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There is absolutely no way
in the world that Black folks

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only ate scraps.

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How people are making
decisions about what they're eating.

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A lot of times when we think about
the foods of especially black folks,

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we often point to, oh,
they're just eating soul food.

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And so their food decisions are
essentially entangled in the past.

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According to the narrative, 
enslaved Africans in the Americas

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were only given 'scraps' to eat,
 the parts of a pig that whites didn't want.

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What's called offal: 
ears, snouts, tails and innards.

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The story goes that the enslaved
people often used hot spices

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and sugar to make these parts tastier, 
or deep-fried them.

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Dishes like that still exist today.

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But they are generally viewed 
as bad for your health,

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and belong to a cuisine 
colloquially referred to as

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'soul food'.

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We have eaten a variety of foods, so
that whole 'scraps' narrative is one

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that really captures a sort of 1800s
to 1865 at the end of enslavement.

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Probably a traveler's account that
saw black folks eating offal

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or the leftovers or the entrails.

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But that absolutely is not
the whole of African

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and African American diets.

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Psyche Williams-Forson wrote a
book entitled "Eating While Black".

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She's a professor of American Studies
at the University of Maryland.

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When you have people who repeat
those narratives without knowing the history,

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you repeat the stereotype.

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Another stereotype is
that Black people love to eat

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watermelon and chicken.

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Back in 2008, when Barack Obama
was first elected US President,

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a caricature circulated online 
of the White House

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with a huge watermelon patch 
on the front lawn.

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There was nothing cute about it.

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It was absolutely a racist trope.

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Its roots can be found in the
post-slavery era in the US,

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when some Black people sold
watermelons to earn money.

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A slice resembles a wide smile,

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which is how Black people 
were often portrayed:

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Always grinning, always happy, 
always wonderfully delighted

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to be in servitude to white folks.

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We were accused of
being watermelon-eating darkies,

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chicken-stealing darkies.

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That narrative goes all 
the way back to enslavement,

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when we were often 
accused of stealing chickens.

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But stereotypes aside,
another discussion is going on.

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Statistics show that
Black people in the US are more likely

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to be overweight.

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And they suffer from heart
disease and diabetes more often

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than whites or Latinos.

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An unhealthy diet is usually
blamed,

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one rich in foods high 
in  fat and sugar.

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Like soul food or fast food.

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I think one of the things that
motivated me to do this research

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was this conversation about
health disparities, right.

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Sociologist Joseph Ewoodzie, Jr.

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wrote his dissertation on the Black
population in Jackson, Mississippi.

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And I wanted to know how black people
up and down the socio-economic ladder

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makes decisions about what they eat.

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I started with
people who are homeless.

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I spent all my days with them.

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I ate what they ate;
I only ate when they ate.

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And then after three and a half months 
through connections that I had made,

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I moved up to people 
who are in poverty.

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Zenani had two children at that time, 
has three children now.

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What I did was just spent time 
with Zenani and start to see

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what social structures 
she was experiencing.

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And then after three and a half months, 
I moved up again to the lower middle class.

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That was a family that had
moved from Washington, D.C.

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to Jackson, Mississippi.

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And I moved up again
to upper middle class.

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I sort of worked as a
paralegal for a lawyer.

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Or maybe paralegal is
too strong of a word.

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I sort of helped her out
in her office a little bit.

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If we think about the health
conditions of Black folks as a result

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of their individual decision-making,
I think that's misplaced.

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If we think about them as just
continuing things that happened

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in the past, I think 
that's also misplaced.

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The term 'food deserts' 
is  often  used  to describe areas

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where there is not enough 
healthy food available.

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Many times where socially
disadvantaged people live,

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where supermarkets offering
 fresh produce are far away.

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The scenario often goes hand-in-hand
with an oversupply of cheap,

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unhealthy offerings from
fast food restaurants.

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But does that description 
apply to where people

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like Zenani the 
single mother lived?

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If we look at Zenani's food
availability by just drawing a circle

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around her address and seeing what
kinds of grocery stores are available to her,

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 I don't think
we will capture as much.

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This includes thinking about 
how she gets housing;

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it includes how she thinks about
getting healthcare, transportation.

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I think for me, food availability
includes all those things.

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And if we're able to think about
her food, what she has access to,

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as being related to 
these other structures,

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I think it gives us a lot 
more analytical insight.

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But back to the topic of soul food, 
which doesn't just include ingredients

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like meat, fat and sugar,
but often also plant-based components

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like sweet potatoes,
beans, kale and okra.

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Foods popular among foodies today
because they're considered healthy.

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It's a variety of foods that in
combination would be most familiar

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to anyone who has Southern roots 
but also in African American communities.

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We helped to build the cuisine 
and the culinary legacies

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of the United States of America 
and globally.

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There's absolutely no way 
we survived off of merely scraps.

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Please don't reiterate
the single story.