In Jack Hitt’s “A Confederacy of Sauces”, the reader learns that there is a sibling feud between two brothers over barbecue sauces. This feud was like the “icing on the cake” after numerous years of the two brothers not getting along. This dispute between Maurice and Melvin exemplify that barbecue has become mixed up with the concerns of race and heritage. Heritage refers to characteristics or practices that are passed down from generation to generation. In this particular story, Maurice and Melvin had a few other brothers in the barbecue business as well. Jack Hitt tastes each brother’s sauce, realizing that the brothers’ versions of their father’s original sauce had very subtle but noticeable distinctions (310). Thus, carrying on their father’s legacy through his sauce.
Politics and barbecue may seem like two opposite subjects, but Hitt makes this very easy to see the connection within the two together. One thing always leads to the next. We as people, human beings, are subject to making mistakes. We are also subject to conformity. Though we all have our own minds, people tend to
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follow trends, authority, and the law. One of the main points behind this story is to discuss the meaning of the Civil War and the Confederate flag. On July 1st, 2000, the State Legislature lowered the Confederate flag from the Capitol dome in Columbia (304). This being such a big deal to Maurice, he went and purposefully hung a Confederate flag at each one of his restaurants he owned. In doing so, he stirred the political pot so to speak. Some view the Confederate flag as racist, as a reminder of slavery; while others view and respect the flag for the honor of the Civil War, the cause of states’ rights and heritage (308). Regardless, Maurice received negative attention from his actions. Mostly blacks viewed him as bigoted and prejudiced, but also those who were interested in doing business with him begun to back away as well. All because of one action from Maurice, his sauce business started to fail and he lost a lot of regular customers at his many restaurants. It’s interesting to think that one act, one decision can create so many consequences and turn such a simple item into a much deeper meaning. It’s kind of like how years ago, Tommy Hilfiger said something negative about gay people, so then it was no “cool” to buy anything from Tommy Hilfiger anymore. This goes for Maurice’s barbecue sauce that was located in many stores in the South. The groceries stores decided to take his items off of the shelves. When it comes to politics, it’s a dirty game and people must follow the trends or they get put under the radar and viewed in a certain way as well. When one store took Maurice’s product down, others followed right behind. His barbecue sauce has been attached to being racist. Coming from the same family, being in the same business, one could conclude that these two brothers could get along, but somewhere down the road it appears that Maurice had been jealous of Melvin for many, many years.
Their heritage is what begun them on making barbecue sauce and being in the food industry, yet they can’t seem to be civil. Maurice’s actions almost cost Melvin his business as well, all because they shared the same last name and come from the same family. It’s like a domino effect, one goes down and another falls behind it. Luckily for Melvin, there was convincing evidence that his barbecue sauce bottling operation was indeed different from Maurice’s (Hitt 307). This story is truly an eye-opener, allowing the reader to understand a deeper, more meaningful value of how one simple thing can turn into negative subjects and topics such as issues with race and
heritage.
Did the five-generation family known as the Grayson’s chronicled in detail by Claudio Saunt in his non-fiction book, Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American deny their common origins to conform to “America’s racial hierarchy?” Furthermore, use “America’s racial hierarchy as a survival strategy?” I do not agree with Saunt’s argument whole-heartedly. I refute that the Grayson family members used free will and made conscious choices regarding the direction of their family and personal lives. In my opinion, their cultural surroundings significantly shaped their survival strategy and not racial hierarchy. Thus, I will discuss the commonality of siblings Katy Grayson and William Grayson social norms growing up, the sibling’s first childbearing experiences, and the sibling’s political experience with issues such as chattel slavery versus kinship slavery.
Post-emancipation life was just as bad for the people of “mixed blood” because they were more black than white, but not accepted by whites. In the story those with mixed blood often grouped together in societies, in hopes to raise their social standards so that there were more opportunities for...
