di Paula Dean revelations continue...mercy

[My Looh]

lonrwolf; the difference between paula deen & jaimie foxx is that foxx is a comedian who made a joke about a role he played in a movie...that's what his character in the movie did- kill white people; paula deen is talking about real life situations & is not joking...she seriously waxes nostalgic about a time when being born of African descent in the USA meant legal racial oppression & being born of European descent meant legal privilege as being the only legitimate citizen of the US. she openly dreams about slavery- c'mon anyone with half a brain can see how a segment of the population would be offended by that. if she is a bigot or if she deserved to get fired-- I don't know or care-- she won't suffer too bad with the millions in her bank account; one thing i'm certain of is that she isn't too bright

Well said!

[Blackstar*]

Hollis shoulda bax her simple behine from awff di stage, chat bout him so dark she cyan see him. Brite an outta awda.

[j-kid]

Har pork product endorsement contract dead tuh. Dem pulled di plug pan ie:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/us/paula-deen-loses-major-endorsement-deal.html?_r=0

[j-kid]

Sound like den had ah "Driving Miss Daisy" ting going on.

Hollis shoulda bax her simple behine from awff di stage, chat bout him so dark she cyan see him. Brite an outta awda.

[jah_yout]

she reminds me of this character in "bringing down the house"

[lonewolf]

In reply to Tuff...

Why not?

Why concern yourself with such nonsense? It should be ignored.

Maybe ...but who said he is held to any standards above her

Really? I don't see his career suffering or see him being raked over the coals like Dean...and why? Because he is black and Dean is white. It's fashionable to make jokes about killing white people. BUT! you know there is no way in hell that if the roles were reversed and a white celebrity joked about killing black people that the media would have let that BS go without a major flogging and public execution of their career.

A this post is about Paula Dean

Yes it is, but it's also about a celebrity being held to a higher standard because of the color of her skin.
If it was a non celebrity no one would give a sheet....Oh, unless it was somone black like Foxx?

B this all came from a deposition in court and it seems her entire culture is based on accepting White on Black discrimination as evidenced by the above friendly interview and the adverse court filings.

Hey, I don't give a rat's behind about Paula Dean. Don't watch her shows and could care less. I think she was stupid for saying what she said. But she has every right to say what she wants regardless of how ignorant her thoughts are without all this "hoopla". This is only happening because she is white and she said something insulting about blacks. That's the whole basis behind this story...cut and dry.

c changing the subject is the oldest most dispicable trick on this board.

It's the same subject. Why is it dispicable? Because you find the the parallels uncomfortable?

You are a master

Thank you..but, I didn't think it was fashionable for blacks to be calling whites master? Watch out, the PC police might chase you down.

[Xavier]

One of the best perspectives on the Paula Deen "scandal"

I know this is a bit long but it is worth it. It is one of the best perspectives on this Paula Deen. Again it is long but worth the read.

Source: http://afroculinaria.com/2013/06/25/...to-paula-deen/
Author: Michael W. Twitty

An Open Letter to Paula Deen:

Dear Paula Deen,
So it’s been a tough week for you… believe me you I know something about tough weeks being a beginning food writer and lowly culinary historian. Of course honey, I’d kill for one of your worst days as I could rest myself on the lanai, the veranda, the portico (okay that was really tongue in cheek), the porch..whatever…as long as its breezy and mosquito-free. First Food Network now Smithfield. (Well not so mad about Smithfield—not the most ethical place to shill for, eh, Paula?)
I am currently engaged in a project I began in 2011 called The Cooking Gene Project—my goal to examine family and food history as the descendant of Africans, Europeans and Native Americans—enslaved people and enslavers—from Africa to America and from Slavery to Freedom. You and I are both human, we are both Americans, we are both quite “healthily” built, and yet none of these labels is more profound for me than the fact we are both Southern. Sweet tea runs in our blood, in fact is our blood…What I understand to be true, a lot of your critics don’t…which is, as Southerners our ancestors co-created the food and hospitality and manners which you were born to 66 years ago and I, thirty-six. In the words of scholar Mechal Sobel, this was “a world they made together,” but beyond that, it is a world we make together. So I speak to you as a fellow Southerner, a cousin if you will, not as a combatant.


