I recently started rereading High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica Harris, which launched a Netflix series of the same name (about which I wrote a few years ago). Once I started rereading it, I remembered there's a second season of the show. In this moment when so many on the right are yelling about how much they hate DEI, I made a conscious choice to turn away from that discourse and to learn more about the roots of Black food and culture in this country.

In the first episode of the second season, "Food for the Journey," Serigne Mbaye serves a plate of akara, black-eyed-pea fritters with a palm oil sauce. He tells the story of visiting Gorée Island (one of the grief-soaked places on African soil from which the slavers set sail.) As slaves were fattened for the treacherous journey to come, they were fed familiar black eyed peas and palm oil. He explains to the hosts of the show that the akara he serves now are a way of honoring that painful history. 

I think of the black-eyed pea fritter recipe I learned from Black Gay Jewish chef Michael Twitty, also a shout-out to the ancestors who brought these ingredients with them across the sea. (I remember the black-eyed pea fritters I ate in Ghana in 1999 outside a very long church service held in half a dozen tribal languages in addition to English.) And I think: refusing to teach or to honor the strength, perseverance, and wisdom of the African American community is so short-sighted and sad.

In another poignant scene, a gentleman named Elvin Shields talks about what it was like to be a sharecropper in the 1940s and 50s. Picking cotton. Growing what food they could. Having to rent equipment from the landowner in order to do their contractually-obligated labor. Having to buy food on credit from the plantation store, and then pay up when the cotton was sold. (Makes me think of today's prison laborers.) And then mechanization came, and they were told on no notice to leave.

All of this was decades after slavery was over. And yet the constricted circumstances, the limited foodstuffs made available at the plantation store, even eventually forced migration -- all of it was still there... right up until the beginning of what we now call the Civil Rights era. (And now it feels like we're fighting again for the same civil rights and human dignity I thought my forebears had secured.) It is both depressing and uplifting to realize how today's struggles dovetail with what came before.

I was also moved by Mr. Benjamin Gaines, Sr. (among the last of the Pullman porters), age 99. He tells a story about an encounter with a white patron who kicked him in the ass, and about how some of the white patrons called all of them "George" (as in George Pullman.) It was an erasure of their identity: a scant step above calling them "boy" (or worse.) He also reminisces about the food the Black chefs made for the staff, and how they had a magic touch that made it feel like home.

The history of human chattel slavery and the long, deep-rooted prejudices that followed makes me so angry and sad. Some elements remind me of the Jewish history that's in my bones and the prejudices we've experienced. I guess it makes sense that I try to understand racism through the lens of antisemitism, which is the hateful bigotry I know best. And -- I also want to honor the celebratory parts of this history. There is triumph here, and artistry, and honor, and beauty. That feels important.

I want to learn more of the history of how (many) white Americans treated African Americans -- and also how Black Americans thrived even amidst hardship, in neighborhoods planted on rocky or even poisoned soil. (Including in Texas.) As a Jewish American I want to come to grips with all of this. Not in a self-flagellating way, but in a way that takes responsibility for my nation's history and my own choices while also lifting up and learning from the beauty of African American wisdom and survival. 

I know a lot of people who have been struggling with feeling hopeless over the last month or so. This book and show are a good reminder that our forebears in the struggle toward justice faced profound difficulties and found a way to survive and even thrive. That might be some of the wisdom we most need right now. At least, it might be some of the wisdom that I most need right now. And I imagine I'm not alone. Anyway: I'm finding some spiritual uplift in watching High on the Hog.