This is not just about being insensitive or hurtful. People don;t get fired over hurt feelings in America, especially not hurt “Black” feelings.

Black people just aren’t that soft. We can’t afford to be. What we can afford to do is demand a workplace that isn’t hostile to our being treated as more than 3/5 of a person. Here’s the context that seems to have gotten lost:

Deen, 66, and her brother are being sued by a former employee at their Savannah, Ga., restaurant who claims Deen’s brother subjected her to sexist, racist and violent behavior. She accused Deen of using the N word as recently as in 2007, while discussing an idea for a “plantation”-style wedding.

Paula Deen’s problems started long before the n-word and her plantation porn fantasies. Her saying the “N” Word wasn’t really surprising to me. The elaborate fantasy cited in the deposition, however, says a lot about what she thinks is southern heritage. These words arise out of a desire for a selective or invented heritage, not memory. Her insult to African Americans and poor “Whites” is much deeper than just these comments; it is cultural erasure and revisionism.

Southern Cuisine is not all butter, sass, and fried food. Southern fair until very recently, last 50 years wasn’t something typical white women knew how to prepare at all (broadly speaking).

Paula has made a lot of money at the expense of poor whites and appropriation of supposedly Black foodways.True Southern Cuisine is an art form, born out of indentured servants’, poor whites, and slaves’ creativity and skill. Much of what she produces makes a mockery of this. But she isn’t alone. Mocking poor southern whites has become the basis of whole networks’ lineups. It is doubtful that her grandmother, who she credits with teaching her to cook, made fried macaroni and cheese.

Yes, she has a great story of being a struggling single mom with agoraphobia who came out of her shell to grow her current empire. But this is a prime example how race AND class are BOTH still at play in media and business in America. The two cannot be addressed as interchangeable, either/or structural ills in society. She knew what it was to be poor, to have to be creative with food, yet she still felt relaxed enough in her white privilege to make the comments she did without fearing reprisal.

Sure, please, go ahead and forgive her, but do not spend a dime at her restaurants.

I wonder, how many other people walk around still infatuated with plantation imaginaries.