A
cook was actually was put in the bake oven, thrown
in the bake oven and murdered because he burned a cake.
And the mistress of the plantation sat through dinner smiling
and laughing and getting drunk and then showed her guests
(20:07):
the skeleton. And I mean this wasn't of course, this
wasn't an everyday occurrence, but the cruelty was the point.
It was constant. But to go, but to go from
there to Africa was always my dream. But but because
I wanted people to understand something, I guess our point.
My point is not that everything was African. But you know,
(20:31):
Herman Taislings is something very important almost hundred years ago.
He says, everything that is born Africa remains African in spirit.
And to get to to get to the other side
of the ocean, you gotta understand, Yes, there were European
and Native American and other elements in the cooking, but
the hands of the black cook were the catalyst. The
mind of the Black book was the catalyst. And you
(20:53):
have but people don't even think Africa has a mind.
There's an intellect, just like there is an Italian cooking
at French looking and I just want to be able
to be that translator. Third, through historical documents, through lived experience,
through people's memories, that that art and philosophy came to
(21:13):
America through food, not just the taste. Mm hmm, Yeah,
we'll be right back. Hey, this is Citizen Chef and
I'm Tom Colochio. Let's pick up where we left off
in my conversation with chef and author Michael Twitter. We're
talking about how the question of reparations in America intersect
(21:33):
with policy and cultural food ways, especially in the South.
What is the debt and how do we pay it back?
Just from a food standpoint and from a land standpoint,
what do reparations look like? Um? Uh, you know, I
know HR forty is is just set up to study it.
Um If if you were put on that panel to
(21:55):
study reparations through food lens, what what does that look
like to you? Oh? First of all, we have to
correct the violence of hunger, the violence of wasted food.
We have to correct the violence of food inequality. We
have to correct the violence of not having land. Why
why do you refer to as I understand, but just
(22:16):
for the listener, why do you refer to as violence, um,
because these are ways to keep people. Um, it's it's
it's a passive aggressive form of war. I mean, you know,
everybody knows about the Black Panthers and it's oh, it's
scary black panthers, the scatherl scary Black panthers. Yea, they
were scary because they're giving out food right exactly exactly.
(22:38):
And then you know, I don't know if you know
about the fake the fake coloring books, the fake coloring
books that the CIA put out. This is not this is,
by the way, y'all, This is not me looking at
some something crazy. This is these are actual things that exist. Um,
fake coloring books. For the said, look at these coloring books.
These black kids are getting with the with the Black Panthers,
(23:01):
and they emphasize the food program. That was one of
the things that JACKO Hoover and his and his cronies
thought was one of the worst things the Black Panthers did.
It wasn't feed up feed hungry people. You feed kids.
Right before they realized kids were going to school without
getting meal, and that's why they started doing it. And
that's that's dangerous for some reason. Yes, it's dangerous. Because
(23:24):
the hand that feeds you, m m, you don't bite
the hand that feeds you. You Also, we also know,
now you and I both know that a child that
is nourished can think better, can go to school and
achieve an education. Better kid doesn't have to worry about
their mind, isn't all worrying about what next meal is
gonna come from or how where they gonna live tomorrow.
(23:47):
And so it's that kind of thing, that kind of power.
I mean, it's like this, and Um, when I was
two thousand twelve, when I did the Southern's Comfort Door,
I went to the River Road African American Museum and
there's this plaque on a wall from nineteen twelves celebrating
this community of black Creole farmers that took the share
croppers in the area and said, look y'all don't have
(24:09):
to go into debt going eating you know, the plantation
owners fooding, buying rashes from him. You can get good
quality food from our from our fields without shame. Come
and get it, and we'll all farm the land together.
And all I could think was they answered the question
of what of how to tackle a food desert in
nineteen twelve without black Twitter, without Facebook, without Instagram, without Snapchat.
(24:34):
And they did it in the face of the clan,
the nights of the white Chamelia and air at law
enforcement and the plantation aristocracy which still existed. So what
are we doing wrong? There's a question, I asked myself.
