Editor’s Note: This is the first issue of the blog Black Talk: A Zine.

If you’re Black, you’ve been to a cookout.
In REAL LIFE, cookouts are social gatherings that we (Black people)* hold to get together. Someone could host a cookout to celebrate a birthday, a graduation, or simply because the weather’s nice. Someone’s uncle is on the grill, all your cousins are running around covered in dirt, and there’s a heated game of spades going on two steps away from it all. A group of random babies is sleeping in someone’s bedroom, an old guy is sitting on the cooler, and the songs playing through the yard are the exact same songs that have been played at every other Black event since your birth. Eventually there’s an argument, someone’s mom shouts “My crew, let’s go!” and she talks the entire way to the car so they don’t actually leave until 30 minutes later.

All that to say, Black cookouts are all exactly the same. To most of us, their purpose is to bring together a community, and for no other reason than to enjoy one another.
On the internet though, “The Cookout” has become short-hand for Black acceptance or approval. While they’re very casual events, cookouts also have unspoken traditions, so getting invited breeds the assumption that you know how to act around Black folk. Anyone who’s ever been a guest knows the kind of reactions you get when your attendance wasn’t given enough notice. Someone asks “who are you here with?” and suddenly everyone’s staring. There is a wrong answer.

While it is largely intended to be a joke, initially being used in response to white people who dance well or season their food properly, the bit has become touchy when used in reaction to activism on social media. A non-Black person on the internet could get “invited” for CLAIMING they’re not racist, CLAIMING they find Black people attractive, or for demonstrating any degree of association with ANYTHING aligned with Blackness.

People have begun to complain about invites being “given out to anybody,” spurring a more important conversation about Black celebration of “bare minimum” activism. Does that girl who “doesn’t say the n-word” deserve applause? Should we give an award to the guy who buys from Black-owned businesses in February? Am I gonna introduce you to my grandmother because you know what Kanekalon is?
In general, giving an online invite to “the cookout” is the equivalent of giving a Grammy to a SoundCloud rapper. You’re not there yet, no one knows who you are, and a lot of people are gonna get pissed off if you show up.

*I KNOW Black people aren’t the only people that have cookouts. But this cookout, THE Cookout, refers solely to the Black kind.