I’ve been keeping something on the inside for sometime. I’m lighter that it can now live with you too. And that you heard it right here me. After Two years! I’m screaming 🗣Ive been waiting!! 🥁 🥁🥁 I‘m hosting a (soon!, 5/26) forthcoming @netflix docu-series based on the book, “High on the Hog” and also featuring its iconic author @drjessicabharris. I will be talking about it oh so much (and with pleasure) in the weeks ahead, but know that I’m excited about this show and want you to be too. It was an unfathomable experience to convene with luminaries and peers, chefs and scholars across country and Continent… So much to be celebrated and explored in the vast cameos alone in the series. It’s laden with people I deeply admire, who move me, that I learn from and some nem is even my homies! A dream! This show was made possibly by the visionary Executive Producers Fabienne Toback (@savyfaby)and Karis Jagger of @hey_sistah. It was also made possible by the perpetually groundbreaking and earth moving Director @rogerrosswilliams and the show runner with the most flow Shoshana Guy @shoshanaguy ( thank you, Shoshana 🖤🙏🏿!!!) Black Author, Black Director, Black EPs, Black Show runner, Black Producers (what up @lvance2010). Black Host, Black Features! Black Parade Energy!! Majorly grateful for the experience to work with talented and kind people like @serenathesoupbowl @jonclas and really throughout the @onestoryup team. @lilfulteezy super job! Thanks to @mrdavidp for the reps and sessions that got me here, thanks to @zanafriend for keeping me sane and @ciaosamin for giving me game. Thank you @nstarkm and @thegordinier for seeing me. Immediately. Thank you @savyfaby for seeing it in me before I saw it on myself. Thank you Dr. J for giving us this and so many works to consider and engage. Thank you @e_zar for this write up @eater. Y’all already know I will have LOTS more to say and people to thank, but it was time to get this off my chest and get y’all hype while I decompress. Thank you. So many y’all made this possible. 🙏🏿✨🙏🏿 High on the Hog!!! Coming to Netflix on 5/26
How old were you when you learned the lie that Palestine was a bad word? What about Arab? We are so bad at navigating stories. The prevailing power is the orator and too often this is absent in our analysis even though we know this to be true. Who is missing from the tale should captivate us equally. Who is not included is a good clue about who has been looted. Colonization, gentrification, apartheid and occupation: the formation of your state causing displacement. Who will hear history without obstruction? None of us if we don’t speak up. Black male American I recognize the rhetoric Of unconditional support For the troops For the boys in blue When mother and child are murdered in their own beds Abetted by State-led raids and the perpetrators get away Our freedom is connected USA provides the weapons RIP Breonna Taylor The right to self defense while also occupying is an inherent equivocation Racists wreak havoc wherever they are The occupation is the problem The rest of us must unite against what is brutal US weapons used to kill civilians Dispossession is the precursor to resistance I lift a fist in solidarity Know justice, know peace Photo: Mohammed Zaanoun // ActiveStills
Suddenly everyone is on the path to racial justice. I know it seems sarcastic, the way I said that, but it wasn’t meant to be. It is however, startling. Overnight and presumably across industries Black creatives have seen their social media followers expand by the thousands. (Thanks @ciaosamin)! Also yesterday, my brilliant friend made a video cautioning against policing other peoples learning journey with racial justice. I’m moving in the spirit of her timely insight. But with complications. It is hard to interpret this show of solidarity(?) without some measure of skepticism. We are not afraid of the stage, but history says it will be taken away and co-opted for profit. No thanks, I’ll take reparations. These shows of solidarity(?) can actually be triggering. I’m happy to have “gained” thousands of “followers”, but feel a peculiar sense of encroachment that makes me feel compelled to express weariness rather than delight. But if you must know about me, know this: I survived Southern apartheid. But none of us get away unscathed. Please understand that right now, Black folks are holding critical space for one another. Historically, when we’ve convened to protect our spaces and our spirits, white people have responded with apathy or hostility. I understand why it is hard to see a