Yes, White People Can Sell Tortillas
By: Chris Newman
Tags: Food, Sustainability, Racism, Cultural Appropriation, Good Dog

Sean Brock is among the more famous chefs in America, and probably the most famous in the South. But he’s famous for different reasons depending on who you talk to.

To many foodies and chefs he’s the godfather of southern-oriented New American cuisine, piecing together a culinary renaissance with little-known or (supposedly) forgotten ingredients, techniques, and dishes, all served from his four gastro-temples spread across three of the most humid states in the whole damn world.

To many Black and Indigenous people, he’s a White boy getting rich off Big Mama’s Sunday dinners, or worse.

Here’s an example:

Over a year ago, Sean posted an image of “Cherokee frybread” to his Instagram account and referred to it as “traditional,” thereby attempting to profit from three awful things:

Misinformation: nothing about frybread, which is made from flour and sugar before being deep-fried in peanut oil, is traditional Dispossession: after the lands were stolen and hunting/fishing/foraging rights denied, indigenous people dubiously fortunate enough to make treaties with the U.S. were forced onto reservations where they had to subsist on government-provided shipments of flour, sugar, and other basic non-Indian staples, known to us as “commods.” Death: Commods — anathema to thousands of years of Indian dietary evolution — are, to this day, the key driver of stratospheric levels of chronic disease for tribes tied to the rez or rez culture

I roasted Brock (who, like everyone else in the world, makes vague claims to Cherokee ancestry) over this in the post’s comments, detailing the genocidal roots of frybread. His post disappeared almost immediately. Imagine my surprise when, months later, I happened upon an article in Post & Courier featuring Mr. Brock all but reciting my IG comment as his own:

For instance, he featured fry bread on the menu not because it’s indigenous to the tribe, but because it’s a symbol of the Native American struggle. It was created by American Indians from the Southwest who were forced to rely on government commodity goods during and after their displacement. “This was not food that their DNA was designed to process,” says Brock. “It’s led to high cholesterol and diabetes. I enjoy the opportunity to tell those stories and raise awareness.”

(Update 12/23: some folks accused me of making this up. Luckily, I posted my response to Brock along with a screenshot of his post, in my own account, which you can see here, dated December 1, 2017. The Post & Courier article appears on December 12, 2017. That would be one spectacular hell of a coincidence.)

When confronted with appropriation or racial blindspots, most White folks will ghost or get defensive. What Sean did, however, was so next-level brilliant it was almost hard to be mad at him: HE STOLE THE CONFRONTATION AND MADE A PROFIT FROM THAT, TOO.

This guy gets called out for appropriation in public, buries the confrontation in the ground, and out it emerges three months later as a flower of self-inspired cultural awareness; a puff piece nestled inside a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper.

Sean’s very White self goes on in that article to extoll the virtues of three-sisters companion planting and the health benefits of traditionally indigenous diets, all from the peak of a small empire of brick & mortar restaurants while another Sean — one who speaks an indigenous language and doesn’t express his heritage as a percentage — has to win a freaking James Beard Award for his cookbook before even getting to CONSIDER opening his FIRST restaurant.

Sean Brock is a better farmer than I’ll ever be, wielding a green thumb that prints stolen money.

I’m exaggerating when I say Garden & Gun credits Brock with discovering the very existence of southern food… but only by a little. You’d be hard pressed to pick up an issue of the magazine without coming across an entire article or a throwaway line crediting him with “discovering” some “lost” culinary treasure that I’ve been eating at family reunions and cookouts since before I could talk.

It happened again when I picked up the Dec/Jan issue a few minutes ago, and I decided it would be the last time. I put down the magazine forever, and started writing this essay.