Christopher Paul Curtis wrote The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 throughout the course of 1995. The novel follows the Watsons, a black family living in Flint, Michigan during the Civil Rights Era. In a historical context, 1963 and the early 1990s have far more in common than one would expect. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 following the church bombing in Birmingham, and yet race-based discrimination remains a problem even in our modern society via passive racism. This paper will analyze the ways in which Curtis’ The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 draws parallels between the time in which his is writing during and the time in which he is writing about. This analysis will also shed light on what can be called the “white standard,” wherein all things white are “good” or “better” and anything not-white is “bad.”
...ism and segregation, it is what will keep any society form reaching is maximum potential. But fear was not evident in those who challenged the issue, Betty Jo, Street, Jerry, and Miss Carrie. They challenged the issue in different ways, whether it was by just simply living or it was a calculated attempt to change the perspective of a individual. McLurin illustrated the views of the reality that was segregation in the South, in the town of Wade, and how it was a sort of status quo for the town. The memories of his childhood and young adulthood, the people he encountered, those individuals each held a key in how they impacted the thoughts that the young McLurin had about this issue, and maybe helping unlock a way to challenge the issue and make the future generation aware of the dark stain on society, allowing for more growth and maximum potential in the coming years.
Sam Woods is a middle-aged man, who works for the city of Well's police department. Until Chief Gillespie had arrived in town, Sam Wood had been rated as a big man, but Bill Gillespie's towering size, made Sam look a normal size. Sam takes a lot of pride into his work, and has read up on everything you need to no about being a police officer. Sam takes his job very seriously, and dislikes being told what to do by everyone and anyone, especially when it comes to Bill Gillespie. Sam dislikes Negro's. He thinks that they are very dirty compared to his race. It is not only black people who are dirty, there are many different races whom are dirty, and that has nothing to do with color, but self-induced. Also, he thinks that all Negro's are poor criminals, and also, he thinks that they have big butts, and they stink terribly when they sweat, and that they are stupid. But like I said, everyone is the same, being stupid has nothing to do with color, and having a big butt has to do with your genes and not color, and everyone's sweat is the same, and it is not like black peoples sweat is like acid. Sam Wood's opinion on Italians was that they married too early, and all got fat. But very many people do that, not just Italians, but white, black, yellow etc. But his opinion changed when he first me...
Reading Catfish and Mandala reminded me of my cultural closeness through food. Due to being bi-ethnic I learned how to cook food from both my ethnicities, however there were times when I found myself acting like a foreigner towards certain dishes. A prime example was when I had Chitlins or pig intestines. I had eaten menudo, thanks to my Hispanic mother and this was the first time I had Chitlins, an African American dish via my paternal grandmother. Unlike Menudo, which to me has an appetizing smell and taste, Chitlins were a gray stringy putrid smelling dish. Remembering the utter dislike I obtained from that African American dish, reminded me of Pham’s experience with Vietnamese food. While there are some dishes people can’t stand, most usually embrace a dish from their culture and that helps ease some of the pain or discomfort.
“Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at fast food restaurant, perhaps 2 cents goes to the farmer that grew the potatoes,” (Schlosser 117). Investigative journalist Eric Schlosser brings to light these realities in his bestselling book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Schlosser, a Princeton and Oxford graduate, is known for his inspective pieces for Atlantic Monthly. While working on article, for Rolling Stone Magazine, about immigrant workers in a strawberry field he acquired his inspiration for the aforementioned book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, a work examining the country’s fast food industry (Gale).
In Sherman Alexie’s “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” and “Dead Men’s Path”, the reader is given a glimpse into two different stories but share many similar characteristics of traditions. Tradition is the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information and cultures within a group of people from generation to generation. However, these two stories will reveal that the protagonists in these stories, Michael from “Dead Men’s Path” and Victor from “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” will ignore their own traditions that they face throughout the story. In other words, the protagonists are westernized and have forgotten their own culture, which reflects the theory of the melting pot. The ignorance of ancestry and traditions brings the worst fates into the lives of the protagonists in each story.