world, or even a movement for racial justice, that is not centered on the comfort of white people. The only relationship to space y’all know is one of entitlement, from colonization to gentrification. All the rest of us know is when the white folks show up, we’re in danger of disappearing. Black folks are uncomfortable and white folks are oblivious. Understanding is under siege. If this analysis has you agitated, please investigate. Your discomfort could never rival mine when my life flashes before my eyes every time I see blue lights. Want me to move through the PTSD to make you feel complete? Please take several seats. Now that that’s off my chest, I want to say that I will meet your journey with racial justice with openness, but only if you hold equal respect for my skepticism. ✊🏿🖤
Suddenly everyone is on the path to racial justice. I know it seems sarcastic, the way I said that, but it wasn’t meant to be. It is however, startling. Overnight and presumably across industries Black creatives have seen their social media followers expand by the thousands. (Thanks @ciaosamin)! Also yesterday, my brilliant friend made a video cautioning against policing other peoples learning journey with racial justice. I’m moving in the spirit of her timely insight. But with complications. It is hard to interpret this show of solidarity(?) without some measure of skepticism. We are not afraid of the stage, but history says it will be taken away and co-opted for profit. No thanks, I’ll take reparations. These shows of solidarity(?) can actually be triggering. I’m happy to have “gained” thousands of “followers”, but feel a peculiar sense of encroachment that makes me feel compelled to express weariness rather than delight. But if you must know about me, know this: I survived Southern apartheid. But none of us get away unscathed. Please understand that right now, Black folks are holding critical space for one another. Historically, when we’ve convened to protect our spaces and our spirits, white people have responded with apathy or hostility. I understand why it is hard to see a world, or even a movement for racial justice, that is not centered on the comfort of white people. The only relationship to space y’all know is one of entitlement, from colonization to gentrification. All the rest of us know is when the white folks show up, we’re in danger of disappearing. Black folks are uncomfortable and white folks are oblivious. Understanding is under siege. If this analysis has you agitated, please investigate. Your discomfort could never rival mine when my life flashes before my eyes every time I see blue lights. Want me to move through the PTSD to make you feel complete? Please take several seats. Now that that’s off my chest, I want to say that I will meet your journey with racial justice with openness, but only if you hold equal respect for my skepticism. ✊🏿🖤
Suddenly everyone is on the path to racial justice. I know it seems sarcastic, the way I said that, but it wasn’t meant to be. It is however, startling. Overnight and presumably across industries Black creatives have seen their social media followers expand by the thousands. (Thanks @ciaosamin)! Also yesterday, my brilliant friend made a video cautioning against policing other peoples learning journey with racial justice. I’m moving in the spirit of her timely insight. But with complications. It is hard to interpret this show of solidarity(?) without some measure of skepticism. We are not afraid of the stage, but history says it will be taken away and co-opted for profit. No thanks, I’ll take reparations. These shows of solidarity(?) can actually be triggering. I’m happy to have “gained” thousands of “followers”, but feel a peculiar sense of encroachment that makes me feel compelled to express weariness rather than delight. But if you must know about me, know this: I survived Southern apartheid. But none of us get away unscathed. Please understand that right now, Black folks are holding critical space for one another. Historically, when we’ve convened to protect our spaces and our spirits, white people have responded with apathy or hostility. I understand why it is hard to see a world, or even a movement for racial justice, that is not centered on the comfort of white people. The only relationship to space y’all know is one of entitlement, from colonization to gentrification. All the rest of us know is when the white folks show up, we’re in danger of disappearing. Black folks are uncomfortable and white folks are oblivious. Understanding is under siege. If this analysis has you agitated, please investigate. Your discomfort could never rival mine when my life flashes before my eyes every time I see blue lights. Want me to move through the PTSD to make you feel complete? Please take several seats. Now that that’s off my chest, I want to say that I will meet your journey with racial justice with openness, but only if you hold equal respect for my skepticism. ✊🏿🖤
