Saturday, June 22, 2013

Maybe Confederate Bean Soup isn't just a recipe. Paula Deen recipes and language.

I guess you have to have been offline for a week or more not to hear about Paula Deen and her use of offensive racial slurs.  Or her fantasy about having a plantation wedding with black servants. The Food Network channel announced that her contract will not be renewed. Her apologies were problematic and criticized widely. Perhaps for one of her last shows she might cook a goose.

An interesting article online is: http://entertainment.time.com/2013/06/20/less-than-accidental-racist-why-paula-deens-comments-insult-her-fans-too/

James Poniewozik in the article says:

Deen made a pile of money off a certain idea of old-school southern culture. In return, she had an obligation to that culture–an obligation not to embody its worst, most shameful history and attitudes. Instead, in one swoop, fairly or not, she single-handedly affirmed people’s worst suspicions of people who talk and eat like her–along with glibly insulting minorities, she slurred many of the very fans who made her successful. She made it that much harder to say that Confederate Bean Soup is just a recipe.

Maybe James Poniewozik might consider that people who insist on naming things "Confederate" probably do have an attitude about race and people who try to say that "Confederate Bean Soup" is just a recipe are being less than candid. Why anyone would insist on naming anything "Confederate" in the 21st century needs to be questioned. It is a subtle strategy of normalization of the Confederacy.

I think a lot of people probably knew about Deen's attitudes, but it became a problem when it became known.

The good thing about this is that a lot of people will avoid "Confederate" anything since the public will rightly suspect that they are under the table racists like Paula Deen. 


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