I was in my early 20s the day I went shopping at a store in Independence, Missouri. It was a day like any other; I don’t even remember what store it was. What I do remember is being accused of stealing something. Within minutes a policeman was approaching me. I told him I hadn’t done anything. He hit me over the head with a billy club and knocked me unconscious.
Growing up in Kansas City, I was the kid who didn’t order kid’s meals. I ordered full-on entrées. I fell in love with cooking in seventh-grade home economics. Those fluffy French omelets got me. Beating the egg whites, watching them come to a peak, folding in the fillings—it was all so cool. I didn’t realize you could do that much with an egg. So I went home and made fluffy omelets for everybody. Then I started looking at cookbooks, playing with chicken pot pie, stir-fries.
Then I get that wake-up call—maybe it’s small, like a put-down from a white chef who feels threatened by Black talent, or maybe it’s big, like a Black man murdered on camera for using a counterfeit bill—and suddenly everything that’s ever happened to me and the people I love based on the color of our skin comes flooding back. When things have been so wrong for so long, you tiptoe around them so they don’t hurt you directly. And then one day they do.
I’d be at a festival with all these top chefs serving pork terrine on peppery crackers or whatever, and I’m like, “Okay, girl. This is the same stuff all the country people are boiling in big black kettles at the cookout.”
I'm just a bit older and grew up in the midwest/neast. Maybe this is more 'you're a woman' and because of your location thing. Black (men) chefs/cooks in the 50s and 60s, up north, had some prestigious jobs; most likely not paid what they should have or total responsibilities.
Every turn Americans take we get this racism bullshit rammed down our throats !!! America is tired of this shit .
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