Another element of reparations in this area is education. Why
(24:54):
is it? Where where is the culinary school that has
has a two semester class, not one, a two semester
class on African African foods of the world on the
continent and then the diaspora. Because we know, you and
I both know every time they learned about Brazilian food,
Southern food, Caribbean food, they're learning about they're learning partially
(25:18):
about Africa. Why not make that a singular thing or
two partner in terms of classes. You know what I'm saying,
you do this when you do this one, I mean
it's it's to to watch to watch a black or
brown kid go to culinary school and go I didn't
learn about native food. I learned about no African food.
You know, I barely learned about Latinos food what that means?
(25:43):
And then what what what it actually is not just
the the ingredients techniques and blah blah blahah recipes. But
but you know, more than that history history, it also
means reparations, the terms of land land. Stop giving away
this damn land these developers give it to, you know,
give it to folks who want to farm and produce
(26:06):
or keep it natural. Just keep it natural because near
the part of our story, it's not just always messing
with the earth. It's also engaging with foraging, fishing, hunting,
raising livestock. It's you know, those are those are things
that preserve our culture as well as just do that.
To me, reparations looks like all of that, all of that,
(26:27):
and then more so so, it's it's completely taking back
the food system. Yes, and re africanizing it. Re africanizing
the food system. I like that, But that would that
would sound so scary to so many people. Why shouldn't
that be scary? The first things? First, I mean, I
(26:47):
want to ask anyone who's who thinks I don't know
about that should ask themselves why my last name is
Twitter and not enjoy m hm. Should ask themselves why
my beer goes out of why I'm beer in my
hair go out of my face like this and not curly.
There's so many there's so many aspects of black identity
(27:08):
in America and then and in the America's plural because
you know, we're in a ship show in Brazil, we're
in a ship showing part of the Caribbean, because we're
still in those colonial and slavery forces. Like people people
never even asked himself, what would it be like to
wake up tomorrow and not have the family name that's
been passed out in my family for that for hundreds
(27:30):
of years. What would it be like if my child
did not look like me because um of some I
was some viciousness, right, What would it be like if
if if I couldn't tell you who I was beyond
a certain point because it was taken from me. So
if I can live this life of four dredn one
(27:52):
years h you know, your your centric life, you can
you can come with me to the multimillion year old
African life and understand, Oh my god, that's part of
who we are. Yes, you know, blackness is not a bubble.
You are a part of blackness. To the same way
(28:14):
I've signed on to be part of Italian, part of Mexican,
part Chinese, part Korean, in this multicultural society we have.
If you, Tammy, if you don't understand what a bloody
gift it is to be in this global era, in
a multicultural society, you don't know how to be an American.
And it's a shame that those of us who who
(28:36):
have had the most to lose African and African and
Indigenous people have to teach that to the rest. Everybody, right,
got me preaching? And why not? I'll let that. I'll
let that set in. Uh, just think in here for
a second. Um, I want to ask you about um
(29:00):
uh again. I want to go back to your to
your book, UM the Cooking Gene and Um, there was
a quote. I'm a a fan of your your writing.
Obviously I'm a fan of what you're writing about. But
the pros itself I just found fine to be so
h it's so descriptive. Point where where when you when
you m write about your kitchen, I feel like I'm
(29:23):
sitting in your kitchen. Um, when you write about again
like homecoming, I feel I'm at that table when you
write about your experience. And this is what I love
about about your writing. I could almost put myself in
the experience. Although I know I know that I can't
get completely get there, but the writing does that, and
that's that's what good writing usually does. And so but
(29:44):
you you wrote um in your book and you were
talking about literacy um, and you were talking I think
the quote is, uh, we could write down our own stories,
we had to tell them to others, and this caused
facts and words to be bent. I wonder what our
history ever looked like if every man and woman could
have written down or passed down and written account their
all lives. Is this yeah, because you know, I'm there's
(30:05):
so many details. It's a lot of times, especially with
our food history and our culture. It's like even among
our own people, um, in America, I mean, everybody buys
into the same narrative. You could tell in thirty seconds
they came they were still in from Africa. They came
to America. The white people threw some ship at them,
(30:26):
through some slap at them. They remixed it. They were
geniuses created soul food. And that's all you need to know.
