Here are four commonly accepted and agreed on facts about grits:
1. The base color is off-white
2. It's one of the few words where both the singular (grit) and the plural (grits) versions of it are fun to say (You could even argue that grit is a better word than a food)
3. Many Black people and quite a few White people seem to have a raving and monomaniacal obsession with them
4. They can be a good accompaniment to a meal if prepared and seasoned the proper way and/or placed with an appropriate meat
Here is one more fact about grits that isn't as commonly accepted and agreed on (but is still a fact)
1. Grits don't matter enough for anyone to give a fuck about how anyone else decides to eat them
I won't lie and say that grits don't matter. Because they do. If you were to order a plate of shrimp and grits and the grits were missing or substandard, you'd be upset. And your disappointment would be justified.
You know what else matters the same way? Bottle caps. And plastic sporks. And iPhone cases. And paperclips. And the font KFC uses for its logo. And tonsils. And gospel rap. And Subarus. And Rita Ora.
Yet, if a group of aliens swooped down to Earth tonight and took each of these items, we'd spend the next week confused that the aliens would take such randomly specific things. ("They took all of our paperclips AND Rita Ora? That's so bizarre.") We'd also spend some time doing inventory to make sure they didn't take anything else we wouldn't notice or miss. ("Wait, so they took Rita Ora but left Blake Lively behind? Are you sure? That's so bizarre.")
But then, after a week, we'd go on with the rest of our lives, and never think about bottle caps and plastic sporks and gospel rap and grits again.
In summary, eat grits however the fuck you prefer. With salt. With sugar. With butter. With cheese. With salt, sugar, butter, and cheese at the same time. With hot dogs. With lettuce. Off of a walrus's ass. While at brunch with a not-abducted-by-aliens-yet Rita Ora. It doesn't matter. Because grits don't matter enough either.
DISCUSSION
This article is so very stupid. Especially coming from someone in Pittsburgh. It's like someone from Jersey telling people from Louisiana that conversations about jambalaya don't matter because the rice dish they ate in Trenton last week wasn't that good. I grew up eating freaking delicious-ass grits at least once a week, and my Georgian parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, etc. did the same. Just because a Southern dish doesn't matter to someone who doesn't live in the South doesn't mean that person has to be idiotic and patronizing about it. Rude.