For many year humans have been trying to fight against discrimination in their communities, but it's an uphill battle that doesn’t seem like it’s been fully wiped out yet in our society. Discrimination and Prejudice has been a key issue that has affected many people around the world. In the movie that we saw in class, “My Cousin Vinny” (1992) it focused on these key issues of prejudice, discrimination, stereotypes and even eye witness testimonies. In the movie it focuses on these key issues while bringing a little humor to the viewers. In this paper I will be going into more detail of how this movie really brought to light these key issues.
The novel Brown Girl, Brownstones is a fiction story that is about an immigrant family from the Caribbean country of Barbados and their struggles in America. The story is set in New York during the time between The Great Depression and also World War II and is told in a third person point of view so that the reader, being us, understands different components of the story. The story’s main character is a girl named Selina Boyce and the story is told through the stages of her life from when she was around ten years old up to when she was around her early twenties. Immigration, specifically race, played a large factor in the story, with race hindering opportunity, and different characters coping with race in different ways. (Thesis statement)
According to the New York Times, canning has seen “an incredible surge of interest recently.” This is not the only newspaper to comment on the growing trend in home food preservation. For this study, online articles from six different North American newspapers with publication dates ranging from 2009 until 2011 were analyzed to determine whether canning is a hobby of distinction or democracy. Josée Johnston and Shyon Baumann’s Foodies discussed the tension between democracy and distinction in relation to the contemporary food movement. Canning has a similar tension, except in a reversed way. In other words, it is the search for distinction that has brought canning into the mainstream. This paper argues that due to its recent rise in popularity, home canning is becoming an increasingly democratic hobby. In comparison to the discourse from Foodies, the socioeconomic status of canners has changed in an opposite direction with a non-hierarchical structure.
During the course of this work, many ideas and themes are portrayed and readers are able to view subjects that surround the main topic of racial injustice and intolerance. With the three main narrators, Minny Jackson, Aibileen Clark, and Skeeter Phelan, the audience quickly gains an insight on how racial inequalities affected everyone. These thoughts help to form a plot that can easily keep readers entertained throughout the novel. During the course of the novel, there are many points in the plot that decide the actions and events other cha...
Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the sun displays the struggles faced by an African American family living in Southside Chicago during the onset of the Civil Rights Movement. In the opening scene, Walter Lee Younger reads from the front page of the newspaper “Set off another bomb yesterday” (6). This news bulletin presents the major issues of the time period surrounding the war on Civil Rights and gives insight into the Younger family’s future intentions to move into a white neighborhood. The conflict-taking place in Southside Chicago over housing causes tension for the surrounding community, especially when they read news articles publicizing the brutal murders of those who try to improve their situations by moving into a white neighborhood. The family’s own efforts have failed to provide the income necessary to move into a bigger home in a better neighborhood. It is not until Walter Younger Sr. passes away and augments the family’s financial situation, through a life insurance policy for $10,000, that the Younger’s are able to pursue better living conditions. Unfortunately, this newfound fortune causes friction between the family members, especially between Walter Lee and Mama Younger. In pursuit of her own happiness, Mama Younger puts a down payment on a house in Clybourne Park, a white neighborhood. It is her right to pursue happiness in the manner she chooses. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the American way. Her happiness is in a home for her and her family. The conflict over whose happiness will be
William Faulkner is concerned with the south and its problems with black slavery. The issues in Barn Burning deal with the conflict between father and son. The theme of this story focuses on justice. The boy, Sarty, objects to his father burning barns and wants people to be treated fairly. His father, Abner, believes his son should respect and support kin. Abner thinks family is right no matter what. Faulkner’s intent is to show that choosing between one’s own family and justice is very difficult to do, and in the end justice must prevail. The theme is best illustrated by its point of view, its characterization, and setting.
People always tell you that there are two subjects never to bring up at a dinner party, one is religion and the other is politics. Why is that? It is because both subjects invoke very strong emotions. Rather than saying something inappropriate, most people avoid talking about religion altogether. But get those same people in a room and ask their political opinions, that is a different story. For many reasons, people are vocal about their political beliefs (Bentz, 2013). Unfortunately, individuals will judge people by their political beliefs first, without notice to other important aspects of their lives. And that is the reason that politics is not brought up in dinner parties.