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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30293 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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Southern food is popular in the north(often brought by black chefs).

Southern food being introduced into the north by blacks is nothing new, the only new thing is it being considered Southern instead of Black. Take the stereotype that black people like fried chicken. This is almost entirely a yankee stereotype. Rednecks love fried chicken, why would a group of people who all insist no one else's fried chicken is as good as what their momma used to make think it was a black thing? Same with collard greens, its a poor southern food not a black one.

But after the great migration of black people north in the early 20th century the only people yankees knew who ate fried chicken were black people so they considered it black culture, but it was really just that the blacks were the only southerners they knew so they coded southern culture as black.

There are stereotypically different dishes between white and black southerners and while actual deep redneck food like frog is not becoming popular(nor is actual black specific soul food like chitterlings or pokeweed), more white-coded foods like biscuits and gravy or flavored iced tea definitely are.

A lot of this is just historical class differences but some of it is definitely racial.

My poor white grandparents ate chitterlings (god what a spelling) but my parents used to make fun of them (the chitlins, not the grandparents). Who's eating the pickled pig's feet? I think that's deep country, and maybe also to a degree black-coded. Ironically my Japanese wife, herself brought up in the Kyushu countryside, really likes them, called here tonsoku /豚足.

Also watermelon is incredibly popular across the South. My (white) family, especially the older generations, really enjoy it in-season.

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