To be part of the national surprise towards you saying the word “nigger” in the past (I am a cultural and culinary historian and so therefore I am using the word within context…) is at best naïve and at worst, an attempt to hide the pervasiveness of racism, specifically anti-Black racism in certain currents of American culture—not just Southern. Take for example the completely un-Christian and inhuman rage at Cheerios for their simple and very American ad showing a beautiful biracial girl talking to her white mother and pouring cereal on the chest of her Black father. That Cheerio’s had to shut down the comments section says that the idea of inter-human relationships outside of one’s color bracket is for many hiding behind a computer screen—a sign of the apocalypse. So just like those old spaghetti sauce ads, yes, America, racism—“it’s in there” even when we were prefer it not be.


When you said, “of course,” I wasn’t flabbergasted, I was rather, relieved…In fact we Black Southerners have an underground saying, “better the Southern white man than the Northern one, because at least you know where he stands…” but Paula I knew what you meant, and I knew where you were coming from. I’m not defending that or saying its right—because it’s that word—and the same racist venom that drove my grandparents into the Great Migration almost 70 years ago. I am not in agreement with esteemed journalist Bob Herbert who said “brothers shouldn’t use it either..” I think women have a right to the word “b….” gay men have a right to the word “queer” or “f…” and it’s up to people with oppressive histories to decide when and where the use of certain pejorative terms is appropriate. Power in language is not a one way street. Obviously I am not encouraging you to use the word further, but I am not going to hide behind ideals when the realities of our struggles with identity as a nation are clear. No sound bite can begin to peel back the layers of this issue.


Some have said you are not a racist. Sorry, I don’t believe that…I am more of the Avenue Q type—everybody’s—you guessed it—a little bit racist. This is nothing to be proud of no more than we are proud of our other sins and foibles. It’s something we should work against. It takes a lifetime to unlearn taught prejudice or socially mandated racism or even get over strings of negative experiences we’ve had with groups outside of our own. We have a really lousy language—and I don’t just mean because we took a Spanish and Portuguese word (negro) and turned into the most recognizable racial slur on earth…in any language…because we have a million and one ways to hate, disdain, prejudge, discriminate and yet we hide behind a few paltry words like racism, bigotry, prejudice when we damn well know that we have thousands of words for cars—because we LOVE cars….and food—because we LOVE food—and yet in this language you and I share, how we break down patterns of thought that lead to social discord like racism, are sorely lacking. We are a cleaver people at hiding our obsessions with downgrading the other.
Problem two…I want you to understand that I am probably more angry about the cloud of smoke this fiasco has created for other issues surrounding race and Southern food. To be real, you using the word “nigger” a few times in the past does nothing to destroy my world. It may make me sigh for a few minutes in resentment and resignation, but I’m not shocked or wounded. No victim here. Systemic racism in the world of Southern food and public discourse not your past epithets are what really piss me off. There is so much press and so much activity around Southern food and yet the diversity of people of color engaged in this art form and telling and teaching its history and giving it a future are often passed up or disregarded. Gentrification in our cities, the lack of attention to Southern food deserts often inhabited by the non-elites that aren’t spoken about, the ignorance and ignoring of voices beyond a few token Black cooks/chefs or being called on to speak to our issues as an afterthought is what gets me mad. In the world of Southern food, we are lacking a diversity of voices and that does not just mean Black people—or Black perspectives! We are surrounded by culinary injustice where some Southerners take credit for things that enslaved Africans and their descendants played key roles in innovating. Barbecue, in my lifetime, may go the way of the Blues and the banjo….a relic of our culture that whisps away. That tragedy rooted in the unwillingness to give African American barbecue masters and other cooks an equal chance at the platform is far more galling than you saying “nigger,” in childhood ignorance or emotional rage or social whimsy.

[Xavier]

Part 2

Source: http://afroculinaria.com/2013/06/25/...to-paula-deen/
Author: Michael W. Twitty


