Greens in Black and White

Greens in Black and White
The New York Times
October 6, 2004
By WARREN ST. JOHN

TO most Southerners, few things are as pleasing as plopping down before a heaping plate of simple, home-style cooking – dishes like collard or turnip greens, fried chicken, black-eyed peas, corn bread, sweet potato casserole. This type of food is so evocative of the easygoing contentment of home that Southerners – and even much of the rest of America – refer to it simply as comfort food.

But there’s a potentially uncomfortable conversation to be had about Southern comfort food, one that has simmered like creamy gravy on a stove top for perhaps 20 years and may now reach a very public boil: how much of what is called Southern cooking can be traced to black culture, and how much to white?

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