They don't know that everybody have collar greens, for example,
or that there's like sixty different type of color greens,
and that things were very regional. Hyper you know, hyper
specific to the climate, the area that you win, or
even that the type of enslaved Africans when ethnic of
(30:49):
the came from. So, for example, as an Italian American,
there's a big difference between people who came from northern
and central Italy to America and those that came from
the south. And the language is the dialects that they
brought from Sicily, Naples and Calabria versus other parts of Italy,
and where they settled and what kind of jobs do
they do, all that all that matters in black food history,
(31:12):
in Southern fndustry American food history as well. So I'm
actually it's it's it's kind of horrible because you get
to the point where you realize that you've got to
leave a legacy and you can't tell everything, but you
can leave the brute. You can leave the blueprint behind,
you know. That's what I you know to Raise Nelson
(31:32):
is actually responsible for the the format of this book.
Where she talked to me one day she said, we're
both we both come from black folks from South Carolina.
We only know so much about where we come from.
I want you to write us a blueprint so we
can find our way on our own. Yeah, that's what
I best. My goal is to make a blueprint, and
that's a blueprint to be to be used by by
(31:55):
other people to to find their way as well. Oh look,
I had it. When I first heard this project, I
had a young man he was he was a little
bit younger than me, when we weren't that far apart
in age, and I did a part I did a
speech in a college in Pennsylvania, and he comes up
to me and he says, hey, Michael, I want you
to know that um in two days, I'm leaving for Italy.
(32:19):
And he said, I saw your journey down south, and
he said, I want to do the same thing with
my family and says, my family from is Granted, New York.
And he says, I always loved my grandmother's food and
my family and traditions, but I don't really know where
they came from, not what that life was like back
in Italy. And so I didn't even think about that
until I started following your journey. So I'm getting on
(32:39):
a plane two days. I don't know what happened to him,
but for me, that was that was validating in the
sense of I know that my journey is universal. Do
white people know that? Do white people know that I'm
speaking to them as well, that I am not leaving
them out of the conversation, that if they are not
the conversation, I'm not doing this right. And Black folks, yes,
(33:01):
I am centering us, but I want you to do something.
I'm not rehashing some easy, unnew ones, uncomplicated myths that
we can just glide by. No, this is gonna make
everybody either piste off, inspired and in love or I'm
not doing this right. Mhm. Is there an American cuisine? Absolutely?
(33:26):
And what whately? What I mean obviously we can go
through region by region, but but what do you think
the roots of of of American cuisine is. I think
it's I think it's layers. I think we have to
understand things aren't things are in layers because they're different.
I'm a I'm a lover of American history, you know,
especially lover of Africa and African American history. But um,
(33:48):
I gotta tell you that it's not one thing. And yes,
there's regions and there's all of that. Um that's important.
But I guess for me, the roots of the cuisine
are um indigenous and and African. Um. If I had
to boil it down to five groups, I would say,
(34:10):
you have to talk about indigenous people, you have to
talk about Africans, you have to talk about UM. I
call it the the the Iberian world and the Americas.
So yeah, I don't want to call it Latin, Latin
or Latino. I just want to call it that. You know,
(34:30):
when the Spanish and Portuguese came to the Americas and
interacted with Native and African people, they came with a
food agenda because they were food lovers, and they set
up a food environment that approximated what they had. UM.
You know, I would say that you can't talk about
Americ cuisine without talking about Italians on their own, and
(34:53):
then you know with and with them the Greek Southern
Mediterranean people, and you talked talking about without East East Asia.
You know, UM because and I say that because other
groups have of course built their food culture in America
on the roots that were established by these you know,
immigrant communities and they're just communities. But but you know
(35:17):
it is I say that, you know, one of the
answers I have to appropriation, which we can get into
and cultural sharing, is that if you're from the Pacific Northwest.
You grew up with, you know, Pacific rim food and
in the in the natural food of the Pacific West,
those beautiful cherries and wild fruits and all of that,
and native ingredients and the fish and all that. That's
(35:37):
that's what you're rooted in. It doesn't matter what color
background you are. That region feeds who you are. If
you know, you know, you know when somebody's from a
place and they love that place because they're rooted in
those food traditions. Um so yeah, I mean American American
food is and layers. It's a global, it's indigenous, it's colonial,
and by colonial, I do not mean nice little colonial
(35:59):
buckles on the shoes. I mean colonial is in Oh
my god, this is terrific and it's and it's and
it's also divisive. American food, by its very nature is
is divisive. And we have to understand this. It's divisive.
