Say Hello to The Bitter Southerner

If Forrester has a single objective for his film, it is to remove the taboo placed on Southerners who practice geophagy, to show the practice instead for what it is: a legitimate cultural moré.

“I’m trying to spend as much time getting an understanding for it and just showing and exemplifying that this isn’t crazy. This should be considered something normal instead of …,” Forrester says, then pauses, measuring his next words before he says them. “Well, what it is, I think, is kind of a race issue. It’s this practice that’s traditionally African-American. There are whites who eat dirt. There are males who eat dirt, but it’s traditionally been an African-American, female practice. I’m a white male, so I’m trying to approach this with as much understanding and curiosity as I can, trying to elevate it to a place where it has the respect that it deserves. I think for so long it has been pushed aside and just been discounted. It’s something that those people do.”

Ah. Those people. How many times have we heard that one?

Charles Seabrook, a journalist who has written millions of words about the geography of the South, in 1997 published a deep study of the kaolin industry and the culture surrounding it called "Red Clay, Pink Cadillacs and White Gold: The Kaolin Chalk Wars." He still remembers how white people assessed their African-American geophagist neighbors.

"Their attitude ranged from amusement — you know, 'that’s the way it is in the South' — to scorn, like, 'These ignorant folks are doing this,'" Seabrook says. "But I found in talking to them that these folks were not ignorant. Some were educated and had college degrees. They just consumed it every so often. It was part of their culture. Their grandmothers did it. It ranged the gamut, but it was part of these women’s cultures and a deeply embedded thing in Southern culture."

When Forrester first began his “Eat White Dirt” project, he placed ads in some local newspapers along the fall line, looking for interview subjects.

“In Greensboro, I put an ad out that just said, ‘I’m looking for storytellers to talk about white dirt,’” he says. “I got calls from African-Americans, and I got calls from white people. The white people would call me and say, ‘I used to know black people that would eat it, and I can tell you stories.’ They would talk about it as if it was this horrible thing. I was just like, ‘What are you talking about? I’m not asking you to talk about how degrading it is for someone to eat dirt. I just want stories of it. I felt that a lot of the older crowd especially had carried that stigma with them, that this is something that shouldn’t be done. ‘I’m really glad you’re doing this so that you can show people how bad it is.’ That’s kind of the idea that I got from that crowd. So I never went to go talk to them.”    

Well, yeah. After three or so decades on this earth, we do eventually figure out who’s worth listening to and who ain’t.

The science of whether eating dirt is good for you, from a health perspective, leans toward "not good," but it isn't a settled issue.

“It’s pretty clear in the medical community that this is not necessarily a deadly idea, but it’s not a good idea,” Forrester says. “It’s kind of like anything else. Too much of anything is harmful. If you eat enough to impact your intestines, you are eating too much of it. But there are some benefits to it, some medical benefits.”

Kaolin can serve to reinforce the linings of our stomach and intestines, which is why Kaopectate settles the upset tummy. But it’s only going to kill you if you eat too much of it. In other words, it’s like many of the foods we love: Too much can take you out.

In his travels, Forrester did find one woman who was essentially addicted to eating white dirt, consuming tremendous amounts of kaolin. “It was interesting her talking about it because she was definitely aware that it wasn’t good for her,” he says. “She takes iron pills because her iron levels are low from eating it. It can absorb toxins from the blood, and it can absorb the iron from the blood.”