Blogger Jan Wilberg tells the story of having a professional lunch with a squad of African American women at a D.C. …white friend who invited you to his family’s 4th of July cookout and asked you to sample this new potato salad recipe he found in the backseat of an Uber last week which probably means he doesn’t want to be friends with you anymore. Damon Young warns against a potato salad coming from your… For some, any potato salad coming from the melanin-challenged side of things is going to be suspect. Food poisoning is rooted in objective, scientific truth. But then we want to know who made the potato salad because we also want it to taste right. (The mayonnaise, if anything, may have a deterrent effect, because it’s slightly acidic.) Then, if the potato salad sits out, and warms past 40F degrees for too long, the bacteria can start multiplying rapidly. In the process of boiling and then cooling, there is a potential for bacteria to grow. The problem is with the way we prepare the potatoes and eggs.

Commercial mayonnaise uses pasteurized eggs, free from salmonella. The truth is that potato salad really is a frequent culprit in food poisoning, so it does need to be handled scrupulously. She had a divinely-inspired Upper Midwest Norwegian Lutheran fear of germs, and was scrupulous about keeping the bowl chilled almost to freezing, and then keeping it out of the sun once it had to go on the picnic table for just long enough to let everyone spoon a heap onto their paper plates. Looking back, I’m not sure it was because Mom’s was just better, or because she didn’t trust anyone else. My kids loved her potato salad, and I have cousins who still mention it. Mom was famous in the family for her candied yams and her potato salad. In my family, my Mom was the Official Potato Salad Maker. So we never ate it, and we traveled home safe, every time. How could we know, after all, how long that potato salad had been sitting in the sun? How could we be assured that it was kept cold from the time it was made? It was too risky. There was simply no way my mom was going to chance bringing home her brood, sick from food poisoning. Every time she’d reach for the potato salad, her mother would give “the look.” Russo says, “Potato salad was the forbidden food of the cookout.” Why? In a 2009 NPR piece, Susan Russo tells of attending summer cookouts in New England. When it comes to potato salad, food safety is also a concern among those of us in the melanin-challenged community as well. Even one bite of bad potato salad “will definitely kill you.” In another piece, “10 Things Aside from the Police that Will Definitely Kill You if You’re Black,” Young says potato salad is threat number one.

The first issue here is not the taste but the safety. As Young sees it, the first element in the Potato Salad Issue is the question of Who Made It. Then last spring, blogger Damon Young wrote an entire piece on the subject: “Why Black People Care So Damn Much about Potato Salad, Explained.” If you can’t cook, or you don’t have all the required black seasonings, just bring some cups and napkins. And please don’t try no new shit like potato salad with raisins or vegetarian shish kabobs. You either show up with a dish or they’re gonna look at you funny. Harriot couldn’t even get through his first point, “You gotta bring something,” without mentioning the Potato Salad Issue: In a similar vein, Michael Harriot put together “ The Caucasian’s Guide to Black Barbecues,” introducing us to Tasha’s new boyfriend. Potato salad is yellow, has paprika and eggs so don’t be confused. Don’t ask who made it, just know their hands are clean. He elevated the Potato Salad Issue to #6:Ħ. Michael Twitty, for instance, who is an Actual Food Scholar, came up with a list of forty items in his “ How to Survive Black Thanksgiving as a Non-Black Guest.” He mentions Shanda’s boyfriend, of course, whom we’re all happy to see. Then I started seeing potato salad humor popping up in other places. Google “aunt potato salad meme” and see it for yourself. Turns out, there’s a cottage industry out there devoted to potato salad memes.

It also got me thinking about potato salad. I’m not sure why this struck me, but it made me laugh out loud, a literal lol. A while back, this meme caught my attention:

Kill barney memes