“I heard my mother asking the neighbors for salt. But we had salt in the house. I asked her why she was asking the neighbors for salt. And she answered me:
“because our neighbors don’t have a lot of money and often, they ask us for something from time to time. I also ask them for something small and inexpensive, so that they feel that we need them too. This way they feel comfortable and easier for them to keep asking us for everything they need”
@adexnelsonx on x
Every year around this time, our bodies slow down. With the onset of winter, we move towards family, reflection, and looking at the year in full. During this period, we tend to come together for great big feasts, calling upon beloved soul food staples and the grace of the Lord. While Black people try to recontextualize this day of misery into one of family and thankfulness, we rev up our engines for one of the biggest months for commerce and consumerism. We laugh over delicious recipes passed down across our families and….
Oh– not all of us do that? What do you mean you don’t want to see your family on Thanksgiving? Why?
If you are the kind of sicko choosing to read this on Thanksgiving, welcome. You are likely grappling with the contradictions of this holiday in an increasingly violent country that empowers settler colonialism and nation states to exert their will upon Black and Brown people. You have mixed feelings. You are likely just excited to eat the food and “take a walk” with your cousins but want no parts of the whole America thing. Or you are salivating over the southern dishes, with clear traces to recipes in Africa you get to bask in today. But why is this Thanksgiving feeling weird for you? Most likely, you’re not as anxious as your white coworkers about going home and talking to family, yet you still recognize you do not all share the same politics. You’re hoping and praying that nobody wants to be a political analyst over a seven-course meal today. They likely will.
But then again, after an agonizing electoral period where many of the electorate had to turn several blind eyes, eventually to their own detriment, I do think maybe these conversations are timely for a select few who may read this while their collards soak. While having tea with a Lebanese comrade Mara Matta last week, she said it quite well.
“We didn’t lose this election at the ballot box, we lost it at the dinner table.” Her words were astute.
We are in yet another moment where not only our social institutions are being called into question, but also our relationships to eachother across class and identity. Such can be substantiated with one quick look at our electoral map where the politics of both the Midwest and the South somehow “surprised” people. I think folks’ shock suggests several things.
We do not know enough about eachothers values. We are so committed to broadscale binaries that our values are not allowed to be complex and nuanced in nature. You are a Democrat or Republican. You are a person of faith or a heathen. And so forth. Our inability to talk about values with those close to us should call the entire idea of polling into question. And yet it might not.
To be American is to prescribe national identity where justice and liberation are needed. The reality is, not all Black people have the same politics. We differ in levels of despair and that influences how we show up in both community but also the political arena.
It is absolutely relevant on Thanksgiving.
Here in Michigan, we often joke that most black people here come from Mississippi and Alabama. The overwhelming majority of us can trace our family origins to the Great Migration, the post Civil war context, and chattel slavery previous to that. There are however other realities for African and Caribbean black folk who migrated to both Canada and Michigan during other periods. For Black Michignaders who journeyed here during the Great Migration, our social conventions were inextricably linked to the acquisition of a so-called “Middle Class” lifestyle that became the template for the Northern Black experience in America. Alice Randall describes this lifestyle in Black Bottom Saints.
“For decades, Black bottom had three distinct advantages over both Harlem and Bronzeville: its close proximity to Henry Ford’s auto factories; its close proximity to Paradise Valley, a Black red-light district where all the primary doors to ecstasy—music, gambling, prostitution, liquor, and drugs— stayed wide open for business twenty-four seven; and its close proximity to Canada.”
Alice Randall
Make no mistake, many of our social conventions can be rooted in the allowances of the automotive industry. Fordism was an ideology that proposed family and political values to a working class base that would eventually form some of their own politics. These discoveries would lead to the formation of the labor movement ( i.e. League of Revolutionary Black Workers) and its successes. But In addition to our politics, our very family traditions are also closely tied to the manufacturing industry.
My eastside home was built in 1959, right during the mid-century housing boom and shares the DNA of many of our childhood homes. Often visitors exclaim “this looks exactly like my grandma’s house” as they walk through a straight-forward and modest bungalow where this sorta holiday was likely once celebrated. We relish in our pastel-colored Italian style bathrooms that once served as vanities for matriarchs who bathed children, lit candles, and potted fresh flowers. And we gather around the TV for the big football game, stacking two plates so that we don't drop the “mac & cheese” which is finite & sacred in these gatherings.
Our homes are drenched in the same benevolent masculinity and femininity that we Detroiters are struggling to uphold to this day. Many of our family trees are so big for this very reason, all started with two antebellum lovers at their roots. But what is the efficacy of the Nuclear family structure in 2024? How does the answer to that question radically change how we engage with family holidays? And lastly, what does it say about our political movement if these moments of connection stay apolitical?
The Northern economy has always depended upon the subjugation of the Black South, with the collaboration of select Black Southerners. This is the true democratic compromise between the regional sections after the Civil War. While Southerners and Black people with roots in the South deliver elections through votes, labor, and organizing, what does the North do in return?
Julian Rose
I deeply resonate with the essay this quote is from. We must acknowledge that we have obtained our lifestyle through the direct exploitation of other Black people, both within this nation and abroad. While we can cling to notions like "climate haven" or "swing state," the material conditions of Black people in the South are not the same. And so while we eat our dinner and discuss politics, we must recognize that our scope is fair, valid even, but still limited.
We now live under increasingly precarious conditions. Living space and food are now huge expenses we have to strategize around. One can’t help but consider the ways that expensive eggs greatly impact several recipes during this time of year– cue the mac & cheese debate. It however is not the norm to reckon with change in this nation. We are a nation of gerontocracy where old ideas fight their damndest to have perpetual dominion over our lives. For us, things die much sooner than we are willing to acknowledge, yet we persist. We tend to make peace with their injustices instead of imagining what else we might build to replace them.
