Irrelevant. Blackening is a modern technique developed by Paul Prudhomme.
This is what I would guess. Most of southern cuisine is, as I’m wont to refer to it, cooked-to-death (think: southern style green beans, greens of nearly any stripe, and, well, the entire concept of barbecue).
Now, if we could only figure why they insist on walking into movies late and talking back to the screen, I could live a fuller life.
This would jibe with the the southern culture theory as well. My mom’s side of the family trace their roots back to the hills and “hollers” of Kentucky, and they are some of the pickiest, most persnickety eaters I’ve ever seen, and that includes eating their steaks no rarer than medium well. Shit, some of them won’t eat a steak unless it’s cooked extra well, for fuck’s sake.
As someone that worked as a cook in the Gulf Of Mexico for many years… All of you that eat your steaks well done are evil sick bastards. Btw- Steak day was Wedneday and Saturday. Every week. Ribeyes only. I would have to say most black folk did want well done… but no more then the white folk. What was most disgusting was the cooks that marinated the steaks…but i digress
My steaks…a lil salt, black pepper, and garlic…and juicy medium rare… are perfect…By the way I cut my steaks 2 inches thick. And if you can’t handle a real steak I’ll cook you a chicken breast.
Why do you even bother ordering a steak?
No, really: Why?
Then again, the pokeweed* my mother-in-law used to eat in copious quantities really does need to be cooked two hours, with two water changes - raw pokeweed is toxic. So are some other wild foods. They used to eat acorns in bad years, which is another food that needs hours of cooking to render it edible. Again, this was tied to being poor and using wild foods to supplement the diet, and I could see it carrying over into cooking EVERYTHING to death.
- By the way, despite 2+ hours of cooking, mom-in-law’s poke sallet is well worth eating. It has to do with the final 1/ 2 hour of cooking, which involves some bacon and basic spices.
If I mention that every Japanese person I’ve ever met, or served prefers their steak rare or blue rare does that mean I’m racist against the Japanese? No, I didn’t think so.
Good then. I have no answer to the OP, but I would assume that it’s a cultural preference. I wonder how black people in the UK prefer their steak?
And that’s why this this thread was started, like previous threads by Dopers who are just appalled that anyone could like their meat cooked more thoroughly than rare or medium rare, the way true gourmets like themselves and Jesus Christ would have wanted. The OP may have been genuinely curious about what element in black culture supposedly leads to a liking for well-done steak, but given his expressed preferences, it comes off as “Let’s ridicule this ethnic group because they don’t know how to eat properly”.
I just don’t feel the need to sermonize about how others should enjoy their food. It’s probably an ethnic defect. 
I’m not remotely sermonizing about how you like your steak. If you want it cooked well done, and that is the way you genuinely like it, then enjoy. It is my experience though, that the people who like there steak well done, don’t really have a lot of passion about steak. I sincerely wonder if these people would like their steak better,if they cooked it a lot less.
There may be genuine steak afficianodos out there that like their steak well done. I have never met one. You may be one, but I can’t tell that over the Internet.
Wow, you’re really reading a lot into what I’ve said. My preference has nothing to do with it - I only even mentioned it after another poster came along and made a generalization about white people (which I happen to be one). I recognize that it’s just a preference. What tastes good to me does not necessarily taste good to someone else. I was curious about cultural reasons surrounding it and nothing more.
Frankly, that’s a pretty insulting comment.
The chefs among us may correct me if I’m wrong. But I think the blackened part isn’t about a degree of doneness and more from the kinds of seasonings used which give the meat a dark appearance.
That explains the horridly overcooked -everything- my (white) grandma cooks.
Yeah, I get the impression, too. There’s no such thing as any type of good, southern produce. I will defend the concept of barbecue, though. There’s a huge difference between, say, a center cut T-bone and a brisket. Long and slow is the only way to make brisket edible.
[Moderator Warning]
ivn1188 and LouisB, insults are not permitted in GQ. This is an official warning. Do not do this again.
To the other participants: tone it down. I’ll be reading through the thread to see if additional actions are warranted.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
As a server, I’ve noticed this too. So has my boss, who does most of the cooking at my current serving job and thinks it’s a sin to cook a steak past an evenly-pink ‘medium’. He is black. According to both him and my (lily-white) Texan grandparents, it’s just a Southern thing. Southern cooks do everything ‘well-done’. My dad grew up detesting beef for this reason.
Even here in Philadelphia many if not a majority of black people have Southern roots and cook a lot of ‘soul food’. So I’ve always thought this was the main reason I can’t ever remember waiting on a black customer who ordered their beef less than medium-well.
It’s pretty clear that the southern/cultural thing is the clincher. Maybe with a little bit of the “poorer cuts of beef” thrown in for good measure.
My (white) family is all over the map-- I like it medium rare, but others in my family want it well done.
As an aside…, does this carry over to eggs (fried, that is)? I love eggs, but if they’re cooked all the way thru, I’ll toss them out. My cousin, OTOH, won’t eat any eggs that aren’t the consistency of shoe leather.
[Moderator Notes]
This thread has gone pretty far off track.* While I am tempted to close it, I am leaving it open for the time being. Some posters have in fact posted factual information relevant to the OP.
However:
Let’s dial way back on the snark. There are a number of other posts here that would have received moderator notes if I had seen them sooner. I am not going to issue individual ones now, but just give a general instruction to be more civil in your responses to other posters.
Further allegations or implications that the OP, or the remarks of other posters, are “racist” are off limits. If you want to discuss whether the question in the OP is racist, open a new thread in GD. If you feel another poster is making racist remarks, report the post.
Also, informing us of how you, personally, like your meat cooked, and especially any moral judgments about how others like their meat cooked, is not appropriate to GQ. If you want to discuss your preferences in meat preparation, open another thread in Cafe Society.
Failure to comply with these instructions may result in an official warning.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
*Not surprising for a thread that combines the subjects of the perceived cultural preferences of a racial group, and whether or not steak should be cooked well done.
In many rural areas in Appalachia, the Deep South, and East Texas, electricity and refridgeration have only been common for about three-four generations. So I would think that there are still a few folks that learned their cooking and eating habits from grandparents who practiced cooking the hell out of meats that had been hanging in the smokehouse for weeks. Barbecue sauces and other spicy sauces served to disquise the taste of meat that was a little ‘off’ but was not quite bad enough to feed to the dogs.
I do love me some Caribbean food, but overcooking it is a feature I’ve never seen. Getting a nice char on the outside isn’t the same as cooking the crap out of the inside. Good jerk chicken is a careful balance.
A good cut of meat is tasty in any done-ness. I prefer medium to medium rare but a well done steak is still delicious if it’s a good cut.
A bad cut of meat is just meh, no matter how it’s cooked.