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Celebrate June 11 by supporting black restaurants

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Just as black music and fashion have been widely appropriated around the globe, black food culture has often been appropriated by the mainstream American food scene. From shrimp and grits to chicken and waffles to macaroni and cheese, many popular dishes within the United States have ties to our ancestors. This June Black Restaurant Week encourages everyone to experience Black-centric cuisine prepared by Black chefs at Black restaurants. Founded by Warren Luckett in 2016, Black Restaurant Week “is a celebration of Black culinary culture from across the diaspora.”

What began as a 25-restaurant campaign in Houston, Texas has grown to a 15-market campaign covering over 1,700 restaurants annually. With a mission to honor the contributions of the Caribbean, African and Black culinary scenes within the United States, Luckett founded the organization to revive the narrative of Black food while making it accessible to people from all walks of life. The organization will host its fifth event this June New York Black Restaurant Week, valid until June 30. In one among its largest campaigns, the organization hosts greater than 150 participating restaurants, food trucks, brick-and-mortar bakeries and specialty food stores, offering reasonably priced menus and allowing consumers to experience a big selection of flavors.

“New York has always been just an amazing representation of culture,” Luckett added. “For us, it’s just an amazing journey through different neighborhoods where we have the chance to learn about some of these amazing stories. And that’s really becoming our favorite part of this whole campaign – being able to shine a spotlight on these mom-and-pop establishments, these mother-daughter-owned establishments, these second- and third-generation legacy institutions that have really been the backbone of the local Black community for so long.”

As a Houstonian who grew up celebrating Juneteenth long before it became a federal holiday, Luckett says authenticity is on the core of how he and his team approach major Black holidays like Juneteenth and Black History Month .

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“There was so much corporate excitement around the fact that June 11 became a national holiday… and it came and went very quickly. For us, it’s like, “OK, no; we still need to lead the way in being intentional and authentic in the way we celebrate things,” he explained. “And what better way to celebrate June 11 than to increase revenue for small business owners?”

In addition to highlighting the complex fantastic thing about Black cuisine, Black Restaurant Week goals to assist Black-owned businesses thrive. Recognizing that always small Black-owned restaurants do an incredible job of preparing their menus and meals but lack the financial resources vital to expand them, the organization’s efforts extend far beyond designated Black Restaurant Weeks across the country.

In addition to presenting the Black Restaurant Week schedule across the country, blackrestaurantweeks.com serves as a directory of Black-owned restaurants. Whether someone is traveling to a brand new city or just on the lookout for a brand new experience, the positioning allows consumers to browse Black-owned restaurants based on zip codes, dietary restrictions, and more.

“One of the things we’re most proud of during Black Restaurant Week is our website…we really try to position ourselves to be a year-round resource for Black-owned restaurants,” Luckett said, emphasizing the importance of community impact.

In 2020, the Houston-based organization launched the platform Feed Your Soul Foundation, a national nonprofit organization providing financial assistance and business development solutions to minority-owned culinary businesses. With the goal of providing a path for growth and sustainability, the muse offers business development, education, grants and scholarships to marginalized culinary businesses and students.

“If you look at Black Restaurant Week as a glorified marketing agency or marketing campaign, the Feed The Soul Foundation is actually our business development arm,” Luckett explained. “Black Restaurant Week is our for-profit cause, and Feed The Soul is a not-for-profit organization that allows us to work with corporate partners to provide business grants, internships and scholarships, as well as help businesses affected by a natural disaster or any other emergency. kind of emergency.”

Through its Restaurant Business Development Program, which offers a financial stipend, six-month consultations, and financial and marketing readiness camps, the Feed The Soul Foundation has helped roughly 85 restaurants since 2021. In addition to supporting business owners, Luckett and its partners felt it was essential to provide back to struggling, growing businesses and the subsequent generation of culinary, hospitality and marketing professionals through scholarships. As such, over the past three years, the nonprofit organization has provided greater than $2 million in education funding, business development and emergency relief funds.

Later this 12 months, Black Restaurant Week and the Feed the Soul Foundation will release a “State of the Industry” report on Black-owned restaurants and hospitality. The organization hopes to make use of the information collected to further fund efforts, fueling conversations about specific needs for corporate and legislative support.

Ultimately, Luckett’s goal is to make use of food to bring stories concerning the black diaspora to the forefront. While most individuals associate dishes like fried chicken, crawfish, collards, etc. with Black Americans, the founding father of Black Restaurant Week emphasized that soul food shouldn’t be the one sort of Black cuisine.

“We are not a monolith. Many times people try to describe our cuisine as strictly soul food. And while soul food is an integral part of our history… that’s not all we’re about,” he noted, emphasizing similarities between diaspora dishes comparable to Louisiana dirty rice, African jollof rice, and Caribbean rice and peas. (*11*) he added.

Understanding the shared intimacy and affirmation that food can foster within the black community, Luckett feels it can be crucial to equally highlight the history that exists in lots of these spaces.