You don't hear anybody else more than Americans arguing more
about um, the precision of recipes based on state, region, place,
(36:25):
and also Americans racialize food more than anybody else. So
I think we have to really have to wrestle with
that that we we have a food tradition that's very uh,
chauvinistic and divisive, even though it's incredibly beautiful. And you're right,
so you said something really important there because when people
and I've always thought about this in terms of what
(36:46):
I do. I cook what I call American food, it's
really some influences from from Italy and France because that's
kind of how I grew up cooking. But uh, and
I would say sometimes like people don't say that to
go out for American food if they want to go
out for French food or Italian food or maybe Greek food.
When they start saying we want to go out for
(37:06):
African food, when white people start saying that, maybe that's
when it starts to sink in. You know, maybe that's
what we need to start hearing. And obviously it needs
to be taught. Listen, we need to start in schools
and teach history. I mean, I I screwed up royally
in naming a restaurant um a couple of years back.
Um Uh. It was in an old historical building. There
(37:28):
were two publishers named Faller and Wells in the building
UM and they published Journalism of Phrenology. I had no
idea what that meant in terms of, you know, how
would affect black people. I had no idea what rabbit
(37:49):
hole I was going down. I was never taught. And
for me, I was like, you know what, I I
gotta be a little more, take a little more responsibility,
and do the work because I stopped short. I thought
I did the work, but I stopped short. And so
it's it's uh, it was just eye opening to it.
I was leading into the idea of teaching history in
(38:12):
school and we're leaving out huge pieces of it. Yeah,
and and so again going back to what what your
your blueprint, it's a blueprint of really really anyone to
take that journey and find history. But also realizing that
there's a huge part of American history that has left
off and it's not enough to have Black History Month.
It's not enough. But but but you know what, you
(38:34):
know what I would I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
absolve you of your journey, because your journey and that
was important looking drops resolution here. No no no no
no no no no no no no. I know you're
not because you're taking responsibility, you're owning it. But I'm
but I'm gonna but I'm gonna say something to you
about it because I think that, um, this cultural literacy
(38:56):
problem effects us both. Okay, because I respect the fact
you have. You know, the person you describe who was
working for you had a really in depth sort of
like engagement with awareness. But bromn, I know a lot
(39:19):
of well educated negroes that don't that don't that wouldn't
know the difference anymore than you. Because listen, and this,
this is why people get upset. Not people, excuse me,
let me be specific. White people who do are kind
(39:40):
of caught unaware. They get upset because they go, well,
I didn't know that, Well this wasn't this. Why does
it matter? Why you bring politics in this, why you
bring race into it, whereas those of us who are
on this other path are going. If you don't know
how insidious and how woven in this is to the
(40:01):
basic fabric um, not just American but Western society period,
then yeah, you're missing the point. I mean, it's to me,
it's like to be aware of these things, to be
aware of these connections is really to have to confront oneself.
You have to in other words, you have to part
(40:22):
of the educational process isn't just knowing the facts, It's
only what the facts mean to you. What are they,
what do they actually on on the ground mean? I mean,
I I'm collecting American history textbooks right now, and not
one of these damn cook textbooks, except for maybe the
one is coming, not one of them talks about how
important cotton was to the American economy to the European
(40:46):
economy too. Yes, exactly know the fact that there's like
people think of, oh, so I've heard it. I've heard
a thousand times. Yeah, I know that you had a
shitty like you're picking cotton downs out or something, but
then you actual free, no excuses, And I said, no, no, no,
that cotton represented two thirds of the American economy and
the processing of that cotton exportation, that cotton man, the
(41:08):
European neighbor gonna come here to a better life, get land,
have opportunities. So no, no, no, no, no. Tobacco paid
for the the American Revolution via France and paid our debts.
And then when the French and the Germans went into revolution,
there was the planners of the Upper South started growing
(41:29):
wheat and corn because Europe wasn't even growing gray anymore.
It was. It was a constantly revolution in the war.
