With All Due Respect Cornbread, Collards, & Black Eyed Peas Ain’t Working.

Fielding questions from Black Food Fridays supporters is nothing new.

Everyday I receive inquiries concerning the best places to eat in [insert] city (most of the time I just refer them to food bloggers in said city). Sometimes I get follow up questions from my #BlackFoodFact videos or people ask my advice about how they should be running their respective Instagram accounts. If I have the time, I’ll answer the questions—no problem. 

This past week I received a couple questions about the New Years tradition of eating collard greens and black eyed peas. Which makes sense, given that it was the first weekend in January. 

To be clear, these weren’t tough questions at all. Nothing probing or super personal. Most people just wanted to know if I had eaten any of the aforementioned greens and black eye peas (or cornbread). They wanted to make sure that I started my year off on the right foot and for that, I’m appreciative. For the record, I did not indulge in those particular food items at the start of the year. Why? I’ll get into that a little later. 

A few people didn’t ask about what I ate. They just wanted to know why I hadn’t posted anything about the tradition itself. This is a fair question given that a lot of my content is educational in nature. And while you or I may already be familiar with the reason, I’m sure there are swaths of people every year who find out, for the first time, about these New Year culinary traditions. On second thought, I most definitely should have posted something around that concept. As a content creator, not doing so was a failure on my part. Eh, “failure” might be too strong of a word. Let’s just say that, at minimum, it was a dereliction of my duties. NOTED! I’ll make sure I create something for NYE 2023. 

Even after admitting my shortcomings as a content creator, I still found that my thoughts were drifting back to them damn peas and greens. It has taken little over a week to drill down to the source of this nagging imposition but I think I figured it out. And while I finally have an answer for why this thing is still on my mind, I must be up-front with you: this blog post will probably not end neatly. 

I know; that’s confusing. On one hand, I’m saying that I finally have the answer to this week long question yet this post won’t actually answer the question? If your response to that is something along the lines of “what kinda shit is that?”, trust me when I say I understand. The reason I’m writing this post is for my own mental relief. I need to get these thoughts out of my head and onto (digital) paper so that I can move on to other thoughts and questions. I am, however, interested in hearing your feedback on the matter. 

So the question that has racked my brain the past week can be summed up in one word: why.

Why do Black people in America hold on to the practice of eating collard greens, black eyed peas, and cornbread? I know the “purpose” behind the practice so I guess what I’m questioning is the fervor. I mean, look at our collective history as Black people in America. Has there been a year in which eating this food has made a deference in how we are treated in this country. Yeah, individually we may have had some solid years. Shoot, even decades. But as a group? Naw. It ain’t happen yet.

While contemplating the non-existent correlation between “Black People Happiness” and “Plates of Collard Greens and Black Eye Peas Eaten On New Years Day”, mind kept going back to two time periods in particular: the Summer of 2020 and the Summer of 2015. Let’s start with 2020.

With COVID-19 literally punching the world in the face, the year 2020 was intense for a number of reasons. Most especially being that the world was under attack from an invisible enemy. Y’all remember the widespread panic early in the pandemic? We thought we could contract COVID simply by touching other people or contaminated surfaces. Suddenly the FOX NEWS meme about the Obama’s “Terrorist Fist Jab” became the defacto way to extend a greeting. (SIDE NOTE: Do y’all remember that? Ol’ gurl lost her job over that foolishness. Might be the only time I agreed with FOX NEWS on anything). In addition to a global pandemic, three names would come to define how messed up a year 2020 was: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery. 

Five years earlier, during the Summer of 2015, different names became famous for similarly tragic reasons: Clementa C. Pinckney, Cynthia Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel L. Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson. These nine men and women were victims of a heinous hate crime forever known as the “Charleston Massacre”.

So what do any of these tragic events have to do with black eyed peas or cornbread or collard greens? To be frank, absolutely nothing. Buuuuuuut that didn’t stop my mind from creating connections.  

