Dear Ms. Deen,

When it comes to recipes, dining and food preparation, few can match your hustle. Over the years, you turned ambition and an affinity for cooking from an out-of-home business into a national empire, parlaying your Southern Belle charm and delicious dishes into books, magazines, and an Emmy-Award-winning television show.

But all of the business sense, bubbly personality and buttery hoecakes in the world doesn’t excuse the allegations of discrimination, your use of the ‘N-word’ and the dehumanizing way in which you and your family seem to view, and treat, African-Americans.

A recent employment discrimination lawsuit against you and your brother Earl “Bubba” Hiers is where we first learned of the flagrant disrespect and belittling of blacks in your employ. According to the transcript, former employee Lisa Jackson (described as a white female) worked at Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House from 2005 to 2010 and left due to the unchecked “violent, sexist, and racist behavior” she witnessed from you (as co-owner) and Hiers.

Jackson claimed African-American employees were required to use separate bathrooms and entrances from white staffers and…. were held to “different, more stringent, standards” than whites.

As evidence that Deen “holds such racist views herself,” the complaint details an incident that occurred when Jackson was in charge of food and serving arrangements at Hier’s 2007 wedding.

The complaint includes a comment you allegedly made when asked by Jackson what type of uniforms the servers should wear at the wedding: “Well what I would really like is a bunch of little [N-word]s to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties, you know in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around. Now that would be a true southern wedding, wouldn’t it? But we can’t do that because the media would be on me about that.”

Really, Ms. Deen? Routinely using the N-word, mistreating black employees and then wanting blacks performing at your behest as if they are trained animals is supposed to be construed as normal and not knowingly racist?

What about the 2012 interview with The New York Times where, in front of a live audience, you called your employee, Hollis Johnson, “as black as this [background] board” (!) and then described with sadness how your great-grandfather killed himself after losing a son and 30 slaves after the Civil War?

You stated that “black folk were such an integral part of our lives, they were like family,” but did it ever occur to you that the people you called “workers” were unpaid, bought and sold, routinely beaten, raped and killed by slave owners like your great-grandfather, who never thought to compensate their tireless labor or view them as human beings?

And more recently, when you’ve been alleged to have forced an African-American employee to take alcohol for payment instead of money, then later fired them for objecting, how is that not exhibiting prejudice?

Woman to woman, Soul Sister to Southern Belle, allow me to break it down for you, Ms. Deen: any white person uses the ‘n-word’ to refer to blacks is racist. Period. It’s a term most of us detest and despite what you have heard some black employees, entertainers or others say among themselves, whites were the ones to infuse that term with a hateful racial context and then legislate, and benefit from, the “better than/less-than” ideals enacted to emphasize that mindset. For that reason alone, whites cannot expect to speak it to and around others without shouldering the prejudicial baggage.

You’ve spent years building businesses Ms. Deen, so many fans will accept your apologies and allow you continued success (though without aid from the Food Network and a growing list of companies).

I, on the other hand, want to be sure that you’ve finished an entire Consciousness Casserole, some Empathy Egg Salad and a heaping helping of Cream and Crow for dessert first.

Hope it all tastes good going down.