Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree
EXCELLENCE
IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY
WHEN
I WAS A KID I CONSIDERED BLACK-EYED PEAS A JOKE – A BAD ONE
They might call Black-eyed peas “soul food”, but when I was a kid I hated that shit, and I still do. When I was forced to eat 'em I needed plenty of cornbread crumbled in and then flooded them with hot sauce just to mask the taste. I used to tell my brothers, “Here comes moma with a trough of them damn ‘Black-ass peas’ again.” For me, they were right up there with those tasteless and tough-ass kidneys. I wanted some spaghetti, with plenty of ground beef, or some tacos, or anything that didn’t taste like warm mud with onions and bell pepper.
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So right there at the dinner table is where the indoctrination of Black people begins. We’ve been being conned for generations. They used to feed us that garbage and call it “soul food” to convince us that it was a delicacy. But they couldn’t bullshit me. Some things that we so lovingly call soul food today, we didn't eat because we liked it, we ate it because we didn’t have a choice, and it's important to know the difference. So for me, if black-ass peas are "soul food", I ain't got no soul - and that also goes for collard greens. When my mother would fix stuff like that I felt insulted because I thought she was tryin’ to run a game on me. I wanted some meat. "Hey moma, hold the leaves, peas, and rabbit food, and pass me some goddamn meat."
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That’s why I used to stay in trouble, because I’d actually get incensed, and as a kid, that wasn’t my place. But while my mother stayed on my case, she knew where I was comin’ from, because she’d be fighting off the urge to laugh while she lectured me. I once overheard her telling a friend, “Sometimes I worry about Eric. I think I gave birth to a damn beatnik. He’s just like his damn daddy. When was the last time you saw a 12-year-old kid whose hero is Charlie Parker? But it’s one thing I can say about him – he don’t buy into no bullshit.”
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And she was right on both counts. I was like my father, and he taught me the difference between real music and clowns on stage wigglin’ their asses. He also taught me to never let anyone else tell me what to think. So trying to teach me that Black-ass peas was a soul food delicacy struck my ears as pure bullshit. That nasty shit was just one step above hog slop. I used to try to feed mine to the dog, and he wouldn’t even eat that shit.
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While all this may sound frivolous, it points out a very important lesson in life – never let anyone feed you bullshit and try to convince you it's a delicacy, even your mother. The willingness to consume bullshit is exactly how we end up with people like the Dubious Donald Trump. He’s the Black-eyed peas of American politics, and his supporters have been brainwashed into believing complete and utter bullshit is a delicacy.
Ewattree@Gmail.com
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
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