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Chapter seven provides a reflection on what it means to be constituted in a particular food tradition. Food it is a central part of identity that has not been fully accounted for in communication scholarship. Southern food never has been one thing; in fact, the food works more effectively rhetorically when defined more broadly, pushing against the borders of foods and bringing more people into the conversation. Although there is potential for using Southern food as one of the tools to redefine the South, we must acknowledge there are many wrongs that must be dealt with, not only through studying culture and its history, but also through economic policy, political change, improvements in education, and infrastructure work. The rhetorical potential of Southern food is but one small part of the story of our shared past and future, but it is an important part and it is a story worth telling.

The chapter begins with an examination of the symbolic significance of the sit-ins at restaurants and lunch counters throughout the South as black protesters asserted their right to eat iconic American food items like hamburgers and to drink the symbolic beverage of Coca-Cola on equal terms with their fellow citizens. At the same time that many demonstrators became disillusioned with the only partially fulfilled promises of the civil rights movement, the alternative concept of a black national culinary identity emerged in the form of “soul food.” Southern food practices were rebranded as an essential black culinary production, and eating dishes like collard greens and chitterlings become a means of expressing fidelity to the idea of a stateless black nation.

“The Roots of Southern Identity,” grounds the book within the larger context of regional identity and social identity before turning attention directly to the issues of southern identity and southern distinctiveness. This chapter also includes original analyses, highlighting the unique role that food and politics play in the southern landscape. The chapter argues that the South remains culturally and politically distinct and that the perception of distinctiveness is a particularly important component of southern identity. In addition, the chapter examines the complicated relationship between race and southern identity. The chapter also introduces “dark side of southern identity,” a phenomenon in which politicians play on southern identity of old to prime voters to support populist, exclusionary, and even racist candidates and policies. Drawing on the social identity literature, the chapter discusses the reasons someone decides to be a member of a regional group.

This chapter relies on evidence from a series of focus groups. These focus groups allow us to explore southern identity in more detail and follow up on many of the themes that developed in earlier chapters. Focus-group participants included adult southerners from a variety of backgrounds—young and old, white and black, native and nonnative. The focus groups reveal many similarities about how blacks and whites think about regional identity and the South. Folkways—like hospitality, manners, pace of life, a connection to the land, and food—are key components of southern identity for both groups. Similar to chapter 3, however, this chapter identifies key differences in southern identity across the two groups. The most notable differences have to do with the ways whites and blacks talk about history, politics, and race relations.

This chapter explores the class tensions inherent in the middle-class project of reforming black food habits, demonstrating that working-class African Americans frequently did not share the certainty that foodways could be used as an avenue for citizenship and doubted many of the assumptions embedded in the project of cultural elevation subscribed to by black food reformers. One of the issues at the heart of the culinary tensions among members of the black community was the emerging question about whether there was a distinctive African American way of eating that was separate from mainstream American food culture. In the context of the Great Migration, “southern” food often became labeled “black” food in the northern cities that served as the terminus for black migrants. This transformation took place much to the consternation of black food reformers who, on the whole, resisted the idea of essential black cultural practices.