I'm so grateful: Thank you D'Angelo, I Got My Brown Sugar!
I woke up like this ✨
What’s your favorite ingredient to cook with?
Mine is dark brown sugar. As I’ve started cooking more over the past years, brown sugar has become a key ingredient in breakfast foods and in elevating the flavors of certain meats. It’s very different from white granulated sugar, as it’s thick enough to harbor both a savory and an intense sweetness. Cooking with it is more fun because it clumps like wet sand instead of the fine, microscopic grains that stick to your hand and fall through the cracks between your fingers. Unlike white granulated sugar, where you might overestimate how much you need due to its thinness, a little brown sugar goes a long way.
However, brown sugar is the icing on the cake for me when cheffing it up, whether it’s a tray of warm yams (sweet potatoes), creamy shrimp and grits, honey-glazed salmon, or even candied bacon. For me, food isn’t just nourishment or art; it’s culture. Not in the “I’m a Black woman from the South soul-food” way—yes, those are facts about me—but by culture, I mean a deeply human environment: a place of crystallizing understanding and engaging in fellowship. A place where science, math, randomness, and creativity all work together to create something beautiful. I just happen to be able to see—or rather, feel—this beauty with my tongue.
When tasting the difference between the sugars, I wondered which would dissolve faster on my tongue—white or brown sugar? White. Which takes longer to clean off my hands? White. Which is most healthy? White. After a quick Google search, I realized I was wrong about that last question. I wondered what that meant symbolically, both the answers to the questions I asked and the illusion of brown not being healthier than white. I wondered what it said about goodness, since nowadays sugary things aren’t considered good for you in our general 21st century culture. So hypothetically, the sugar that is absorbed the fastest is the best for you. I asked what the thickness of brown sugar versus the fineness of white meant in relation to bodies… I also wondered why I cared this much about a trivial ingredient. Who actually cares? It’s all just some sugar, so I silenced my thoughts and turned on my “public deliberation playlist.” Music is a tool I use to silence my thoughts, but it’s also an experience that is fundamental to understanding concepts for me.
As an adult, I’d forgotten that my first exposure to brown sugar wasn’t through cooking at all, it was through listening to the D'Angelo song Brown Sugar and asking “why”. I’ve always been obsessed with questions about the experiences I was having. There weren’t many things that ever romanticized brownness; the largest association with brown in school was poop or chocolate, and given the racist environments I grew up in, it was always poop… So this idea of comparing brownness to something sweet was not only interesting to me—it made sense.
Preschool was the first time I remember being aware of my skin color in a social context. I remember one boy telling me I was evil. I was so hurt and embarrassed—maybe because I liked him a little, but he explained that I was evil simply because of my skin color. He said that black things are dark and evil, and that’s why pepper is black and sugar is white and sweet. I tried to argue that salt and pepper are analogous and that salt is bitter, but in retrospect, it was a pretty weak defense.
Ever since then, a low-grade insecurity was born of the symbolism of light being good and darkness being bad. This memory fully tainted my view of my skin and the random cosmic lottery that assigned it to me. It also explains why, in cross-examination with myself, I thought that brown sugar was less healthy than white sugar. But like all people on planet Earth, as a consequence of the 15th century, anti-blackness subconsciously lived deep in my heart. Maybe that’s why religion was so hard for me to understand, even though I loved poetic literature: if there was a God, why would he curse me with this evil brown skin? Why would he make me a woman in a world where I’d always be called ugly? Or told that I am closer to a man? But at the same time, God created D’Angelo who was inspired to write a song for black women in a world where nothing validated their existence. In his lyrics, I saw someone appreciate having brown skin and brown eyes. He drew analogies I’d never made before comparing Black women to chocolate, caramel, honey, and other prized, beloved things. For the first time, music became a place where my skin, and my beauty felt validated, desired, and sacred.
So, shout out to the boy from my preschool class; he didn’t know about brown sugar yet. But he triggered this entire train of thought for me, so I wish him love and peace.
Being a “brown sugar babe,” in D’Angelo’s words, is a lot like the real sugar itself. A single pinch carries rich flavor beyond its size: layers of warmth, depth, and complexity that linger long after the last bite, just like the aftertaste his opening hymns leave his listeners. We’re made of melanin, each skin cell a testament to endurance under pressure (heat, evolutionarily), glinting with our kind of sweetness. Like brown sugar binding butter and spice into something transformative, we bring together joy and pain, softness and strength, into lives that nourish and uplift communities. And just as a little brown sugar can turn simple ingredients into something sublime, our presence, our stories, our laughter, our fierce love leaves a lasting sweetness in everything we touch.
I got my brown sugar! Do you have yours?
Wonderful essay MK!