Over the last two years, Thug Kitchen has made a name for itself as a foul-mouthed food blog that’s upending stereotypes about vegans and healthy eating. But with the release of their first cookbook, the authors—who are white twenty-somethings—are being accused of appropriating or exploiting racial stereotypes.
As soon as Michelle Davis and Matt Holloway went public as the cooks in Thug Kitchen earlier this month, the internet backlash was fast and harsh. The Root site called it “A Recipe in Blackface” and Jezebel reminded readers of professional football player Richard Sherman’s recent assertion that “‘thug’ is a new way to call somebody the n-word.” For many, the use of “thug” seems misguided, if not problematic.
In one of their first interviews, Davis and Holloway spoke with Charles Monroe-Kane about cooking, elitism, and the power of language. Drawing on the cultural association of “thug” with gang violence, Monroe-Kane asked them, “What makes you a thug?” Davis and Holloway say “thug” is not a demographic category, but a frame of mind.
Davis says, “We think of it as attitude. We understand that ‘thug’ is a loaded word and has gotten more loaded in the past year and a half. The site is about being a bad-ass in the kitchen. We joke that we are verbally abusing people into eating some more goddamn vegetables. That is the point.”
Holloway says, for him, being a thug means “just not taking ourselves too f___ seriously. I don’t see the word ‘thug’ being synonymous with any particular person. It’s a personality. It’s an aggression.”
Listen to an excerpt of their conversation below, or hear it in the context of their full interview here.