Chocolate and Blackness

1. Exploring the Entanglements of Chocolate and Blackness In January 2006, Ray Nagin, then mayor of New Orleans, caused quite a furor with a statement he made at a meeting to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Participants in the meeting were intending to discuss the reconstruction of the city, which hurricane Katrina had devastated on August 29 the year before. Nagin expressed his wish for New Orleans to remain a "Chocolate City," that is with a majority of African-American residents: "We ask black people: it's time. It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild a New Orleans, the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. And I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way; it wouldn't be New Orleans." According to Nagin's statement, New Orleans before Katrina was a "Chocolate City," that is, a city largely made up of African-American resi-dents. The white minority of New Orleans, which-for a brief moment-had become a majority after the hurricane, protested heavily. Understand-ing Nagin's use of "people from Uptown" as a coded reference for well-to-do Euro-American residents (although the area is in fact very diverse), they felt unwelcomed and accused the mayor of racism. Interestingly, Nagin's reference to God in his speech ("It's the way God wants it to be.") was less cause for irritation or protest. Instead, the white, mostly middle-class residents, as well as members of the black community, and even the national mainstream media chose to focus their criticism and attention to Nagin's wish for a "Chocolate City." A couple of months after Nagin's controversial speech, during the soccer World Cup in Germany in the summer of 2006, the Ivorian Bourse du Café et du Cacao (BCC) introduced the chocolate bar Le Chocolat du Planteur to the British, French,

Contents1.Exploring the Entanglements of Chocolate and Blackness91.1 Why Chocolate?141.2 Chocolate as a Myth and as a Floating Signifier182.Producing a Taste for Chocolate252.1 "The sweet may be obtained without the bitter": Cocoa and Colonialism302.2 Critical Accounts of Neoslavery383.Advertising Chocolate453.1 The Emergence of Mass Advertising503.2 From Scientific to Commodity Racism543.3 Exoticism, Primitivism, and Blackness593.4 The Lactification of Chocolate; or, how Chocolate Became White703.5 "Robust Men like Baker's Cocoa": White Men's Appetite for Chocolate754.Chocolate and Desire854.1 The Sexualization of Chocolate864.2 Chocolate as an "Afrodiziac"?934.3 Desire and Black Popular Culture1055.The Racialization of Chocolate1135.1 Chocolate Colorism1155.2 "That Chocolate Colored Gal of Mine": Sheet Music and Blackface1235.3 Resignifying Chocolate on Broadway1345.4 Chocolate Kiddies in "Kaiserland"1395.5 "Chocolate City, are you with me out there?"1466.Conclusion155Acknowledgments158List of Illustrations160Archives and Collections162Bibliography164Index181

Silke Hackenesch, Dr. phil., ist Amerikahistorikerin an der Universität Kassel.