the utter yankee nonsense there came from how many of the people being stroppy about it proclaimed themselves to be ~sjws~
you can't be interested in race/class justice and also trip all over yourself to screech at soul food for being disgusting, folks
you don't have to personally be ready to chow down on possum pie or hoppin john, but don't look down at the culinary traditions of poor people and-or people of color (and the large large overlap there) in the south and in appalachia and also say you're interested in empowering the masses
yeah, some of these are cuisines borne of desperation, but they're also really important cultural touchstones. don't mock them for being 'silly' or 'not classy'.
so nah, you don't have to suddenly acquire a taste for chitlins, but i think it speaks fucking volumes about somebody if they gush about being interested in social justice and anti-racism, and will eagerly wax poetic about finding the perfect authentic bowl of pho, but will immediately dismiss soul food as gross, disgusting, unsanitary, and not something that could ever be considered 'real fine dining'.
honestly i think there's some real model minority bullshit at work in the culinary industry. pho with beef tendon and tripe is exotic, classy, trendy.
but the same trends that say that will also say authentic menudo is disgusting, dirty, and unsafe to eat. and the same people will tell you that chitlins are awful, unsanitary, and something no fashionable person would ever consider eating.
i mean when even my lily-white mayonnaise ass can see this shit, you know it's bad.
"well as long as my authentic cuisine hasn't been touched by THE POORS" is such a depressingly yankee attitude to take that it just about squeezes the desire to live out of me.
if you don't like, for instance in above example, offal, it's fine. i don't. but that's me personally not liking the thing. i know when to shut my fucking yap and not make value judgments about it, like you're only allowed to eat this shit if you're sufficiently ~*exotic*~.
because god fucking forbid a yankee motherfucker eats food that is commonplace to any of the workers he scowls at for being poor eh. 
right i think that rant is done
(p.s. please note that there is a big difference between "someone who lives north of the mason-dixon line" and "a yankee". the first is fantastic. the second is me describing a particular brand of odious idiot, and please feel free to also come jeer at them as well.)
this goes triple for some of the oddities of soul food which you can directly trace back to african cuisine. if you're mocking that shit, you're mocking the black community's desperate way to keep continuity with their heritage as they were stolen from their homes. you're being cruel to often some of the only connections that still remain there.
that's fucked up. don't say you're fighting racism if you're interested in perpetuating it.