GONE WITH THE ANTEBELLUM WIND; THE LAST DISH PLATED BY PAULA DEAN…

A Formal Event With All-Black Servants

GONE WITH THE ANTEBELLUM WIND; THE LAST DISH PLATED BY PAULA DEAN…

The Clampets And Their Rebel Flag

I prefer to look into and onto an event well after it has occurred in order to get a more aerated perspective especially when the issue is race and racism.  As I have said many times before, the perspective of a Black American man is necessarily different than any other due to the history of racism in America especially with respect to the fact that the image of the Black American male has been so tenaciously resilient to revision and evolution in spite of the many achievements of Black men. 

Al Jolson, A Famous  Comedian, In His Trademark,  Black-Face

Enter Paula Dean, Internationally renowned gastronomist extraordinaire! To say that the racist remark made by Ms. Dean was beneath her would be technically correct but culturally ignorant given the history of racism in America given her heritage as a profoundly southern white woman.   In America one has to begin with objectivity, giving the benefit of doubt but keeping an eye open for the telltale signs of racism. Racism, if it is present, will be veiled beneath an unstable veneer or pastiche of political correctness but will invariably decay with certain volatility to a more, “Al Jolson” like persona.  I say “Al Jolson-Like” because sometimes racism is not just as it appears.  Putting on black-face is not flattery, nor does it try to represent any real comprehension of who black people really are, it is merely a form of defamation intended to degrade Black American people as if their inferiority were matter of fact.  Paula Dean operated within the tradition of white racism in America and ultimately her comfort with using the “N” word was merely a manifestation of the Paula Dean we suspected but never knew off-stage.

Scarlett O'Hara with her black "Mammie" in Gone With The Wind

In twenty-first century America when a Black man refers to another Black male as, “My Nigga” and when a southern white woman celebrity says the word “Nigger” it is a completely different bowl of hominy grits!  The all-Black male butlered and servant wedding Paula Dean romanticized was not an historical recreation of some antebellum couples union of glory it was a cheap, anachronistic essay on the art of white racial coonery in the same tradition of Al Jolson.  Given the evidence, it is quite clear that Paula Dean needs to come out of the closet as a racist and rename her restaurant from “The Lady and Sons” to “Uncle Tom’s and The Lady and Son’s Cabin”!

A Racist Caricature of Black Culture Inspired By the Novel,  Uncle Tom's Cabin

Last weekend I made a road trip on my motorcycle to visit an historic state park only to find a huge confederate memorial and confederate organization of some kind standing as a sentinel to the park.  My first instinct was to turn around, I was absolutely appalled but I kept on.  I would never begrudge the descendants of confederate soldiers the right to pay respects to their ancestors but there was something more afoot there.  It was like a flashback to the Beverly Hillbillies; a 1960’s parody about a rural Appalachian family so isolated in the hinterlands that they did not realize that the south lost the civil war and continued their zany antebellum antics even after becoming wealthy and moving to a mansion in cosmopolitan Beverly Hills.  Well, there you have it!  The story of Paula Dean….

The Reality of Slavery and Racism in America

Written by David Vollin

Promotional Poster for Al Jolson a comedian who became famous for his racist faux-character impersonations of  southern Black men in what he called, "Black-Face"
The effect of "'Black-Face" performance was achieved by painting black paint over his white skin and affecting degraded behavior including exaggerated facial expressions, posture, demeanor and elocution intended to mimic and parodize antebellum Black slave vernacular