“Traditionally in the Black South, getting together for a family meal on Sundays after church was something we still traditionally enjoy. “(Once upon a time) there weren’t a lot of different eateries that we could go to, so the ones that were open to the black community really became havens for the community,” he said. “Whether it was pastors or civil rights activists meeting over a good meal to discuss plans for the next bus boycott, or even simple things like how we celebrate baby showers, anniversaries, brunch… we love a good time to get together (and) eat something that touches our hearts.”


This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Houston’s Trills On Wheels Expands With Brunch Tour

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Houston, Trill on wheels, hip hop


A well-liked interactive Houston attraction that continues to attract visitors and showcase the town’s wealthy history and black business scene has expanded its offerings.

Trill On Wheels is a national prime minister a hip-hop bike experience that celebrates Houston culture and contributions to hip-hop. Launched in 2021, the party bike offers a two-hour cruise around Houston with stops at various black-owned businesses while guests enjoy cocktails and shisha.

Designed to rejoice the Houston lifestyle, each bike is designed to spotlight the town’s automobile culture with a “Candy Paint” mural featuring hip-hop heroes and the neighborhoods they represent. The bikes also feature Swang’s rims wrapped in trendy tires and Houston’s signature bass pumping out of the speakers.

The exuberant experience has made Trill On Wheels a tourist attraction that visitors put at the highest of their lists. Now, the brand new EADO Hip-Hop Brunch Tour offers guests a fun-filled approach to experience popular brunch stops in Houston.

Trill On Wheels is currently based in Houston’s historic Third Ward neighborhood, EADO, and plans to expand to the Fourth Ward. The tour experience combines the talent of Houston-born artists with a splash of sunshine fitness. Featuring Beatking, Slim Thug, and Lil Keke.

What began as a single bike delivered in a shipping container to the resort “is a testament to our team’s commitment to meeting high expectations and delivering a world-class experience to our riders,” he said. business stated on its website.

“Team Trill” is run by a married couple with two babies.

“As true fans of hip-hop culture, hosting epic game nights and being ‘out there,’ we wanted to create an experience that we could enjoy ourselves and one day pass on to our son,” the couple said. “After a year of prayer, research and pure, unfiltered hustle, Trill On Wheels was born and we couldn’t be more proud!”

Trill On Wheels has served over 30,000 tourists who’ve donated over $700,000 to local black-owned businesses, helping to spice up Houston’s economy. Be sure to examine out Trill On Wheels in your next visit to Houston, and don’t forget to bring your personal booze!


This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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Fear of sitting in crowded, black spaces

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There are two types of black people in the world: 1.) those that can walk right into a church on Easter Sunday, “sit” the highest five seats, and take a look at the ushers to just accept that those seats are taken; or 2.) me.

I’m the kind of person, and I represent the kind of black people, who hate being asked to sit down anywhere. I almost never feel anxious in public and I’m rarely nervous or concerned about who’s around me. But after I am in a public place and someone who just isn’t there and is not going to be there for some time asks me to sit down, I get anxious. I sweat. I stress. I fade quickly after which hand over. I don’t like to sit down for other people and I don’t ask people to sit down for me. I don’t prefer to put my burdens on the riverbank of the one who was on time.

But unfortunately, in the black community, “holding seats” is a thing—a sport, even. I’ve seen (and I mean this with dead seriousness; “without a hat,” as the children would say) an elderly black woman tell an usher in church that she was holding seats, and get mad on the ushers who suggested she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t consider they thought she couldn’t hold a row of seats, and so they couldn’t consider she couldn’t consider she couldn’t do it. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. My wife is one of those individuals who will hold all of the requested seats and risk a public demonstration of “Who’s going to break first, loudly?” over said seats. She’ll even be very mad at me after I can’t do it. Marriage, right?

If I’ll, I would really like to share with you all a recent experience I had attempting to get a seat that not only threw me out of the constructing, but threw me into an overcrowded room where I could now not see anything on account of the stress of attempting to get a seat for somebody. Also, as you may see, I failed this task with flying colours.

Just a few weeks ago, a famous friend of mine was giving a speak about books at a famous Washington landmark. I had been to that bookstore before—persistently—and had attended many of that friend’s talks. A math problem was about to pop into my head; there was absolutely no way that store could accommodate the number of individuals who would show up for that talk. Spoiler alert: I used to be right.

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Since I consider myself a forward-thinking person, I anticipated this math problem and got to the shop early enough to get a seat, but late enough to get one of, for example, three remaining seats. Many people should have been pondering the identical thing I used to be occupied with math, not math, given the space constraints of the shop. Anyway, I went in and sat down on a stool, then watched the parade of people, mostly black, who got here in after me, attempting to determine where to sit down. As an increasing number of people, especially older blacks, entered, I prepared to present up my seat and use my younger legs to face for your entire show.

And then I got a text from a friend asking me to avoid wasting a spot for her. Now that friend cannot stand for long, I had to avoid wasting her a spot (which I used to be already willing to present up) or we’d have to depart together; that wasn’t an option; we were there to see our friend be amazing and do her own thing.