In the wake of some considerable bullshit yesterday I did not have a chance to properly express how truly overjoyed I was to be included in this @nytimes roundup of Black wine professionals. I started in wine in the Willamette Valley in 2005. Back then we learned about who was poppin from @foodandwine and people like @andrearobinsonms were the wave. The most visible Black somm at the time hands down was @andrehmack. I super looked up to him then and still do. Wine as a vocation was an idea that first popped into my brain at 19. I was in culinary school and taking hospitality classes, a mindful middle ground between my already well established love of food, and my desire to fall into some similar kind of love with wine. But being the only one for so long is no fun, ya know? So I left, but kept my love by my side. I decided that if I was gonna be Black in the wine industry that I was gonna be all the way Black. So I started the International Society of Africans in Wine and I became (ISAW). I went all the way to Africa to link with Black colleagues, which is where I first met Ntsiki @nbiyela. She was the first Black woman in her country to make wine professionally. Ten years ago today I was in Stellenbosch for the second time. Guess who was there too? @juliaconey! at the home of Diale and Malmsey, the only Black family in the game with their own land to their name. Black wine lovers on the outskirts, in the Western Cape and the USA. Damn the Dutch and British did a number, didn’t they? After ISAW I thought I lost that part of me. Y’all thought ISAWSTEPHEN was a clever name but that’s where I came from. Now for the best part: I was googling for yesterday’s NYT clip but instead took a trip to 2009. January 27th. @ericasimov who wrote this article (who I revered as a wine writer then and still do! Thank you for writing this, Eric!) wrote about South African wine, and well, let’s just say, I BEEN ON MESSAGE! Anyhoooo…. I’m so so proud of us all! 🖤🖤🖤
In the wake of some considerable bullshit yesterday I did not have a chance to properly express how truly overjoyed I was to be included in this @nytimes roundup of Black wine professionals. I started in wine in the Willamette Valley in 2005. Back then we learned about who was poppin from @foodandwine and people like @andrearobinsonms were the wave. The most visible Black somm at the time hands down was @andrehmack. I super looked up to him then and still do. Wine as a vocation was an idea that first popped into my brain at 19. I was in culinary school and taking hospitality classes, a mindful middle ground between my already well established love of food, and my desire to fall into some similar kind of love with wine. But being the only one for so long is no fun, ya know? So I left, but kept my love by my side. I decided that if I was gonna be Black in the wine industry that I was gonna be all the way Black. So I started the International Society of Africans in Wine and I became (ISAW). I went all the way to Africa to link with Black colleagues, which is where I first met Ntsiki @nbiyela. She was the first Black woman in her country to make wine professionally. Ten years ago today I was in Stellenbosch for the second time. Guess who was there too? @juliaconey! at the home of Diale and Malmsey, the only Black family in the game with their own land to their name. Black wine lovers on the outskirts, in the Western Cape and the USA. Damn the Dutch and British did a number, didn’t they? After ISAW I thought I lost that part of me. Y’all thought ISAWSTEPHEN was a clever name but that’s where I came from. Now for the best part: I was googling for yesterday’s NYT clip but instead took a trip to 2009. January 27th. @ericasimov who wrote this article (who I revered as a wine writer then and still do! Thank you for writing this, Eric!) wrote about South African wine, and well, let’s just say, I BEEN ON MESSAGE! Anyhoooo…. I’m so so proud of us all! 🖤🖤🖤
