"You Ate!"

Like good art, food can capture experiences in a way that simply cannot be put into words. Food is both healing and communal; it captures feelings and emotional nuances, leaving lasting impressions on our souls. 

While the dining hall food has its ups and downs, I always cherish the meals I have with my friends. We’re a diverse group of people; therefore, some food is familiar, others not so much. For example, as a Black woman, putting grapes in a chicken salad is definitely something I was not familiar with (Evan tells me this is a white people classic). I am familiar, however, with the mac and cheese, collard greens, and corn bread, which we all enjoy. Little moments like that remind me of home—soul food, and exceptional company.

Now, near-every Black person will tell you of their Grandma’s cooking, or their favorite Soul food restaurant. The Sunday dinners, and how, being away from college, we miss home-cooked food more than our actual homes. I, too, am said Black person who misses the chicken and waffles, with a side of shrimp and grits, butter, and Aunt-Jemima syrup—or well Pearl Milling company syrup.

As of June 2021, following Quaker Oats' announcement to remove the name and image due to its historical roots in racial stereotypes,  Aunt Jemima is no longer the face of the syrup. Aunt Jemima, the older, docile Black woman, was actually not Black, a woman, or even a person at all. She was a fictional character, based on the mammy archetype—a pervasive racial caricature depicting an enslaved Black woman, who was content with her “care-giving” role. This was propaganda aiming to reinforce the institution of slavery. Aunt Jemima, like mammy propaganda, was exploited by a white-owned company to market towards Black people. She, with the jovial demeanor, was the palatable face of hegemony. 

Hegemony is the dominance of one group over others in a social, political, or economic context. In this case, the dominant culture—white people—profits from and consumes the marginalized culture of Black people. Quaker Oats profited an annual revenue of millions from promoting racial propaganda. Isn’t that insane? 

If you didn’t know, Soul food was created during slavery when African Americans were forced to find sustenance in portions of meat and vegetables considered inedible by white people. Soul food seasonings were used to spice up those less desirable portions of food, transforming scraps into irresistibly flavorful meals. Like Soul food, Blues and Hip-Hop were born from the necessity of navigating limitations created by racial oppression.

Blues music was created post-slavery using their bodies in the absence of instruments. It gave way to Jazz, which then led to Rock and Roll, and now Hip-Hop, as well as every new beat, rhythm, and phrase. Similarly, we’ve moved from cool to slay to Bet, a linguistic dialect created by Black people, or otherwise known as African American Vernacular English; hereafter referred to as AAVE.

Anna Lehn (in her article “Cool” Theft), namely, brought up Helen O’Connell, a white woman, a part of a white band, who was successful in the Jim Crow era. O’Connell sings, “Man, that's Groovy!” a phrase popularized by Black Harlem jazz musicians, who in the Jim Crow era were deemed second-class citizens. 

AAVE has its own complex syntax and grammar structure, and words, like Groovy or Bet (positive exclamations which mean “cool”), are specific to the dialect. Speakers of AAVE are often marginalized on account of racist ideology, which places it as an ungrammatical, incorrect, and uneducated way to speak, rather than a distinct dialect. O’Connell’s use of the phrase reaffirms hegemony by capitalizing on the Black created language, while it continues to be demeaned as “bad English.” 

Today we continue to see hegemony through the appropriation of AAVE, because again, like Soul food, it’s made its way into the mainstream and the mouths of non-Black people. Jokingly, someone might stop reading because of this, but Ariana Grande, during her “Black-iana” 2018-2019 Thank U, Next album era, is an example of this kind of cultural appropriation. 

So many non-Black celebrities cherry-pick the parts of Black culture they want, appropriate them, use them to get ahead in their careers, then casually discard them once they no longer benefit them. This is also seen by Grande, who, in her current Wicked era, has made herself white again, shifting her aesthetic and avoiding AAVE slang, as if to be taken seriously in the acting industry. Seemingly and strategically rebranding and connecting herself back to being white to distance herself from the accusations of appropriation. This example illustrates the perpetuation of the improper and “unprofessional” connotations ascribed to AAVE. 

I’d like to preface that the issue isn’t consumption, it’s respect, acknowledgement, and profit. Recently, I’ve been seeing AAVE referred to as “Internet Slang” or “TikTok language.” This invalidates its history and creator—it’s Aunt Jemimafying our language. Whether the non-Black usage of AAVE is permissible in the context of location and proximity (Southern dialect vs. AAVE), I personally don’t think it’s inherently wrong for non-Black people to use specific AAVE terms. In the same breath, however, it’s wrong when AAVE terms are used to create viral moments that misuse, monetize, or mock Black people. And I also believe the white anger towards Black people's “gatekeeping” of our language stems from hegemony. Black people asking a non-Black person to respect our culture doesn’t always equate to gatekeeping. 

There's a distinct line between appreciating and appropriating Black culture. Soul food requires you to acknowledge the chef; AAVE requires you to acknowledge the source. If you're using our language to profit and or to mock us, like Quaker Oats, you didn’t eat. But to those who stand with us, respect the culture, and are willing to give credit to its originators, there's a seat at the table with us. 

Kaniyah Swann