Culinary injustice is what you get where you go to plantation museums and enslaved Blacks are not even talked about, but called servants. We are invisible. Visitors come from all over to marvel at the architecture and wallpaper and windowpanes but forget the fact that many of those houses were built by enslaved African Americans or that the food that those plantations were renowned for came from Black men and Black women truly slaving away in the detached kitchens. Imagine how I, a culinary historian and living history interpreter feel during some of these tours where my ancestors are literally annihilated and whisked away to the corners of those rooms, dying multiple deaths of anonymity and cultural amnesia. I’m so tired of reading about how “okra” is an “African word.”(For land’s sake ya know “apple” isn’t a “European word…” its an English word that comes from German like okra comes from Igbo and Twi!) I am so tired of seeing people of African descent relegated to the tertiary status when even your pal Alton Brown has said, it was enslaved Black people cooking the food. Culinary injustice is the annihilation of our food voices—past, present and foreseeable future—and nobody will talk about that like they are talking about you and the “n word.” For shame.
You see Paula, your grits may not be like mine, but one time I saw you make hoecakes on your show and I never heard tell of where them hoecakes really came from. Now not to compare apples and oranges but when I was a boy it was a great pleasure to hear Nathalie Dupree talk about how beaten biscuits and country captain and gumbo started. More often than not, she gave a nod to my ancestors. Don’t forget that the Southern food you have been crowned the queen of was made into an art largely in the hands of enslaved cooks, some like the ones who prepared food on your ancestor’s Georgia plantation. You, just like me cousin, stand squarely on what late playwright August Wilson called, “the self defining ground of the slave quarter.” There and in the big house kitchen, Africa, Europe and Native America(s) melded and became a fluid genre of world cuisine known as Southern food. Your barbecue is my West African babbake, your fried chicken, your red rice, your hoecake, your watermelon, your black eyed peas, your crowder peas, your muskmelon, your tomatoes, your peanuts, your hot peppers, your Brunswick stew and okra soup, benne, jambalaya, hoppin’ john, gumbo, stewed greens and fat meat—have inextricable ties to the plantation South and its often Black Majority coming from strong roots in West and Central Africa.


Don’t be fooled by the claims that Black people don’t watch you. We’ve been watching you. We all have opinions about you. You were at one point sort of like our Bill Clinton. (You know the first Black president?) When G. Garvin and the Neely’s and the elusive B Smith (who they LOVED to put on late on Saturday nights or early Sunday mornings!) were few and far between, you were our sorta soul mama, the white lady with the gadonkadonk and the sass and the signifying who gave us a taste of the Old Country-which is for us—the former Confederacy and just beyond. Furthermore, as a male who practices an “alternative lifestyle” (and by the way I am using that phrase in bitter sarcastic irony), it goes without saying that many of my brothers have been you for Halloween, and you are right up there with Dolly Parton, Dixie Carter and Tallullah Bankhead of old as one of the muses of the Southern gay male imagination. We don’t despise you, we don’t even think you made America fat. We think you are a businesswoman who has made some mistakes, has character flaws like everybody else and in fact is now a scapegoat. I find it hard to be significantly angry at you when during the last election the re-disenfranchisement of the Negro—like something from the time of W.E.B. Du Bois was a national cause celebre. Hell, today the voting rights act was gutted and I’m sure many think this is a serious win for “democracy.” If I want to be furious about something racial—well America—get real—we’ve had a good twelve years of really really rich material that the National media has set aside to talk about Paula Deen. Yes Paula, in light of all these things, you are the ultimate, consummate racist, and the one who made us fat, and the reason why American food sucks and ……you don’t believe that any more than I do.



A fellow Georgian of yours once said that one day the “sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners would sit down at the table of brotherhood.” Well no better time than now. Paula, I don’t have to tell you redemption is yours to choose, to have and to embrace. As a Jew, I extend the invitation to do teshuvah—which means to repent—but better—to return to a better state, a state of shalem–wholeness and shalom–peace. You used food to rescue your life, your family and your destiny. I admire that. I know that I have not always made good choices and to be honest none of us are perfect. This is an opportunity to grow and renew.


If there is anything The Cooking Gene has taught me—its about the art of reconciliation. We aren’t happy with you right now. Then again some of the things you have said or have been accused of saying aren’t surprising. In so many ways, that’s the more unfortunate aspect. We are resigned to believe and understand that our neighbor is to be suspected before respected. It doesn’t have to be this way, and it doesn’t have to go on forever. As a species we cannot conduct ourselves in this manner. As creations of the Living G-d, we are commanded to be better. You and I are both the descendants of people who lived, fought, died, suffered so that we could be better in our own time. I’m disappointed but I’m not heartless. And better yet, praise G-d I ain’t hopeless.
If you aren’t busy on September 7, and I surely doubt that you are not busy—I would like to invite you to a gathering at a historic antebellum North Carolina plantation. We are doing a fundraiser dinner for Historic Stagville, a North Carolina Historic Site. One of the largest in fact, much larger than the one owned by your great-grandfather’s in Georgia. 30,000 acres once upon a time with 900 enslaved African Americans working the land over time. They grew tobacco, corn, wheat and cotton. I want you to walk the grounds with me, go into the cabins, and most of all I want you to help me cook. Everything is being prepared using locally sourced food, half of which we hope will come from North Carolina’s African American farmers who so desperately need our support. Everything will be cooked according to 19^th century methods. So September 7, 2013, if you’re brave enough, let’s bake bread and break bread together at Historic Stagville. This isn’t publicity this is opportunity. Leave the cameras at home. Don’t worry, it’s cool, nobody will harm you if you’re willing to walk to the Mourner’s Bench. Better yet, I’ll be there right with you.


