This was my original facebook post on the topic:
“There was a thread in which somebody said that “Soul food” isn’t ‘just’ Black American. But Soul food is quite literally the name of our food. Michael Twitty talks about the naming of Soul Food in High on the Hog. Yes, every culture can make food that has soul in it. But ours is called soul food.
what I think is interesting is that anything cultural that was born from Black folks whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States that has been touched by any other peoples, people feel a claim to ownership & invention over it (see soul food named as southern food). But I want to know which cultures are untouched by outside influence, and why then is our culture the one that everyone wants co-ownership of?
Personally, I think its because (especially) nonBlack people tend to think of us and things that come from us as property (still) to be claimed and divided up. I think y’all should rectify that.”
Continuing my thoughts- there is not a single aspect of Black culture (particularly that of Black folks whose ancestors were enslaved in the US) that non-Black folks will not argue you DOWN about their historical right to participate in and capitalize off of. Our hairstyles, our dress, our arts, our language & our grammar, our skin color and phenotypes, our food, etc. And every time it happens, we are expected to have references, citations and proof that our culture iz 100% ours without ever having been influenced by anything and anybody else for us to claim ownership of it.
Which is ridiculous, but also a continuation of the imperialist anthropological project of western hegemony and the creation of the idea of Black people as nothing more than white people (culturally) in Black skin. When people culturally attack and jack us, by claiming ownership over the unique africanity that is here in the United States, it is erasing the AFRICAN influence in the United States (the fact that much of what we call culture in the UNITED STATES as we know it is the result of Africanity as shaped by the conditions on this land) and that in turn makes our africanity (our culture) invisible. This invisibility is not an accident. envelopian cultural anthropologists have been trying, for hundreds of years, to promote the idea that we are culturally void here, by positioning us oppositionally to those peoples whose cultures they consider more “pure” and “untainted” by whiteness (This is also the completion of Black objectification, or Black people as objects of whiteness and not as full peoples, but I digress). That makes any of our cultural product inherently ownerless and ripe for the exploitation and exportation. This was necessary because there is no cultural foundation for the psychic and mythological creation of the United States other than violence. It’s all stolen. We see it in the confederate and fake native trading posts that dot tennessee and south carolina, and we see it in the erasure of country music’s african roots.
Personally, I’ve stopped arguing with those of the blank paper persuasion, and non-Black people about individual instances of cultural appropriation (as much as it disgusts me), because it iz the consumability of Blackness as a whole that is the greater problem. It iz the way that Black people and our unique interpretation and expression of Africanity here on these shores is consistently sacrificed and chopped up and exported for the cultural cache and coffers of the United States. Other peoples have more success with arguing cultural appropriation, because other peoples are not the capital. We are. And the sooner we understand that, the sooner we understand that other folks copying us and capitalizing off of us iz not a compliment, but a participation in the idea of us as currency. This iz a problem of the fundamental organization of the world as we know it, not just the irritation of individual nonBlack people with colored cornrows (ie festival braids) and African (tiktok) dances.
& yeah, we don’t gatekeep hard enough, but if you are the currency, then it makes sense that we sell-out (literally) in order to survive. It’s disgusting, but it makes sense. I personally don’t see myself inviting nonBlack folks to the cookout, but the issue isn’t just the invitations. It’s the fact that they coming regardless of whether they were invited or not.
Anyway, nonBlack people this iz for you: Stop arguing that you have rights to pick through Black culture for whatever reason you think you have the right to. Understand that there are larger and more harmful systems of violence that you are participating in and capitalizing off of that are unique to the experience of Black people, particularly Black people whose ancestors were enslaved in the chattel slavery of the American South.
