“Your body is perfectly yours, even if it ain’t perfect to anybody else. If you only knew the complexities your body possesses you would be so proud of it.”

Medical science has an abysmal track record with Black America. There simply isn’t any other way to put it. There’s the time when scientists deliberately watched Black men with syphilis suffer and denied them care as a means of testing the ramifications of the illness. But there’s more than that. So, so much more.

Research is showing that diseases largely associated with approaching retirement age are being found well before we would normally expect. Conditions that are normally found in 50 and 60 year olds are being uncovered in younger and younger people.

Perhaps we need to consider that “incel” is, when looked at through a lens that doesn’t merely fixate on white men, a term that includes a lot of the behavior that we see displayed in our community every day.

Recipes are more than roots in a rich family tree still bearing fruit, they’re connection to the people who loved us. That’s more than food—that’s Soul Food. 

It’s too easy to blame Black people’s rates of heart disease and diabetes for the high rate of COVID-19 related mortality. It’s so, so much deeper than that.

People will tell you any old self-hating nonsense about why there aren’t any good grocery stores in the hood. It’s time to learn the truth.

Celebrating the decades of work of Jessica B. Harris, a phenomenal author who chronicles the history of Black food culture.