And for reasons I still don’t understand, my subconscious became obsessed with this notion of whether Clementa C. Pinckney, Cynthia Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel L. Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson, George Flyod, Breonna Taylor, or Ahmaud Arbery ate black eyed peas, collard greens, or cornbread the first day of what would become their final New Year celebration. If not all, then certainly a good bit of them partook. I don’t have a clue whether or not this in true but, I mean…they Black.

My brain continued to spiral: what about the thousands of Black men, women, and children who lost their lives to this global pandemic? Or the Black men and women who died for this country, regardless of how they are treated when not in uniform? Did they eat black eyed peas, collard greens, or cornbread the year they passed away?

Even when I tried not to focus on death, the question persisted. I started wondering about our brothers and sisters experiencing perpetual poverty? How many years in a row have they been eating this New Year culinary trifecta only to remain in the financial situations they are in. Year after year, they eat yet how many people come to help lift them out of their unfortunate circumstances? 

And on the flip side: what about people who were finally able to lift themselves out of indigence? Whether it’s because they finally got a better paying job or because they hit the lottery or got drafted by a professional sports team. Whatever the case may be. How many of them would attribute their success to what they ate on the first day of the year where the lack of money was no longer their primary concern? I won’t speak for you but I’ve never seen any Black entertainer or politician or athlete win something or be recognized for their greatness then turn around and give thanks to their New Year's Day meal for bringing prosperity into their lives. 

Yet the practice is programmed so deeply into the Black subconscious that I’m sure my open questioning of this ritual is making somebody’s skin crawl. This is not a religious custom so my hypotheticals do not, by definition, fit into the blasphemy category. But let’s be honest…it kinda feels blasphemous, right? 

Alright, so here’s the final big question: if no one’s life is being improved by doing this then why do we continue the practice?

Furthermore, it’s become so routine that we don’t even pretend to be intentional about where we buy these products. Items that, in theory, set our year up for big things once ingested. If we were to be intentional, doesn’t that mean we would be buying our greens, beans, and cornmeal from Black farmers or at least from Black owned grocery stores? 

The final thought, the one that really kept me up at night was this: how much prosperity are we handing to the Walmarts and Wegmans of the world by blindly following this tradition? Think about how many people, all over this country, buy up collard greens or cabbage, black eyed peas or whatever beans they can find, and cornbread mix in preparation for New Year’s Day. How much money could we be funneling into Black owned businesses if we were more purposeful about how we execute this tradition? I can’t even begin to quantify how much “prosperity” we forgo by not doing this.

Again, this is not to say that you shouldn’t eat these foods on this day. Starting the first day of the year with a plant based meal isn’t the worst way to get your life in order. But in 2022, with all that we’ve been through, I find myself questioning the supposed comfort found in both the application and execution of this tradition. I think it has something to do with my running of Black Food Fridays. 

You see, for a year and a half I’ve been asking my followers to be intentional about spending money with Black owned businesses. From ice cream to coffee and cereal to sushi, I’ve been highlighting Black owned food businesses of all types so that when a craving hits, you can try to scratch that itch with a Black owned product. I’ve talked about Black owned liquors AND Black owned mixers. I’ve made videos about Black owned pancake mixes and Black owned syrups. If a Black person makes it, there’s a good chance that I’ve covered it in one of my 1700+ posts on Instagram.

So that’s what I did for the new year. I ate some Black owned food on Friday night (and watched college football) and then on Saturday, I visited a brand new Black owned martini bar in North Charleston. For the new year, I practiced what I have been preachin’ since April of 2020. Yet, no one cared about that. Muscle memory kicked in and, for the first time, no one cared if I supported a Black owned business. It only mattered if I followed the “rules” and ate the New Year’s Holy Trinity. 

Is it more important to pantomime prosperity by eating black eyed peas, collard greens, and cornbread or to help Black businesses achieve this aim of this practice by spending our money with them? Is it ok to wrap ourselves in the comfort of old time ways for the sake of nostalgia or should we be focused on the future? There is no right or wrong answer to these questions. Just something for you to ponder as you go about your Black Food Friday.

Respectfully submitted,
KJ.