There are a s***load of things that black people do in spite of themselves. We support Jay-Z. We refuse to firebomb Viacom headquarters. We smoke menthol cigarettes and insist on frying and/or putting salt on damn near everything. We allow European standards of beauty to be crammed down the throats of our women. But perhaps no self-spiteful practice among black people is more bewildering than the fact that we cling desperately to Slave Food.
We all know what slave food is – it’s food made from that parts of the animal that make even native Chinese people say “dude, that’s f***ing sick”.* It’s the stuff our slave ancestors were forced to eat because all they’d be given after their ‘masters’ got done raping, eating, kissing on the mouth, and doing whatever else it is to animals that white people just love to do.
I can’t believe that today, despite all the social, cultural, and economic strides black people have made over the years, so many of us still insist on eating that grimey s***. I’m pretty sure that 50% of the reason MLK ever marched anywhere is so his children wouldn’t have to eat pig intestines ever again. Anyone caught eating this crap is willfully desecrating the memory of the following:
- Martin Luther King and Malcolm X
- Nat Turner
- Each and every Union casualty from the Civil War
- Jesus
- Sugar Ray Robinson
- Your mother
Let’s take a moment to examine some of the more common types of slave food, shall we?
Name: Chittlins
Description: Cleaned and boiled pig intestines
Stank Rating: 10/10
Summary:
Figure 1: Sick…
The first argument you’ll get into with black people about this is the proper way to spell it. Some use ‘chittlings’, ‘chittluns’, ‘chittlins’, or for the conflicted and self-hating bougie negro – ‘chitterlings’. No matter how you spell it, there’s no denying what they actually are: swine s*** tubes. Nothing is worse than the smell of these things when they’re being cleaned and cooked. If you want to know what the inside of your own a**hole smells like, just mozy yourself down to any country kitchen in Mississippi and inhale. One of the worst days of my life was when I came home exhausted from a powwow and was bludgeoned in the nose by the unimaginable stench of grandma’s big a** 10 gallon boiling pot of chittlins. The fact that anyone can get past the smell of these things to not only touch them, but TASTE THEM, is proof positive that the Force exists, and human beings can use it.
Name: Hog Maws
Description: Cleaned and boiled pig stomach
Stank Rating: 6/10
Summary:
Figure 2: Sick…
Apparently eating a pig’s s*** tube isn’t nasty enough in and of itself. To remedy this, we decided to also throw in the stomach because…f it, that’s why. Hog maws cooked alone actually doesn’t stink too much since there’s a relative absence of…you know…pig s***. The problem is that the popular thing to do is cook hog maws right alongside chittlins in the most oddly paradoxical culinary endeavor imaginable. By eating this stuff you’re basically digesting another digestive system. Logically speaking, this is insanely confusing – kinda like the ‘tree falling in the forest’ or ‘one hand clapping’ riddles. My head already hurts just thinking about it.
Name: Pig Feet
Description: Take a wild guess
Stank Rating: 9/10
Summary:
Figure 3: This is the only post I’ve written where I’ve struggled not to vomit
Feet and I do not get along in general. My cousin said it best: “feet are for the floor”. I cringe whenever I see people will bare feet on coffee tables, kitchen tables, sticking out a car window (I’m looking at you, white folks) or, God forbid, anywhere near my face. Feet are the nastiest part of the whole entire human body, including the a**hole. So you can only imagine my thoughts about EATING the f-f-f-f-feet of the most vile and disgusting animal ever to walk the face of the planet. Pig feet can be boiled, fried, or even baked, each method producing a respectively larger and more permanent stench in whatever unfortunate venue you happen to be doing the cooking. There are also people who eat pickled pig feet. The thought of this is so nasty I’m just going to move on.
Name: Chicken Feet
Description: ….
Stank Rating: 2/10
Summary:
Figure 4: ….why?
