They discussed what they might select from the buffet inside The Lady and Sons her wildly popular restaurant in the heart of Savannah.
But they also talked of boycotting the Food Network which dropped their beloved TV chef on Friday after she awkwardly apologized for having used racial slurs and for considering a plantation themed wedding for her brother with well dressed black male servants.
The predicament that Ms. Deen finds herself in began when a former employee a white woman who is now managing restaurants in Atlanta filed a discrimination lawsuit in March 2012. She claimed that racial epithets racist jokes and pornography on office computers were common while she managed Uncle Bubba s Oyster House one of the restaurants in Ms. Deen s empire. Forbes has estimated her net worth at $17 million.
Most of the diners in line on Saturday morning were white and more than ready to defend one of their favorite cooking stars. But at the very front was Nicole T. Green 36 an African American who said she had made a detour from a vacation in New Orleans specifically to show up in support of Ms. Deen.
I get it believe me Ms. Green said. But what s hard for people to understand is that she didn t mean it as racist. It sounds bad but that s not what s in her heart. She s just from another time.
The strong reaction to Ms. Deen s pickle reflects a simple truth race remains one of the most difficult conversations to have in America. And here where antiseptic nostalgia for the antebellum South is not uncommon the conversation is even more complex.
The memory of slavery and Jim Crow and civil rights is still very much alive said William Ferris a University of North Carolina folklorist and an editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. We carry those burdens through our lives. How we deal with them measures who we are. It s always there lurking over our shoulders.
Ms. Deen 66 many say did not carry her burden well. Deen is inarticulate about race because she doesn t have to be articulate said Roxane Gay a writer who explored the cultural conditioning behind Ms. Deen s comments in Salon. She hasn t had to have any critical awareness.
But in other circles the cultural outcry and Food Network s decision seemed overblown.
The Food Network s Facebook page swelled with Deen supporters who disagreed with the punishment meted out by network executives.
Everybody in the South over 60 used the N word at some time or the other in the past wrote Dick Jackson a white man from Missouri.
No more Chopped for me and I suspect thousands like me he said referring to a popular Food Network show.
In the line Saturday some pointed out that some African Americans regularly used the word Ms. Deen had admitted to saying.
I don t understand why some people can use it and others can t said Rebecca Beckerwerth 55 a North Carolina native who lives in Arizona and had made reservations at the restaurant Friday.
Tyrone A. Forman the director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University said the use of derogatory words can mean different things to different groups.
People take a term that was a way to denigrate or hold people in bondage for the purpose of continuing their subordination and turn it around as a way to reclaim it he said.
But that kind of subtlety is often lost in a discussion of race.
That nuance is too much for us Mr. Forman said. We have a black president so we re postracial right Someone uses the N word That s racist. But the reality is there is a lot of gray.
Some who thought Ms. Deen s words were hurtful gave her a pass for her apparent inability to articulate her evolution on race and her awkward apologies which she offered in a series of three videos on Friday.
I was wrong yes I ve worked hard and I have made mistakes Ms. Deen said but that is no excuse and I offer my sincere apology to those that I have hurt and I hope that you forgive me because this comes from the deepest part of my heart.
Lawanda Jones 62 who drove two hours with some friends to celebrate birthdays at The Lady and Sons said many people in the South have worked hard to overcome its racist past.
We have lived with each other and loved each other here for a long time said Mrs. Jones who is white. Sometimes I think there is more prejudice in the North than there is in the South.
Ms. Deen who was born in Albany Ga. in 1947 is simply a product of her era she and others said.
Ms. Deen s great grandfather had owned at least 30 slaves and she was born when Jim Crow laws meant cruel divisions even at the simplest levels. In Georgia a black barber could be jailed for cutting a white person s hair.
Students of Southern culture say that people like Ms. Deen learned a quiet crippling system of polite etiquette to smooth the edges of segregation. While overt shows of racism are rare it still persists.
You still hear people talk that way if people think they are in a group of like minded people said Richard Hattaway 56 who lives just outside Savannah.
He said his grandfather used the word often and without rancor in referring to African Americans. But Mr. Hattaway s own parents forbade its use. It is an evolution common to many white families in the South he said.
She obviously didn t get it but I think they are kind of blowing this up Mr. Hattaway said.
He was particularly bothered by a commentator on a national news program who suggested that Ms. Deen should have atoned for the pain of slavery given credit to African Americans who helped influence some of the country food that made her famous and offered a stronger statement against racism.
She s a cook Mr. Hattaway said. She s not a Harvard graduate.
Julia Moskin contributed reporting from New York.
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