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There was the Chitlin Test from the 60's or 70's. I still have a copy somewhere. It was a test that only a black person could get all the answers right. Chitlin culture to me is deep black culture, things that only black people know about being black.
If it's the same kind of test I saw in the 70s, it took someone who was urban black to get all the answers right. Some of those questions were specific to the urban black welfare culture, which not even a poor black from the rural south would know.
They both talk about how cultures form and collide.
The Cavalier/Indentured Servant class may have been a culture Black slaves were exposed to in the earlier days of slavery. However, as the USA expanded, so did slavery. And many people were moved around. Slave owners weren't just the descendants of the English aristocracy/Cavaliers. There were also alot of poor Whites in the Antebellum South. There are also many yeoman farmers in the South. While a decent size portion of the southern White population owned slaves, most who did owned a few slaves. Rich families owned large size plantations and alot of slaves.
I will have to discuss at more length the bifurcation that occurred even in the "chitlin culture" during the Great Migration.
I grew up similarly in the late 50s and 60s, being a military brat and living mostly at Army bases in the south...and those bases were always attached to small towns, not major urban centers. Being Army put us into the middle class, and we normally lived off-post in the better part of the black part of town (I learned later that my father preferred keeping us off-post among other black people...for some good reasons of the times).
But that southern culture was strongly "adoptionist," and that adoptionism was lost in ADOS who moved into urban areas.
I could tell the difference at the deep culture level even as a kid in 1963 when we visited some distant relatives in south Chicago. I could not have articulated that difference back then, of course, but I can now.
Your posts are teaching me a few times. I think about time you grow up, and when I grew up. I grew up in the 1990s/early 2000s. It might explain why your father chose to live where he did, and my father chose someplace different.
My father is the product of the Great Migration. He was born and raised in Milwaukee to parents who fled Mississippi during the Great Migration. He also has relatives in Chicago (especially South Side Chicago) who left Mississippi during that time. On my mother's side of the family I have relatives from the small-town South. I don't know what "adoptionism" is, but I can definitely tell some differences. I feel like the southern way of life meant a certain degree of acquiescence to it. Where as, with my father's side of the family, there is a sense of "we don't take any mess".
If it's the same kind of test I saw in the 70s, it took someone who was urban black to get all the answers right. Some of those questions were specific to the urban black welfare culture, which not even a poor black from the rural south would know.
Your posts are teaching me a few times. I think about time you grow up, and when I grew up. I grew up in the 1990s/early 2000s. It might explain why your father chose to live where he did, and my father chose someplace different.
My father is the product of the Great Migration. He was born and raised in Milwaukee to parents who fled Mississippi during the Great Migration. He also has relatives in Chicago (especially South Side Chicago) who left Mississippi during that time. On my mother's side of the family I have relatives from the small-town South. I don't know what "adoptionism" is, but I can definitely tell some differences. I feel like the southern way of life meant a certain degree of acquiescence to it. Where as, with my father's side of the family, there is a sense of "we don't take any mess".
By "adoptionist," I mean the intention by ADOS to adopt as much of the dominant culture as possible. True assimilation wasn't possible--whites would not allow it--but there was an intention to adopt it as much as possible.
I don't know if you've caught the new dramatic iteration, "Bel Air" on NBC's "Peacock" network.
In that version, Uncle Phil did more than merely take Will in. Uncle Phil--a powerful LA attorney running for DA--had actually taken some legally shady steps to keep Will out of jail and whisk him to LA. So, Will's presence is actually a continual danger if Phil's political enemies discover Will's background.
So, Phil's being "bougie" is more clearly shown to have saved Will's life and freedom, and Will's inability to abandon being "hood" is shown to be a continuing danger to Phil and Phil's family (all of whom are displaying real personal agency in functioning in their world).
The new show makes it more clear that "culture is a choice."
I haven't seen that version yet. However, I could understand Uncle Phil's consternation with Will's inability to shed the "hood" culture. Culture can be something you're born into, but it can also be something you choose to keep, or let go. It can be a choice.
This reminds me of a neighborhood who went to middle school and high school with me. He was basically a step child. He was partly raised in a "hood" environment. Being brought into a middle class neighborhood didn't do much for him. I would think me being a fellow Black male (in a White neighborhood) and me getting decent grades and being goal-oriented might have helped him. It didn't. He wouldn't shake the "hood" culture. I think his mother and stepfather might have been thinking "if we take the kids out to a nicer neighborhood, maybe they will be around better people and do better". That classmate of mine just gravitated to the White underclass/druggies. He has issues with drinking and drugs as we speak.
By "adoptionist," I mean the intention by ADOS to adopt as much of the dominant culture as possible. True assimilation wasn't possible--whites would not allow it--but there was an intention to adopt it as much as possible.
I think among those who moved, there was a mindset of "we don't take any crap from anyone". There were some who did have an adoptionist mindset, and some that didn't. I think those that did were more likely to stay. And many who didn't were more likely to move.
I also think about this. Southern culture, both for Blacks and Whites, has more similarities than either side would admit. Certain aspects, however, aren't always reconcilable. I think going North (or West to a certain extent) put Blacks into a culture quite different from the South. And in places like Detroit, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, there were alot of ethnic neighborhoods. It wasn't just a White side of town and a Black side of town. It was Italian, Jewish, Irish, Czech, Polish, German, etc. In some of the smaller northern communities, there could have been even more incentive to assimilate. If you’re one of the few Blacks in a 90% White school or block, you'll have more reason to adopt the dominant culture.
Last edited by green_mariner; 05-04-2022 at 12:35 PM..
Not sure I can post here. I get the shakes upon any mention of chitterlings (chitlins).
Yuck...
Well, we can say yuck. However, most of us have eaten sausage which is stuffed into animal intestine. Link sausage, yum. I had a great grandfather that killed pigs once a year, he didn't make chitlins, but he did make sausage. I'll have to ask, but I think they cleaned the intestines and soaked them in salt water. No chitlins though, but they had people ask for their unused pieces, maybe they made it.
Yeah - I know - I'm just poking fun at my own disgust for chitterlings.
Disgust is not a strong enough term here...
For those that don't know... pig's intestines is what that is.
My grandmother used to cook them in a small apartment in DC with substandard ventilation. OK - I need to stop now, it's too much for me...
I've never had chitterlings. Never seen them in person. My parents never made them. It's never been in my home. I would hate to think about what a house would smell like while chitterlings are being made.
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