So so if you don't know those three facts, right,
three or four facts, then you think that the black
experience is ancillary to whiteness, and it's not. It's central,
no more no different than me having to understand that
(41:52):
when Europeans decimated their resources between the fourteen and seventeen centuries,
they then had to figure out either we're gonna get
some massive review what we're doing, or we have to
go other places in colonize. We have, you know, the
last last comment on that, we have to know how
(42:12):
interpersonal and interconnected our stories are. You know, I can't
there's no way that I can appreciate you without the
contextual fullness. And so it has to be more than
just places and dates and times and and and our trivia.
It has to be meaningful and you have to feel it.
(42:34):
M hmm. Yeah. But again that's that's what I imagine
is so hard for for so many people. Yeah, you
look the original sin of of of our country and
slaveries that sin, and then they have to go back
and say, man, not only did we, you know, build
(42:55):
our country on the bodies of enslaved people, but they
actually made the country. They they they they, and people
don't want they don't they don't want to give that up.
And I think, you know, even liberal people I think
look at and go, well, yeah, okay, I get it,
I I you know, and it all sounds good and
let's move on. No, I can't move on because unless
(43:17):
you actually admit to that, there's no moving on, right
And and that's that's where that's where I think the
change when we're talking right now of obviously with George
Floyd's death and people that just changed it in the air,
and and COVID also exposed so many you know, uh
for the fragility of our country and our economic system
and our food system, and so, you know, can we
(43:38):
find a better way, But it has to start with actually,
you know, acknowledging that. And until we do that, there
is no moving forward. And people don't want to be vulnerable. Yeah,
that's that's right, that's right. They don't want to be vulnerable.
They don't want to seed power. You know something. I
think you said something about that one time, and let's
see it. I see so many battake is why car
(44:00):
give does he do say it? He just said something
about seating some damn power, because that's honestly, what's what's up.
And it's not and it's not that you've given them
at all. About we're just saying I can I can afford. Yeah,
And I'm not talking about I'm not talking about fame
or position or platform. You just stuck about white. As
you said, I can afford to see some of this whiteness.
(44:24):
And it's not gonna make me any different. It's not
gonna it's not gonna change my life, but I can
change a lot of other people's lives, you know. And
and and that's that's where I think the conversation needs
to go. And I'm i'm uh, you know, if I'm
hearing from from so many of my friends, just sit
back and listen. Do the work. You don't need to
have the answers. Don't even think you have the answers.
(44:46):
And UM, I got I gotta say this conversation. I was,
I was, I was nervous coming in, um, and I
feel so much better after having it. And and I
don't say that from wanting you to make me feel
better about myself. I having voices like you out there,
and and I really believe that you can heal so
much through food and using food as the context. Bye bye.
(45:10):
By your reclaiming history, telling history, having people understand the experience,
having people like you doing it, I think gets as
closer to understanding acceptance, you know, changing changing some minds
and changing changing you know, our experience here in this country,
because something's got to give. Thank you, um and and
I think, uh um, you know, I just you know,
(45:34):
you're you're not afraid. I'm just I'm just happy to
spend this last I think we're going on an hour
now with you. So um, thanks man, this was great,
great conversation. I appreciate it. We're the hardest thing I
do is when I interpret slavery, sometimes people don't understand.
And I mean a lot of times there's it's a
fellow people of colored And I think, why are you
(45:56):
read traumatizing as might read traumatizing you. I'm showing you
the way to heal yourself is a steer your past,
your president in your future right in the eyes, and
don't blink, hug your ancestor and hug your descendant, and
hug yourself and heal and move. We we we we
(46:17):
have to because you know something we're cooking the kids
with dead people. The funniest thing I remember for when
you did Donna with Omar was I was joking about
you know when you're when you're when you're white, your
your people stay did and you go. Not when you're Italian.
So yeah, they show up, they do, they show up,
(46:38):
They really do, all right, Michael Pleasure, pleasure talking to you,
Thank you folks, thank you family, Stay safe and absolutely
you'll do again. A very special thanks to Chef Michael Twitty.
And it's always a shout out to a place to table.
Citizen Chef is a production of I Heart Media. Christopher
Howseiotis is our executive producer, Jescelyn Shields is our searcher,
(47:00):
and Gabrielle Collins is our producer and editor. Don't forget
to write us and we'll catch the next episode mhm
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