This lack of focus on establishing new norms means that we are accountable to the exploits of this holiday only, not our own politic. We over-extend in ways we normally wouldn't to accommodate family and friends, scrambling from store to store to collect all of the hallmark items while corporations that price gouge us year-round release "sales." Many families depend on the work of family matriarchs to carry the importance of the holiday instead of distributing both labor and decision making in more intergenerational ways.
Queer and nuerodivergent Black people often mask their way through these social interactions to stay In good graces with elders. And also, we adopt perfectionism, excluding others who may not yet know the best practices for these gatherings. Folks bicker over the best recipes, best ingredients and everything in between as if all black families are a monolith. And I wonder, what is being fostered from this day of settler colonialism that we have recontextualized as rigid and dogmatic “family time?”
Are we actually preserving the culture of our Southern ancestors if we are not positioning a new generation of hosts with radically new ideas about how to meet our current needs? Are we really connected as a people when we struggle so much to affirm the harm done to other black people the world over? And in what ways does antiBlackness protect itself with notions of "national identity?"
This is starting to sound like the longest commercial for Friendsgivings you’ll ever read in your pajamas. But its because I do see that as one potential path that folks are taking in a broader vision towards something new. These increasingly popular Friendsgiving hangouts provide safe opportunities for queer and neurodivergent Black folk to celebrate connection and family recipes together without the persecution of social conservatism. They are a great start to something that is both visionary and restorative.
But I think it goes deeper than just building relational space with our chosen family. I think that these shindigs can be thinking about lineage and tradition while also implementing new ideas that welcome diaspora and mutual aid. Like all “big bold plans” there are existing models of this. Look to organizations like Keep Growing Detroit and Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network (DBCFSN) for clear roadmaps towards equitable food systems where the majority of produce Black Detroiters eat are grown right here within city limits. These changemakers are where you find cooking classes, gardening experts, and folks who are deeply invested in the nutrition of Black people.
Just this year, I got to eat collard greens grown right in my backyard. The experience was one that radically changed my thoughts on “land ownership” and its capabilities. This is a story many have told before; the gardening bug is one that teaches us the value of patience and a true connection to the land. In growing collards you develop a better understanding of why Africans brough these seeds over to America and how reliable they might've been. They can grow in such a wide array of conditions and are always filling with a nice starch like cornbread to dip into them. I was so excited to have my mom try my greens I cooked in herbs, spices and coconut milk!
In my last blog, I talked about how city life can often pull us so far from our body's natural inclinations. In many ways, we see the natural world as something dissimilar from our urban landscape. This is one of many ways we have severed our ties from more liberatory norms still present in the South. Growing food is not just about climate impact; ultimately our impact on the environment through urban agriculture is very modest. What is most revolutionary is the connection we can make between the land and our bodies--something that has very intentionally been taken from us.
This summer, I walked through the Denby neighborhood with comrade Ru Sade passing out swiss chard from their new community garden to folks who had never known what it was called. It showcased just how much our food systems have severed our connection to the land. We canvassed asking folks what they would like to see in their community and folks said a wide array of things. But along with that question came a gentle push to try out the lettuce. " You can put it on a burger" or " "a little olive oil and lemon juice and you got a nice start for a salad" we'd share to folks who were skeptics. Ultimately, we got rid of all of the chard we bundled that day. It presented not only a new experience for folks but an opportunity for Ru to return and ask them about it. With food we don't always have to wait for a guru to engage us in community. We can learn about food together in ways that don't make people feel excluded.
This is something many millineals and fellow GenZers who have picked up gardening are saying. I'm sure you've seen the memes and tik toks about GenZ picking up "granny. hobbies" like knitting, and gardening. These narratives live on the same internet that deems GenZ to be lazy and increasingly conservative. But what I actually see are young black folks who are asking important questions about where we are headed. We have much work to do to answer that question and will not be the sole arbiters of liberation, but I think these aforementioned shifts are aligned with infrastructure being laid by our elders over the past decade of resistance in Detroit.
Just weeks ago, Detroit passed a historic Animal Keeping Ordinance that will now allow Detroiters to legally keep limited numbers of chickens, ducks, and beehives. This ordinance was more than a decade in the making--the progress of our urban agriculture community. Many Black & Brown folks have kept chickens and beehives prior to this ordinance. But now, a new legal precedent and clear leaders in the community in position to teach the public about these things reveal opportunities for food systems the likes of which Detroit has never seen.
I now know that I can grow most of the produce I enjoy in my backyard and want to do better next year about inviting my friends and family to take part in growing it next year. There is so much to learn and so much to build. There's work to do!
And so as usual, I finish one of these essays on a hopeful, visionary note. I see a path forward where we must scale back our inclination to consume so much and hold eachother to insatiable standards. I see gatherings that form anew, instead of trying to justify a holiday rooted in the same type of settler colonialism that is costing the lives of Black & Brown people abroad. But furthermore, I see community meals where folks learn more about themselves, eachother, and how to prepare food that nourishes the fight ahead. So as always, I leave you with a series of questions.
What dishes have you tried to make? How do you think you did and did anyone taste them?
If you could host a gathering + meal that connects people you care about, what would it look like? What would you do together?
What cuisine do you wish people would prepare for that gathering ?
Is that gathering + meal possible within the next year? What would it take to host it?
Peace & Love and Let’s Grab Crayons,
Kamau Jawara
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