On to the post about Maurice’s
BBQ. What got me thinking about this was that my father-in-law
brought some of the sauce with him on a visit. Somewhere in the last
few years, they have added the rebel flag on the bottle. I guess once
they’ve been pulled from all the store shelves, there is nothing worse
that can happen and they might as well go all out to appeal to their core
constituency. As a datum from what I felt two years ago is
this post from Usenet (apologies to my newsgroup friends for the
absurdly long link). In previous posts other folks were asking why I
would stop frequenting a place I liked just because I didn’t like the
politics of the owner. This post was my attempt to explain that it’s
more than just disliking the politics, that he is going well out of
his way to make his politics part of his business. This is not a man
who quietly holds a belief and is being persecuted for it. Bessinger
is co-branding his products with a particular brand of southern
racism, the same brand that defies flag changes as impinging upon “our
traditions” and seeks biblical justification and historical
revisionism to rationalize the sins of the old south and the
Confederacy.
The last time I ate in one of his Piggie Park
restaurants, the whole joint seemed to be in a state of decay with the
building noticably deteriorating, no customers and oddest of all, the
counter covered with stacks of photocopies of newspaper articles about
reverse discrimination cases and stories about wrongdoings of prominent
black people. It was really creepy and a dismal
experience. Ultimately, my decision not to purchase his products
anymore (note that I don’t dump it down the sink when it was given as
a gift) is driven by the fact that I feel like a scumbag when I give
him money. This is materially different from disliking the private
politics of a business owner, it is no longer being able to turn off
the voice inside my head that says “this food doesn’t taste as good
as buying it makes me feel bad.”