While certainly the cleanest of slave food, it is unquestionably the most bizarre. I’ve never actually seen anyone eat chicken feet, but there’s a legend passed down to me from my brother indicating that, like my rude introduction to chittlins by my maternal grandmother, he was given a similarly abrupt introduction by our paternal grandmother to a big a** pot of upside-down boiling chicken feet. I can’t really imagine what eating chicken feet must be like. They can’t have much meat on them, there are claws in the way, and their ‘W’ shape would seem to make for difficult handling mechanics. Plus they’re feet, for Christ’s sake. The Amish must love chicken feet since they enjoy doing everything the unbelievably hard way for no particular reason.
*After once watching a chinese dude eat an entire bowl of monkey brains, I become convinced that they will eat damn near anything.
So FXP Reader… how do YOU feel about “Slave Food?”
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
I may be country, but I stay away from the above mentioned foods. LMAO. I just can’t. I have had gizzards before but I didn’t know. I guess they weren’t that bad, but what was the purpose? Gizzards!? LOL What does that even mean?
Well here I go!!!! I don’t eat the food mentoned above but…..I have friends that do. As w/ anything eat what you love in moderation!!!
You have got to be kidding me. Just as Blacks has “allow European standards of beauty to be crammed down the throats of our women”, it is obvious that paradigms of which they operate under has infiltrated the minds of some of our Black youth. How come some Blacks are so quick to negate anything pertaining to the historical survival of our people when in fact, it is those very acts that got us through the hardest times. Is not our culture a hybrid one? So it is okay for other ethnic groups to indulge in their cuisines because it is noted by mainstream as a “delicacy.” Wow. Oh yes, there’s caviar, calamari, gou rou- for those who are nescience- it is dog. Koreans eat dog for stamina during the hot summer months and seahorses for increases sexual ability. Cuitlacoche is a Mexican dish which some refer to as “corn smut”. Burnt goat head is a West Indian favorite. The list goes on. How predictable is it to regard “slave” food as sick, disgusting, and ignoble. I wonder what the origins are of other ethnic dishes. I will put my money on it that “slave” food and ratatouille (French peasant dish) are not the only foods that came from the creative minds of the oppressed.
I kinda see the statement that this article was trying to make. It was the institution of slavery that was holistically wrong, not the coping mechanisms that slaves innovated. However, our survival tactics should be venerated, not insulted.
@Precious P., I see what you’re sayin and you definitely broke it down for us. Dropped knowledge. I still cant get down with no pig feet though. Nor chittlins. Not to mention how unhealthy the stuff is. What vitamins and nutrients can you get from pig shit? I just wanna know. Look at black peoples short life expectancy, then look at those disgusting pictures up top.
@Precious P., I feel what you are saying, of course this is mildly to be entertaining as well. But I think it would be nice for black people to get to learn what our culture was before slavery. Before we had to cook for slave owners and eat the scraps. We were farmers and hunters and gathers before that. What did we value for nutrition then? I’d revere that for sure.
@JG*, In order for Black people to learn what our culture was before slavery many of us would have to loose the inbred prejudice we harbour for our native African relatives. My Boyfriend is Liberian and he can’t even count the numerous times he has been called an ‘African booty scratchers’ and asked if he has ever hunted a lion by other Black people; the root of the problem is that Black people need to stop degrading and belittling eachother because there are already an abundance of other races doing a good job. Until this we cannot learn from one another. Well, let me get off my soap box, lol.
You make some points Precious. I can understand folks not liking these foods but the criticisms do sometimes smack of uppityness. I do not eat some of these foods mainly for health reasons anymore; and, because I have simply stop eating pork.(Although if I did still eat it, I would still be eating chitlin’s. Not so much the chicken legs, hog maws, and pig feet though! I was never big on that. Anyway I still miss chitlins from time to time!) But I sometimes find it funny too when some black folks criticise these foods, because the same ones that make a point to do this will eat escargot(snails), caviar(Uncooked i.e.raw fish eggs), and sushi(raw fish).Go figure! I won’t speak on the author’s motives for criticizing the foods but the criticism again do smack of uppityness!
