Race in America
Why White People Can’t Cook
Or protest.
Author’s note: This piece was originally published on June 3, 2020, under the title White People Can’t Cook. It has been revised for clarity.
On holidays, I’m the one that cooks. Not because I want to, but because I’m good at cooking in large quantities and because I can be trusted not to fuck up the macaroni and cheese.
For Black family gatherings, there is a certain way to make things, and that way can (read WILL) differ based on the family’s regional and personal history. No matter how many times you do it, cooking for a new group of Black people, ones whose ‘good countertops’ you haven’t grown up cutting nicks into, whose spice cabinet you’ve never organized alphabetically, is stressful.
My mother was a gourmand, and she delighted in introducing my young palate to culinary delights that would one day make me a very, very expensive date.
Looking back on it now, I see that my mother was always teaching me how to cook.
Every weekend we would take the number six bus to the westside market. My mother would drag me, hand clutched firmly in her larger, rougher one, from stall to stall, judiciously selecting only the freshest corn, the ripest melons, and the…
