A really interesting piece by Kim Severson (excellent writer) in today’s New York Times: Paula Deen’s Cook Tells of Slights, Steeped in History.
Severson obviously spent hours trying to understand the world of Dora Charles, “the queen of Deen kitchens” for 22 years. So Charles’ work with Deen predates by a decade the years of fame. Clearly, Deen and Charles were very close on many levels, but their relationship echoes many traditionally southern ones between white employers and black employees.
Charles is “not expecting any money,” but she does claim that Deen used racially offensive language at times. But the story isn’t really about legal issues. It’s just a story — a sort of sad and touching one.
One snippet:
For a black woman in Savannah with a ninth-grade education, though, it was good steady work. And Ms. Deen, she said, held out the promise that together, they might get rich one day.
Now, Ms. Deen, 66, is fighting empire-crushing accusations of racism, and Mrs. Charles, 59 and nursing a bad shoulder, lives in an aging trailer home on the outskirts of Savannah.
“It’s just time that everybody knows that Paula Deen don’t treat me the way they think she treat me,†she said.
The relationship between Mrs. Charles and Ms. Deen is a complex one, laced with history and deep affection, whose roots can be traced back to the antebellum South. Depending on whether Mrs. Charles or Ms. Deen tells the story, it illustrates lives of racial inequity or benevolence.