In the wake of some considerable bullshit yesterday I did not have a chance to properly express how truly overjoyed I was to be included in this @nytimes roundup of Black wine professionals. I started in wine in the Willamette Valley in 2005. Back then we learned about who was poppin from @foodandwine and people like @andrearobinsonms were the wave. The most visible Black somm at the time hands down was @andrehmack. I super looked up to him then and still do. Wine as a vocation was an idea that first popped into my brain at 19. I was in culinary school and taking hospitality classes, a mindful middle ground between my already well established love of food, and my desire to fall into some similar kind of love with wine. But being the only one for so long is no fun, ya know? So I left, but kept my love by my side. I decided that if I was gonna be Black in the wine industry that I was gonna be all the way Black. So I started the International Society of Africans in Wine and I became (ISAW). I went all the way to Africa to link with Black colleagues, which is where I first met Ntsiki @nbiyela. She was the first Black woman in her country to make wine professionally. Ten years ago today I was in Stellenbosch for the second time. Guess who was there too? @juliaconey! at the home of Diale and Malmsey, the only Black family in the game with their own land to their name. Black wine lovers on the outskirts, in the Western Cape and the USA. Damn the Dutch and British did a number, didn’t they? After ISAW I thought I lost that part of me. Y’all thought ISAWSTEPHEN was a clever name but that’s where I came from. Now for the best part: I was googling for yesterday’s NYT clip but instead took a trip to 2009. January 27th. @ericasimov who wrote this article (who I revered as a wine writer then and still do! Thank you for writing this, Eric!) wrote about South African wine, and well, let’s just say, I BEEN ON MESSAGE! Anyhoooo…. I’m so so proud of us all! 🖤🖤🖤
RIP, young Bre. Today you would be 27. So sorry you never got to see your dream of becoming a nurse. So sorry you were slaughtered in your sleep by the Louisville police. Hard to believe that you could be an ancestor already. Indelible forever. We will lift your name forever, no matter how heavy. No rest til justice. #sayhername #breonnataylor
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For the culture, for the yut. Eli gets it!! Lil #OriginForager 😭 We will never stop, Eli!! 🙏🏾 cc: @whetstonemagazine
The 2010s did not teach me to be less verbose. Not even close. It is where I began to gather the scattered seeds of my life’s dreams. Not to be dropped in topsoil, but to be sown in a fertile place called my own that would come to be known as #Whetstone. Last decade I graduated from restaurants to #entrepreneur. I came into the 2010s as an advocate for Black and indigenous people and I’m still on that. I left the decade through a new portal with the same truth. Never have, never will I leverage my work to further a perverted fascination with Blackness or the idea that it is in fashion. I was Black before y’all got here, I’ma be Black when y’all leave and I got centuries of receipts that tell me how y’all act. The fact is facism made diversity the wave for capitalism but I will not be counted among the victims that conflate opportunity and exploitation. Let me help with that right quick. The question you will want to commit to memory is simply, “who benefits?” And we could be talking about gentrification or appropriation it’s always gone be easy to see. It’s one nem questions that’s a lot like turning on the lights, such as, “who paid for that?” Look at me givin way game for free when I’m in the attention economy. Y’all should buy my #magazine. Anyway, let me get back to business of daydreamin when my heart starts beating like a buncha broncos stampeding. I lived stay low and build until it spilled from the nest into the interest of universal forces that had me riding horses and now I’m just holdin em. Special dedication to my dedication. Bout to go from cottage to high wattage. I never been afraid of the lights more like emanated them from my insides illuminating voluminously. Made in Atlanta in the 80s like the Human Highlight I was born to fly high. It’s #whetstonevolume5 Happy New Year, Y’all. ✨🥂
🍤 el año de camarones. 🦐
🍤 el año de camarones. 🦐
🍤 el año de camarones. 🦐
🍤 el año de camarones. 🦐
🍤 el año de camarones. 🦐
