WOKE
Years ago my friend Brittany Smith who I met in a program before high school, attended both Cass Tech and the University of Michigan with suggested I read a book called the Warmth of Other Suns. If you’ve ever seen this book you’d know its a beast. Its been sitting in my Kindle library ever since. Weighing in at 538 pages (22:40 audible hours) and all fact no fiction I was super intimidated by this book.
This year I finally decided to tackle it (the audible version). Not to my surprise, it covered some of the most disturbing things I’ve ever heard and what makes it even worse its all true. Some how over the years the stories disappear. I totally get it though because who wants to relive the trauma through story telling. My generation didnt see most of these things first hand so the severity of the situation kind of got lost. It seems that we dont have the same fire that existed in our ancestors to not only want to see change but to be the ones to make it happen. We need to feel that fire as if these things were happening here and now and to us.
I highly suggest you check it out. After reading it I felt a new sense of awareness; I felt “woke”. Like I’ve always loved all things black. I grew up in Detroit where everything is black. Where black is beautiful and black is everywhere. Our teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, politicians served as representation left and right. This was a different level of awareness that I saw myself separating from the more I could yell, “Mama I made it!”
Woke as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice.
Knowing that I have “made it” this new awareness lead me to ask myself the question, “what can I do to help better our community? “
I’ve always struggled with finding the purpose of bougiefoodie. I created the page after a high school classmate of mine, Sherisse Quince, suggested that I start a food blog because I was always posting delicious pics of food. I do enjoy food photography and checking out new hot spots but because Im a person who does purposeful work I’ve been wanting bougiefoodie to be more than just pics of cheese pulls and perfect avocados.
I’ve thought about different avenues to make this work/time working on bougiefoodie more purposeful.
First, I thought about impacting our community’s health by curating healthy recipes that combat some of the food related diseases we often suffer from but I dont measure when I cook making it hard to record the ingredients.
Then I thought about creating grocery lists to help with saving money and budgeting which I still may still do but I’m only cooking for two so I dont know how realistic my lists will be to larger families or ones trapped in a food desert which often happens in our community.
Finally, it hit me! One day I ran across a post on Ashley Toliver’s story (@beautybandit_ashley) about a black-owned brunch spot. I’d never heard of it and wanted to check it out so I went to do some research on it. I yelped the restaurant to no avail. I searched google and couldnt find it on the map but I found a Facebook business page. With this info the next day I went to check it out with my homegirl Brittany Thornton and by the end of the day I understood the direction I needed to take bougie foodie.
Resturants in Detroit come and go. It is what it is. Ive been downtown since ‘04 Jersey dresses at Cass Tech days and seen that one location go from Rub Pub BBQ to Taqo to Brass Rails Pizza. But I thought to myself when searching for the restuaurant above, how can I not find a whole restuarant that has amazing and affordable food in a great space on Al Gore’s internet?!
As a food blogger, Im going to provide visiablilty into those black owned restuarants that dont get the shine that they deserve. Going forward bougiefoodie.com will only highlight black-owned businesses. And by highlight I mean HIGHLIGHT. I will not bash our restaurants. My mother like many black mothers instilled in me if you dont have anything nice to say dont say anything at all.
“If you dont got nothing nice to say, dont say nothing at all”
How will this visability help? Well, Popeyes showed me the buying power our people have. One way to make change is to filter our funds back into our community. I believe that if people knew about the amazing food being served right in our community by our people they’d definitely patronize. I still havent tried the Popeyes chicken sandwich yet smh.
The Instagram will still feature posts of places I dine all over the world by all types of people. Plus I just got an iPhone 11 Pro so the pics are going to be 🔥!!!