As a dude who loves food, I am a huge fan of @netflix's Chef's Table series. When it's great, it tells these intimate, personal stories of how history, culture, and art intertwine in the food we cook. When I saw that BBQ was the next installment...

Barbecue is my favorite food group. For it to get the #ChefsTable treatment...I was all in. Started watching the first of four episodes, which followed the Texas pitmaster Tootsie Tomanetz. https://austin.eater.com/2020/8/17/21372044/netflix-chefs-table-bbq-show-pitmaster-tootsie-tomanetz-texas-barbecue

And her story is great. Inspirational. Moving. But if I didn't know better, you'd think that this kindly old white lady invented BBQ—when, in fact, American barbecue (and, basically, most of what we consider "American food") can be traced back to slavery.

The art of cooking the cuts of meat no one else wanted—the ones that had too many bones or were too tough for the big house—was invented and refined by Black folks. First during slavery, then during Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Poor white people learned at their feet.

Tootsie never acknowledges it. None of the food experts featured say anything about it. The second episode is about an Australian dude. It's not until you get to the third episode that you get Rodney Scott: an actual Black dude talking about Black food. https://www.rodneyscottsbbq.com/ 

I talk a lot about the narrative that America wants to tell about itself and how that narrative is usually the legend and rarely the truth. BBQ belongs to everyone. It's American food...in the same way that jazz, blues, country, and rock 'n' roll are American music.

And all of these are art borne from pain, subjugation, and deprivation. We ignore these things at our peril, America. We are where we are at this very moment in history because we want the roses not the thorns.

Food is a way we tell stories about who we are and where we came from. Let's tell the right stories...with all the facts. Let's not leave any ingredients out of the American cookbook. Otherwise, we end up eating potato salad with raisins in it.

(And, honestly, @Netflix and the #ChefsTableBBQ producers could've avoided looking as ignorant as they do simply by making the Rodney Scott episode first in the order. Ask yourself why they opted for an old white lady instead.)