“American homemakers are increasingly aware of their rich heritage of cooking, of its wide variety as a result of its regional origins. We have the fine culinary traditions of those who settled in Louisiana, Virginia, New England, the South, the North, the East, and the West. No statement of the excellence of the cooking of American homemakers, who are representative of every race of mankind, is complete without a reference to the fine cooking of the Negroes of the South, who are natural gourmets. They seem to have inherited a sort of tradition of good cooking, and it may be that this will have a large place in the final development of a real American type of cookery.”
Introduction, The Gold Cookbook by Master Chef Louis P. De Gouy
Oscar Tschirky
1947
Just a couple of decades later, and in another book, on another topic, which to me at least, is not at all unrelated . …
An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power
“When Lyndon Johnson succeeded to the presidency on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he proved to be a very different president. A decade older than Kennedy, Johnson was fully a son of the New Deal, one with deep faith that government could solve social and economic problems. . .. With the help of an overwhelming electoral victory in November that year, Johnson prodded Congress to pass bill after bill. The Equal Opportunity Act (1964), Mass Transit Act (1965), Appalachian Regional Development Act (1965) Head Start (1965), the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act (1966), Higher Education Act (1967). Along with many other, smaller, programs that involved the federal government in areas of national life it had never before been concerned with, these cause a breathtaking rise in federal expenditures. Nondefense government expenditures rose by a third in just three years, from 1965 to 1968, from $75 billion to $100 billion. Two years later they were $127 billion. Meanwhile, the Vietnam War escalated quickly. In 1965 the defense budget had been $50 billion. In 1968 it was $82 billion.”
John Steele Gordon
(P. 382)
Kensho Homestead 
The pioneering spirit is still there, just dormant at the moment. Inner city folks won’t get it. Those that work with the land, will.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree. And the fact that as stupid as they want to portray us, and I mean Americans in general, and more specifically the ‘lower classes’ of the ‘flyover states’, the more chances they will fall on their own petard. It’s not exactly their arrogance that will get them in the end, but their underestimation of everyone else. I truly believe we are pioneers at heart in this country, even if our current demographics don’t reveal that so much, it’s in our blood.
LikeLike
That and, pitting people against each other prevents solidarity against the gubment. Education reinforces the helplessness and foments the anger (or, worse…grooming). Gubment creates the problems and points fingers at whatever maligned “group of the day” is, as culprits. Now, we get blanket “virus” fear or “climate change” fear. I see cracks in the rhetoric, tho… They can’t get past the hyperinflation of everything. That 600 lbs. gorilla can get everyone’s attention.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes! And, they clearly invested a lot on social programming to convince everyone of a huge divide in classes, based on race, that didn’t really exist in this country initially, including up until modern times. It makes no sense that blacks could be ‘natural gourmets’ or great musicians and athletes, for that matter, if they were so poor and oppressed and enslaved as we are lead to believe from the current decades of programming. Not trying to say no problems existed or bigoted people don’t exist, only that their intervention foments tensions, not attempts to alleviate them in any way. It’s nothing but opportunism and creating markets to be exploited. They don’t spend all our money to help us at all, but to take it, put their stamp on it, and make us pay to get it back. Total fuckery.
LikeLike
Ok. Yeah. Federal intervention always screws things up, starting with mass education. Don’t teach anyone self sufficiency. Teach them to look upon their “leaders” and demand “help” & “change” or hope & change…LOL.
The bigger the gubment, the bigger the mess.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How did we go from robust regional cuisine where the most celebrated restauranteur in America would so highly praise all our differences, with the negro race highlighted as being natural gourmets, to now, where Whites are the forever-evil colonizers exploiting every other race in our systemic violence with most folks eating industrialized crap that’s called “American”? Seems to me all that federal spending had a great deal to do with it.
LikeLike
Great look back on history. LBJ…another terrible prez…
I’m not getting the connection between the quotes.
LikeLiked by 1 person