The critique that speaks to the Black identity most powerfully is ideological. Passionately pro-Black activists argue that eating a food that is not part of the African American ancestral diet and that slaveholders forced upon us means literally ingesting and digesting white supremacy. They also argue that many of the chronic disease ills that plague the Black community flow from the pork that we refuse to wean from our diet. Ultimately, a return to the pork-free diet of our West African ancestors is a powerful way to reassert our collective Blackness. This perspective gained momentum in the 1960s, and has been a part of Black culture ever since.
But I’m old enough to remember when pork, and its swine-related synonyms, were unquestionably tied to the essence of African American identity. Pork was showcased at special occasion meals, inspired cultural references about status (“eating high on the hog”), and was a euphemism for sex. Some even believed that heaven was a place where barbecued pigs ran around with knives and forks stuck in them to make them easier to eat. The anti-pork sentiment represents a stunning reversal of cultural and culinary cachet for pigs. Ironically, people have also previously been denied Blackness because they refused to eat pork.
The main reason pork became a dominant protein in African American cuisine is slavery. Prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade, pigs were present in sub-Saharan West Africa, but they were not a major part of the indigenous diet. Even if pigs were plentiful, Islam had spread in the region since the 800s C.E., which made pork a taboo food for the burgeoning number of Muslim converts. Centuries later, slavers didn’t care what spiritual practices their human captives observed. Enslaved African Muslims were force-fed salted pork on the weeks-long journey by ship from West Africa to the Americas. The only other option was to starve.
Once in the British North American colonies, slaveholders doled out weekly rations of a couple pounds of dried, pickled, salted, or smoked pork along with a few pounds of cornmeal and a jug of molasses to the enslaved. Slaveholders relied heavily on pork to feed the enslaved because pigs were so easy and inexpensive to raise. One of the high points on the plantation calendar was the annual hog-killing, where numerous pigs were slaughtered, processed, and preserved to provide nourishment throughout the year. If enslaved people wanted another source of protein they had to fish, hunt, or raise livestock during their leisure time, of which they had little. Many still did so to supplement their diet, but pork was the meat the enslaved typically ate.
Even though it was forced upon them, the enslaved eventually embraced pork when they were free to choose what type of meat they were going to eat. After a hog-killing, the various parts of the pig that couldn’t be preserved were relished. This brings us back to pig’s intestines, also known as chitterlings or chitlins. To this day chitlins are soul food’s most controversial dish, mainly because of what they are (“guts”), the funky smell that arises when they’re cleaned and cooked, and their reputation for being something that white people didn’t want to eat. The latter is false. Plenty of white people ate, and still eat, chitlins. As just one historical example, in the 1930s, Willis Woodson of Texas recounted during an oral history interview that his enslaved mother auditioned for the plantation cook position by proving to their enslaver that she was good at making chitlins.