I’d rather eat lassie than wilbur’s feet and intestines. Slaves ate what they did to survive not to stay healthy or because its tradition or culture. It was a survival tactic and frankly the community who eats what people commonly refer to as “soul food” are one greased up swine away from a heartache and mud butt.
Chittlins and hog maws disgust me. And anybody that eats em, disgusts me too! Its so unhealthy, and I’ll bet chittlins contribute to bad health. They eat cow balls on Fear Factor. We eat pig guts for the flavor. WTF.
cows don’t have balls. cows are female. bulls have balls.
I have to say, I think all of that food is disgusting along with being unhealthy… I have never eaten any of it, the smell alone lets me know it’s a “No.Go.”
In the interest of full disclosure: I am white.
I eat and make sausage using natural cases (slightly more processed chitlins.)
I lived in China for a year, and was treated to plenty of chicken and pig feet. Pig feet are pretty good, drenched in Chili oil the Chinese way. Chicken, not so much.
As to the maws…never cracked that nut. But my Italian grandmother cooked tripe-another preparation of stomach, and the Mexicans use it for a soup called Menudo.
The enjoyment of peasant (or “slave”) foods is not the exclusive domain of the self-loathing black people you describe. It’s part of everybody’s culture.
I used to eat a lot of that nasty stuff when I was a child. I’m into health food now and feel better. Even though I used to eat that type of food, looking at those pics made my stomach turn a thousand knots! I’m a white lady who grew up in a poor neighborhood, and my family members struggled to survive and get ahead. We were called “dirty white trash” and I didn’t like it. Kids from the schools I went to made fun of me because of the food we ate and the fact that we looked ragged. I guess there are white people who also got some scraps, but it must have been because those were cheap. I don’t know. I do know that I no longer can stomach that kind of food. I work hard and a lot of hours to put healthy food on my table and avoid a heart attack and/or stroke. My mother, grandmother and biological father all died from one or the other at relatively early ages, and I don’t doubt it’s because that kind of food did them in early!
Your awfully racist against the Chinese in this post. For someone who praises MLK, you don’t follow his teachings very closely. I don’t know you, nor pretend to. However by your actions and your writing it seems like your the type to praise the double standard of racism. Although what you said is more about a nationality you are still generalizing and stereotyping a big part of the asain population. The Chinese only eat some of those things because of the famines that went on before and during the transition into the communist government of today. They ate those things because they had to. Just as the slaves of this country did.
Ok, the bottom line is we are a more informed nutritionally about whats healthy and not. I work at a place with all different cultures. Our cafeteria serves hamburgers and steaks and beef. So the Indian people who are Hindu stay completely away. (Cows are sacred to them). When they serve pork many of our Muslim employees will avoid the cafeteria altogether. No I don’t eat those (Soul Food). I remember my dad cooking chittlins and always having a terrible headache afterwards. It was his blood pressure. I try to avid most soul food. Because simply my body won’t digest cheese anymore without me taking a lactaid pill. So no more Mac and cheese, no more fried chicken (baked or broiled). But the most suprising thing is how much better I feel since I stopped eating those types of food and losing weight. No diabetis, no HBP (117/60). and my cholestoral is low.
the real “slave food” is welfare, gangs, heroin, crack and the bloodthirsty criminality in the DNA of the subhumans that infest Africa, Haiti and inner cities. What is it with you criminal animals that bitch and moan and can’t take up human responsibilities? keep voting democrat, ignorant slaves
Actually chicken feet taste so good unlike everything else you listed. I’ve never tried the other things, don’t plan to, they smell stank, but chicken feet does not, in fact smells like chicken! Go figure! I’ve only had it one way and its been years since I have. Boiled! Chicken foot soup, jamaican food, that my mom and granny made. Yummy trust me. Look it up and try it.