Once I linked my liberation to self-reliance I knew I was moving in the spirit of my forebears Carry the torch to light the way Or hurl that thang. Barriers to emancipation are immense Every century we mobilize for freedom And each of the days in between them. For me, @whetstonemagazine has always been salvation byway of self-identification: raconteur, bricoleur, entrepreneur. Look at me speaking French like a Black Haitian With the same pigmentation Purpose fervor Find a way or make one Clark Atlanta is my mama’s alma mater Now I’m in a proud tradition of Black publishers In the spirit of Walker’s Appeal, For real. Regarding the ultra-depleted seat at the table fable Baldwin asked rhetorically, “Do I want to be integrated into a burning house?” When David Walker said, I cannot remain where I must hear slaves’ chains, When Haki Madhubuti said There ain’t no poems to stop a .38 no stanzas can protect me from a nightstick. Or when Nikki Giovanni said, i wanted to write a poem that rhymes but revolution doesn’t lend itself to be-bopping maybe i shouldn’t write at all but clean my gun. These have always been the stakes in the United States And its origins as a Slave colony. Do not rely on me for your stories deriding the white fantasy of Black inferiority. I’m not the one who needs convincing nor am I moved to disprove notions of white supremacy When the fallacy is obliterated with every breath I take. Whatever yall call the cutting edge of culture, in vernacular, fashion, music or hoopin has been Black. Now you can tell your friends it’s true in food publishing too! I owe a great deal to @alexbowman for the stunning cover design, and @laylaschlack, “If you know, you know.” So many holding us down behind the scenes. Thank you. Especially to the contributors of Whetstone Volume 6. It is because of your talent that I stand in my conviction about the specialness of what we’re making, and what we made. Thank you for the radical act of supporting independent media. 🗣🗣🗣WHETSTONE VOLUME 6 SHIPS NEXT WEEK!!!
🍤 el año de camarones. 🦐
🍤 el año de camarones. 🦐
🍤 el año de camarones. 🦐
The hardest cover, meaning the most difficult, but also, the most dope. No bars spared on the @whetstonemagazine caption so read it there, but I’d like to give special thanks here to @alexbowman @laylaschlack and @heleenetambet, the team behind the publishing dream. Whetstone Magazine Volume 7 on sale NOW! barelyflexbutdontplaywitmeperiod. 😤💪🏿
#WHETSTONEVOLUME5 To my birth I owe my parents, to my life I owe @whetstonemagazine. Apparently it gets no easier, but something about 🖐🏾 is particularly gratifying. 4 was an ecological and metaphorical conclusion, but with our 5th the emphasis is on the fact that we’re still here and building! Please believe, if you have Black indies in your industry, they’re making it better!! In our corner of the world, we’ve published the voices of our generation like: @soulfirefarm @soleil_ho and @from_lagos. We’ve taken it further with our #pointoforiginpodcast, made in collaboration with @iheartradio. We’ve published incredible WOC illustrators like @alexbowman @samnakahira and @4ur3lia. My brother @mrdavidp secured our production dreams with #WildGrapes, but Whetstone is a practice in patience. Still awaiting payment. Anyway, Ima say it again til it’s seared in: white editors and media companies contracting POCs is not diversity. It shouldn’t be noteworthy. It’s the bare minimum and more like an asset to their enterprise. POC and specifically #blackownership is THE power shift. The opposite of what we got is what we want. Please do us the courtesy of committing this distinction to memory, especially if in our industry and asked to speak on diversity. When you say @whetstonemagazine, please lead with a new sentence. We trust you know the industry of which you speak well enough to notice an anomaly when you see it. Gotta name it til it isn’t. The distinction is in the truth that I’ve sacrificed my life to make this work, and supporting Whetstone hasn’t just been for me, but Us, the countless we’re building with, and those we’ll never know. None of it would be possible without my co-founder #MelissaShi, who has found her voice in this work in tremendous ways. So proud to be in this work w/ her, and live in the power of a Chinese woman and Black man working in solidarity to fuck shit up. New tables, new meals, new kitchen, new cribs. There is service is the heart perseverance. 💕 Thank you, Mel!! And to @mccalmanco. The 1st thing everybody notices about @whetstonemagazine is how beautiful it is, they deserve the credit! Order now!!!
Sending a major THANK YOU to @target for bringing me to (the Black SXSW) @Essence to debut @iamtabithabrown new wine. What an honor to share the stage with an icon among us. Tabitha’s electric welcome was a testament to her message of warmth and authenticity—fitting reception for a queen. Many thanks to the one behind the scenes, Ms. Pamela Brown, for the opportunity.
