From the exhibition Without Sanctuary (www.withoutsanctuary.org):

"In their day, lynching photographs were often published as postcards. They were sometimes developed on site, so people who had come, often from far away, could take home a memento of the historical spectacle they had witnessed.

"A few cards shown in the exhibition have a particular shock value due to the blithe commentary of the senders: "This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is at the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe," reads the message on the back of The lynching of Jesse Washington, May 16, 1916, Robinson, Texas, which depicts a grotesquely charred corpse."

The only things the review has to hold it above the book itself is that it is shorter and that trees died to make the book.

Other than that minor difference, the levels of silliness match (at stratospheric levels) and the book is convincing proof that Leeds University does not give Mr. Warnes enough to do.

Some Greek (Herodotos?) wrote that the Greek word barbaros (=barbarian) came from the fact that the barbarians did not speak Greek, and their barbarian speech just sounded like, "Bar-bar-bar-bar..." to the Greeks.

But, linguistically, that, "Bar-bar..." involves hair, especially beards. Think of the English word barber. My Spanish dictionary is in a storage unit, but I believe barbacoa in Spanish means cheek, i.e. breard. I asked a Mexican-American waitress one time what kind of barbeque meat she was serving me, and she said, "Cheek meat."

Do you have a beard, Andrew Leonard? I would not be surprised if you do. King Kaufman has a beard, and I understand most leftie, California, bloggie, bicycle-riders have beards.

And you barbeque (bar-barque). You, my friend, are what Herodotos called a Barbarian.

No, no, no.

"At it's core", barbecue is a a "framework of sticks set upon posts" upon which the Native Americans placed their meat, for purposes of slow smoking."

...as that reference and quote taken from the article should have made clear, a few paragraphs prior to the direct quote featured in the title of this comment.

You shouldn't need a degree in Cultural Anthropology to figure that one out. Although if you were exposed to a post-modernist Cult Ant curriculum, it may have played a role in misguiding you into making that elementary error.

Texas BBQ is beef. So I wonder what the etymological anthropology of THAT, is?

BTW, pigs aren't indigenous to the New World, they were brought here. So I guess ALL pork is nothing but genocidal imperialist something something, isn't it?

"American barbecue smolders on the coals of genocidal racism"--don't be ridiculous. America itself smolders on the coals of genocidal racism! BBQ is just another coal on the fire, so to speak.

As anyone who has spoken Spanish in more than one Latin American country could tell you, the word "barbacoa" is hardly a legend or an invention of the OED. It is still used daily in a variety of senses in a large number of countries, and the common sense that they all have is something like "framework of sticks" (or, you might say, "grill").

In Havana today, a barbacoa is an illegal loft built inside an old, tall-ceiling apartment to provide extra living space in a city where legitimate new construction has been insufficient to keep pace with the number of people who want to live in the city. This usage derives directly from a much older use of the word, to refer to a framework placed high in the room and used to keep food or tools off the ground.

The latter sense is still used in the Andes (where it was spread by Spanish settlers who had passed through Cuba), but there the word has developed in other directions, to refer also to a rack for kitchen utensils; or to the boards of a dance floor (and hence to tap dancing).

Elsewhere, a barbacoa is a bed frame.

As far as I know, barbacoa is only used to refer to cooked meat in Mexico, Central America, and Venezuela. In northern Mexico, the word barbacoa was applied to a local way of cooking meat that had relatively little to do with wooden frameworks. A deep pit is dug; a big bonfire is built in the pit; a goat (usually) is slaughtered, marinated (in beer and/or pulque), and put in a huge pot (more recently, in what I would an aluminum garbage can); when the bonfire has burned down to red-hot coals, the pot goes in and dirt is shoveled on top to trap the heat as in an oven. Twenty-four hours or so later, the meat is done. In other parts of Mexico, you will find a variety of other styles of barbacoa.

The British (and French) found the Antillean style of grilling barbacoa in Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica. The earliest citations of barbecue in the OED (the oldest dates to 1660) refer to this type of barbacoa. Planters in South Carolina and (I'm guessing here) Virginia had close connections with the British Caribbean, and my guess would be that they brought that style of barbecue from Jamaica.

Mexican barbacoa met Anglo settlers in Texas, and Texan barbecue reflects a quite separate Mexican cuisine. Texan "barbecue sauce" is simply a regional variation of Mexican "chilmole" (chile sauce).

The two streams of barbecued meat (Caribbean, Mexican) met and mingled in the US South, where new and distinctly local forms of barbecue where invented and passed down.

Does the author of this book touch on any of this? I doubt it. Like most amateurs, he probably leaps from DeBry and Columbus in the 1500s, to Jefferson in the late 1700s, to Jim Crow in the 1900s, to today. Leaps of time and logic without any sense of historical connections or continuity.

America itself smolders on the coals of genocidal racism!

Actually, I think the idea is more along the lines that America was smoldering in the coals of genocidal racism, but that it's in the process of healing from that.

Personally, I don't think anything is gained by having it the other way. But then, I live here, and perhaps you do not.