Posted on 08/24/2015 1:30:34 PM PDT by Albion Wilde
The US is in the midst of a barbecue boom. But as television programmes and restaurants celebrate mostly white pitmasters, are the cuisine's African-American roots being forgotten?...
...the Brantleys have enjoyed a great deal of success with their traditional St Louis-style barbecue. There are lines out the door, as well as accolades from both local and national media...
But things aren't as good as they used to be. Daryle once had three locations and sold the sauce bottled at local supermarkets - today he only has the original shopfront.
The decline happened as factory jobs left St Louis and the recession of the 1990s took its toll. Once the outlook improved and he wanted to expand or make improvements, he found no bank would loan to him.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
This stinks to high heaven of the attitude that gave us the Community Reinvestment Act.
I don't buy it, AW. I call complete and utter horse crap on this. We have been hearing this for years, and it gave us reams and reams of liberal rules, regulations, oversights, and policies to solve a problem that NEVER EXISTED.
What existed IN REALITY was a disparity in incomes and assets due to liberal policies that kept blacks from moving off of the "liberal plantation".
The DEVASTATING solution was to force banks to lend money to people who COULD NEVER REPAY IT. That's it. They cried racism then, it was PROVEN to be false and showed that the books were cooked to make it look like racism so they could have justification for the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which planted the seeds of destruction for our economy in much the same way the liberal policies of the Wilson and Roosevelt administrations planted the seeds of future destruction with their liberal policies.
This "structured racism" is a load of crap, and it makes me angrier than Hell. I would challenge this guy to this: let him submit his request for a loan in the blind to a random group of bankers ANYWHERE. He should submit it anonymously, making DAMN sure to remove the "African American" BS checkbox from his loan, and let's see how his loan application goes.
Why didn't I think of that?
“Arthur Bryant’s in Kansas City set the standard during his life.”
I agree. I ate there in ‘99. Went hard-core carniverous that day. Ate 2/3rd of a rack of ribs - minus the fatty sections. Drank a lot of Coke.
My blood pressure must have been 490 over 210 when I left with all the salt and caffeine I ingested. LOL!
Their original sauce is, to me, the gold standard. Every time I eat BBQ somewhere new, I measure it against Arthur Bryant’s.
I think the point was that the recently raised media profile is entirely about white chefs.
What I am tuned in to is the greater impact of globalization and export of jobs on black people. He didn't have to close two of his stores in a vacuum; white manufacturing owners took their jobs overseas and gutted his community, and many like it. Just as American blacks were empowered to hit their stride in the wake of the Civil Rights acts of the 60s and 70s, companies started dismantling the entire opportunity structrue for the working class, which has greately affected blacks. Nothing conservative about globalization, something Trump has realized and is trying to address.
I’m not convinced there’s racism here. I’m 64 years old, and I have never seen BBQ accredited to Blacks prior to this. Is that racism or is it reality?
Don’t forget, there are people out there that claim Blacks built this nation too. Is it also racist not to accept that?
Mmmm! Great way to pass the time while the car is being processed!
Reminds me of a Sunoco gas station at 10th and Washington Avenues, Philadelphia, in the 80s. The owner, a first-generation Italian-American, used to cook Italian sausages on his paper-strewn desk in the office of the gas station, in an electric frying pan. Mmmmm! I always took my VW there for repairs!
Good BBQ is just good BBQ, I don’t care who makes it. My favorite food of all.
Here is the late great man himself.
I don’t know about beating a Carwash & BBQ but here we have a place that is a Pizza Shop and Laundromat.
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>> “there does remain some remnants of racism that suppress capable, hard-working black entrepreneurs.” <<
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Could it be the same racism that powered the Ferguson riots?
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“What existed IN REALITY was a disparity in incomes and assets due to liberal policies that kept blacks from moving off of the “liberal plantation”.”
Stats are unavailable for loans in general, but even when adjusted for income, blacks default on student loans at 5x the rate of whites.
The article points out that when blacks were working their way up from slavery and Jim Crow, all they had to do was have a place to dig a pit, or use a low-tech grill, in order to get started, and that most BBQs were carry-outs; but now the costs of entering a business with bricks&mortar and health department regulations are already steep, and now the yuppie-fication of the white celebrity chefs doing BBQ on television is adding to the pressures to use high-tech equipment or to open sit-down restaurants, a more expensive business model.
The restaurant business is very hard to begin with because it is labor-intensive, as the article also brings out. If a restaurant operation gets bigger, it has to hire people who are exposed to the temptations to steal, either directly in the form of food or drinks, or indirectly in the form of recipes, expertise and opening a competing restaurant.
TV shows about food-related eateries and personalities are not just one of the most reliably porn-free offerings on cable; they are also free advertising; so the business owners care a lot.
Yep...Stubb’s is great BBQ.
But BBQ is getting played out right now. The appeal to them was that they weren’t on every corner. Now I can barely throw a rock without hitting someone who’s running a BBQ joint.
Some are great, some are fair. I’ve never really eaten bad BBQ.
I don’t view this man’s slowdown as anything other than overexposure to BBQ more broadly.
Age 10 in 1865 (end of CW) born 1855, lived to 110(?), 1965. If the grandson heard the story at age 10, he would now be 50.
Is he that old?
If grandma only made it to 90 the grandson would now be 70!
Some memory.
I just completed a 2000 mile road trip around the South in early August (college tours).
I probably didn’t go to any places that are world famous for barbecue, but I still had some really tasty stuff in Memphis (Central BBQ) and Birmingham (Jim ‘n Nicks Bar-B-Q, home of Morgan County style, mayonnaise-based sauce, and famous cheese biscuits). I’d recommend both of those places.
I don’t know who owns them but a mixed group of employees work at them, and a mixed group of customers shows up hungry.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: BBQ is a sign that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
“I’m not convinced there’s racism here. I’m 64 years old, and I have never seen BBQ accredited to Blacks prior to this. Is that racism or is it reality?”
I grew up in NC, and my understanding is their eastern BBQ was associated with tobacco. Flue cured tobacco was cured in tobacco barns that had a small fire built outside in a small pit and the “flue” drew the heat and smoke into the barn (through a small channel dug in the ground that led to the floor of the curing barn) , then out the top.
Fires had to be kept burning all night, so it cost nothing more in labor to smoke a hog at the same time. Farmers/share croppers tended the fires, some were black, some were white.
Was this the origin of pit cooked BBQ? Probably not, but great BBQ can be found everywhere in Tobacco country.
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