G-d Bless,
Culinary Historian, Food Writer and Living History Interpreter

[Tuff Gong]

In reply to Tuff...

Why concern yourself with such nonsense? It should be ignored.

You mean the nonsense of an employer maintaining a toxic atmosphere of racism, sexism, sexual harassment and labour discrimination for her employees at a public restaurant?

[lonewolf]

Xavier, that's a well written piece.

We think you are a businesswoman who has made some mistakes, has character flaws like everybody else and in fact is now a scapegoat.

BINGO!

[Tuff Gong]

In reply to Tuff..
Really? I don't see his career suffering or see him being raked over the coals like Dean...and why? Because he is black and Dean is white.

You put words into other mouths then you go off on a rant on your own words.
As was explained a few posts ago.


a. Mr. Foxx is a Comedian discussing a role he had in a movie. I did not see the movie myself but it seems the facts supported his quip that he was killing white people. No where it could be compared to the matter in court against Ms. Deen.
b. Mr. Foxx and Ms. Deen's comments are not in the news cycle together. I imagine that Mr. Foxx's situation has been played out already and whatever punishment or support he was due, he has received.
c. You are one person who is still raking Mr. Foxx over the coals, so it not true that he has not been lynched for his comments about offing white peple.

[Tuff Gong]

In reply to Tuff...

It's the same subject. Why is it dispicable? Because you find the the parallels uncomfortable?

It is not the same subject and I am not uncomfortable discussing Mr. Foxx. I am pointing out your dishonesty/confusion?

[j-kid]

What is Jesse (where is the money/camera?) Jackson getting out of this? He has offered to help Paula Dean.

[lonewolf]

It is not the same subject and I am not uncomfortable discussing Mr. Foxx. I am pointing out your dishonesty/confusion?

It's another discussion involving race. Why do you stoop to the low levels of saying I'm dishonest because you either refuse to recognise my point or simply don't have the mental faculties to keep up with the conversation? Or have you moved to the dark side of the Cakes/Calvin form of debate?

This is an open forum for discussion.
In my opinion what I'm saying is relevant. If you disagree, fine, but that does not give you the right to say I'm dishonest because I see things in a different light than you.

You are one person who is still raking Mr. Foxx over the coals, so it not true that he has not been lynched for his comments about offing white peple.

That statement would have merrit if I was some big "mucky muck" behind the curtain at MSNBC pulling the strings...get real.

Now ya see what you can get away with being black? Maybe I'll have to spell it out for you just in case it is over your head.

You can post a comment about Foxx being lynched and without repercussion because you are black. Me? At the very least it would raise eyebrows because I'm white...Get it? Or do you need me to break it down further.

Paula Dean? Jamie Foxx? Not sinking into your cranium?

[j-kid]

Paula Dean seeks help from Rev. Jesse Jackson

Posted: Jun 26, 2013 5:55 PM by Joe Bevans

CHICAGO (AP) - Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson says he's agreed to help celebrity chef Paula Deen try to make amends for her past use of a racial slur, saying she shouldn't become a "sacrificial lamb" over the issue of racial intolerance. Jackson told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Deen called him this week, and they discussed how she might recover. Jackson says if Deen is willing to acknowledge mistakes and make changes, "she should be reclaimed rather than destroyed." Jackson says he's more troubled by racial disparities in jobs, lending, health care, business opportunities and the criminal justice system. Her admission of using the slur first came in a lawsuit deposition. It later cost her an endorsement deal with Smithfield Foods and her job with the Food Network.

http://www.koaa.com/news/paula-dean-...jesse-jackson/#_