Afi Odelia E. Scruggs has a piece in today's Cleveland's Plain Dealer about the changing role of pork in African-American cuisine.
Most interestingly, she tracks how pork's image has changed in the community over the years, partly for health concerns, but mostly because of the influence of the Nation of Islam.
Unless it has changed drastically since the last time I visited Cleveland, Shaker Heights is not where I would look for trends in African-American culture. Trends in hip upwardly mobile black culture, maybe....