Gastropolitics and Jim Crow
Courtesy of Farm Security Administration, US Archives II, College Park, Maryland
As professor, I find that most North Americans find it difficult to move beyond a fixation on race to an awareness of what Isabel Wilkerson writes about in her latest book, Caste. For example in thinking about James Weldon Johnson’s novel Autobiography of An Ex-colored Man, do poor whites have more restaurant options than black elites in Jim Crow Atlanta? How did Jim Crow policies influence one's restaurant experiences in the US caste system as an entrepreneur, manager, employee, and or customer?