But here’s the issue: My friend who asked for a seat was a minimum of quarter-hour away, and the stream of people coming in was growing. On top of that, my seat was in the aisle where people were coming in, which meant that everybody, including women who looked like my grandmother, could see that I used to be NOT giving up my seat. I looked like a young kid on a subway automotive not giving up her seat to seniors or pregnant women. The thing is, I knew why I wasn’t getting up, but they didn’t, and I couldn’t look my grandmother in the face and say, “Hey, I would give up my seat for you, but I would save it for a woman younger than you but older than me who potentially has a leg problem and wouldn’t care if you didn’t get it.” No one asked, they simply watched.

I used to be sweating an increasing number of with every passing minute and an increasing number of people were observing me. I do not know if that truly happened or not but that is the way it felt and I felt uncomfortable and judged. I used to be texting my mate with my ETA and he kept saying “I’ll be there in 5 minutes” for over 5 minutes. I let her know I didn’t think I could sit any longer because I used to be beginning to seem like I hadn’t been raised properly.

Then the book event organizer took the microphone and identified that there have been issues with the seating and that those of us who could should hand over our seats to those that were older than us or might need to sit down down, and I felt like she was talking on to me when she said that. She mentioned the overflow situation outside on the back patio instead for all of us who either needed a seat or had to present up our seats. At this point, my stress and anxiety were at their peak; my heart was beating fast and my palms were sweaty. I could not take it anymore. I stood up from my seat and without anyone, said, “The seat is free,” and quickly ran to the overflow spot while texting my friend that I could not hold on to my seat any longer.

It’s been weeks since that night and I still remember how I felt attempting to keep the place going. I felt really uncomfortable and I knew my wife could be high quality. Oh, and concerning the overbooking situation – it was awful. The place had no idea what they were doing and arrange a projector TV during sunset so nobody could see what was happening. Cool idea, terrible execution, but a minimum of I wasn’t stressed anymore. I used to be briefly annoyed that the place hadn’t thought to order a bigger space for the lecture considering who that they had brought, but that is in the past now.

Now it’s OK; thanks for asking. But one thing is obviously, and two things are obviously: next time I’m going right into a place that I do know can be crowded, I’ll just skip the entire sitting thing and prepare to face in the front, back, or side. Sure, my back might hurt and my legs might ache, but a minimum of I won’t feel stressed or judged.

If you’ve gotten a friend who cannot hold seats, please don’t force them to. It’s an excessive amount of.

Thank you for coming to my talk in Panama.


This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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White woman calls 911 about her racist and uncompromising mother for shaving her 3-year-old mixed-race child’s hair without permission

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In a now-viral Reddit post, a woman shared why she called the police on her mother after she shaved her biracial daughter’s curly hair.

This fastingWritten on the r/AITAH forum by user OrneryExchange8001, it has since been faraway from the platform’s moderator list, but received over 17,000 votes after being posted on September 8.

A Reddit user wrote about her 3-year-old mixed-race daughter, Zoe.

Stock photo
A well-liked Reddit post describes a grandma pushing her limits. (Stock photo/Pexels)

“Zoe is biracial – I am white and my husband Tyler is black,” she said. he wrotein response to the New York Post. “Zoe has the most stunning curly hair, and I’ve always taken great care of it. She absolutely loves her curls, and we’ve made it a fun, bonding activity to style her hair together.”

Unlike Zoe’s parents, the little girl’s grandmother was not a fan of the 3-year-old’s hair and made disparaging comments about it, similar to, “It looks so wild,” “That’s just too much hair for a little girl,” and “Wouldn’t it be easier if it was straight?”

Zoe’s mother said she all the time ignored the comments as “harmless” until a childcare incident involving Zoe’s grandmother led to disaster.

Zoe’s mother said she left the 3-year-old girl in her mother’s care for a couple of hours a couple of weeks ago as a consequence of a piece emergency.

“When I arrived to pick up Zoe, I was horrified – Zoe’s beautiful curls were completely gone,” Zoe’s mother wrote. “My mum cut my daughter’s hair without my consent – ​​she did it halfway through.”

Zoe’s head was “shaved bald.” When her mother asked her grandmother what had happened, her grandmother “just shrugged and said, ‘I did her a favor. Now she looks neat and tidy. And her hair will grow back straight.'”

The child’s mother said she was “angry” and near tears, adding that she felt her mother had “violated my daughter’s self-esteem” and “did not respect my boundaries as a parent.”

The incident prompted Zoe’s mother to call police and report the hair cutting as an assault.

“They came and gave statements to both me and my mum and she was later brought in for questioning. Then my dad, who I have always loved and respected, called me and was furious,” Zoe’s mother wrote. “He said I had gone too far, that my mum was just trying to help and that calling the police was a huge overreaction.”

Thousands of Reddit users sided with the child’s mother, expressing similar contempt and disgust on the grandmother’s behavior, noting the racist connotations surrounding the incident.

“This is terrifying,” one other commenter added. “There is a long, racist history against black women wearing their hair natural, I can’t help but feel like this is somehow stemming from that. Not to mention her ignorance that her hair will ‘grow back straight.’”

“NTA your mom attacked your child because he’s black. That’s a hate crime,” one person added.

“Her comments and inflicting physical harm on a minor are more reminiscent of a hate crime than a haircut,” one other comment echoed.

This article was originally published on : atlantablackstar.com
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