There have been reports and rumors that collard greens would be the next item to be gentrified and Columbused by the mainstream—that is, folks would be told that it’s a green that people aren’t using as much and ought to start using, completely ignoring its legacy in African-American Southern soul food, and how it’s a staple in black households nationwide.
Whole Foods caught itself proving that hunch right by tweeting that people who aren’t cooking with collard greens ought to start, and then directing people to a link telling people to cook collard greens with peanuts. Or at least that’s what the photo it used implied.
https://twitter.com/WholeFoods/status/687665527553134592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Yep, peanuts. Never in the history of Negrodom, in the history of the black Diaspora, in the history of these United Households of Black America, has anyone espoused the cooking of collard greens with peanuts. And if anyone did, he or she certainly didn’t suggest that it was “how to cook collards.”
And again, if someone did, they didn’t put the peanuts in the main collard green cooking pot. Oh no; they scooped up their share of collard greens, put it on a plate and sprinkled their own peanuts onto their share. (Everybody’s got somebody in their family who’s allergic to peanuts.)
Black Twitter came down on Whole Foods for this one.
https://twitter.com/wondermann5/status/687689122106888192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/akacharleswade/status/687755012143878148https://twitter.com/queen___mariah/status/687709768245481472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/Honey_Bee2/status/685295891255791617https://twitter.com/keity_rich/status/687696146693775362?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/LesaMonroe/status/687746644322967552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/BreezyBreee3/status/687689278755700736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/KelleyLCarter/status/687703108881874944
Whole Foods woefully backtracked on its peanuts recommendation and tweeted this.
https://twitter.com/WholeFoods/status/687701188792430592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
All is well for Sunday dinner.
For more of black Twitter, check out The Chatterati on The Root and follow The Chatterati on Twitter.
Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele is a staff writer at The Root and the founder and executive producer of Lectures to Beats, a Web series that features video interviews with scarily insightful people. Follow Lectures to Beats on Facebook and Twitter.