MLK

[MaryL]

MLK loved fried chicken. And plagiarized his doctoral thesis. And cheated on his wife bigtime. Nobody is perfect.

 

[Moonglow]

Is there something wrong with fried chicken?

 

[MaryL]

Is there something wrong with fried chicken?

Apparently, in some circles, if you serve fried chicken to school kids on MLK day, it's "racist", because they say so.

 

[Moonglow]

Apparently, in some circles, if you serve fried chicken to school kids on MLK day, it "racist", because they say so.

You starve 'em and they'll eat anything.

 

[MaryL]

MLK was a hug]e amoral pandarderer. He did that nasty thing, he witnessed a rape, and did nothing. He stood by And did nothing. MLK did that. Truley.

 

[Sixties Fan]

MLK was a hug]e amoral pandarderer. He did that nasty thing, he witnessed a rape, and did nothing. He stood by And did nothing. MLK did that. Truley.

And you got all of this from?????

 

[Sixties Fan]

Apparently, in some circles, if you serve fried chicken to school kids on MLK day, it's "racist", because they say so.

[Simple research would clarify things for the uninformed ]

Sports-talk radio was abuzz Wednesday morning with some comments that Sergio Garcia, the professional golfer, made about his frequent foil, Tiger Woods.

"We'll have him 'round every night," Garcia said. "We will serve fried chicken."

The comment came after Garcia was asked if he would invite his rival, with whom he has a frosty relationship, to his house during next month's U.S. Open. Woods responded to Garcia's tweets on Twitter: "The comment that was made wasn't silly. It was wrong, hurtful and clearly inappropriate ... I'm confident that there is real regret that the remark was made." (Garcia offered a textbook nonapology apology.)

Wait. This again?

This black-people-and-fried-chicken thing is really old — it's not even the first time a professional golfer made a joke about fried chicken and Tiger Woods.

What is it with this stereotype about black people loving fried chicken?

I asked Claire Schmidt for help. She's a professor at the University of Missouri who studies race and folklore. Schmidt said chickens had long been a part of Southern diets, but they had particular utility for slaves. They were cheap, easy to feed and a good source of meat.

But then, Schmidt says, came Birth of a Nation.

D.W. Griffith's seminal and supremely racist 1915 silent movie about the supposedly heroic founding of the Ku Klux Klan was a huge sensation when it debuted. One scene in the three-hor features a group of actors portraying shiftless black elected officials acting rowdy and crudely in a legislative hall. (The message to the audience: These are the dangers of letting blacks vote.) Some of the legislators are shown drinking. Others had their feet kicked up on their desks. And one of them was very ostentatiously eating fried chicken.

"That image really solidified the way white people thought of black people and fried chicken," Schmidt said.

Schmidt said that like watermelon, that other food that's been a mainstay in racist depictions of blacks, chicken was also a good vehicle for racism because of the way people eat it. (According to government stats, blacks are underrepresented among watermelon consumers.) "It's a food you eat with your hands, and therefore it's dirty," Schmidt said. "Table manners are a way of determining who is worthy of respect or not."

But why does this idea still hold traction, since fried chicken is clearly a staple of the American diet? Surely, KFC, Popeyes and Church's ain't national chains — and chicken and waffles aren't a brunch staple — because of the supposed culinary obsessions of black folks.

"It's still a way to express racial [contempt] without getting into serious trouble," Schmidt said. (Among the Code Switch team, we've started referring to these types of winking statements as "racist bank shots.")

"How it's possible to be both a taboo and a corporate mainstream thing just shows how complicated race in America is," Schmidt said.

It's also worth citing the great and very NSFW social theorist Dave Chappelle, who quipped that when it comes to race and food, people of color suffer from some real information asymmetry.

"The only reason these things are even an issue is because nobody knows what white people eat," Chappelle said.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/05/22/186087397/where-did-that-fried-chicken-stereotype-come-from

 

[Sixties Fan]

In honor of Black History Month, we'd like to explain exactly why your fried chicken and watermelon lunch is ill-advised, with the hope that people will find better ways to honor this month.

Why is fried chicken racist?

Via Authentic History.
Fried chicken isn't racist. Eating fried chicken isn't racist. A lot of people like fried chicken, and some happen to be black. In 2010, a black chef at NBC served fried chicken and collard greens in honor of Black History Month. QuestLove was not impressed, and stirred up a Twitter storm when he tweeted the picture. “I don’t understand at all. It’s not trying to offend anybody and it’s not trying to suggest that that’s all that African-Americans eat. It’s just a good meal,” the chef, Leslie Calhoun, told The Grio, adding, “I thought it would go over well.” It did not.

The problem stems from the way fried chicken is associated with black people, and the historical baggage that comes with it. The same way blackface recalls minstrel shows, the "black people love fried chicken" image recalls negative portrayals of black people. According to Claire Schmidt at the University of Missouri, it started with Birth of a Nation, the 1915 film on the founding of Ku Klux Klan. In one scene:

[A] group of actors portraying shiftless black elected officials acting rowdy and crudely in a legislative hall. (The message to the audience: These are the dangers of letting blacks vote.) Some of the legislators are shown drinking. Others had their feet kicked up on their desks. And one of them was very ostentatiously eating fried chicken.
"That image really solidified the way white people thought of black people and fried chicken," Schmidt said.

And in case you're tempted to think that sort of portrayal is a thing of the past, like minstrel shows, think back to what professional golfer Sergio Garcia said to his nemesis, Tiger Woods, when asked if he'd ever invite Woods to dinner. "We'll have him 'round every night," Garcia said. "We will serve fried chicken." Woods was not amused. When Republican Colorado State Sen. Vicki Marble associated diabetes and mortality rates with barbecue and chicken, even the Colorado GOP had to take a step back.

Why is watermelon racist?

Same deal. From Theodore Johnson writing for The Huffington Post:

Just as the undesirable leftovers of farm animals, such as pig intestines and feet, are linked to the slave diet, watermelon is the food most associated with the 19th and 20th century depictions of blacks as lazy simpletons.

Remnants of the connection between shiftless, lazy blacks, and watermelon still remain today. You know the song the ice cream man plays (not "Pop Goes the Weasel")? Well, the original version, from 1916, is titled "****** Love a Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!" And again, you might say to yourself "Well, what does that have to do with post-racial America?" Well ...

Exhibit A—Urban Dictionary:

Exhibit B—This racist message board:

******* are attracted to bright colors and large amounts of sugar, not unlike their cousins who swing from trees.

******* get obsessed by trivial pleasures like watermelon, fried chicken and bling because it stimulates a vesitigal [sic] part of their primitive jungle brains

Exhibit D. Via
Exhibit C—This owner's manual, via a White Power website:

Experienced ****** owners sometimes push watermelon slices through the bars of the ****** cage at the end of the day as a treat, but only if all ******* have worked well and nothing has been stolen that day.

So, no, a slice of watermelon isn't racist in and of itself. But when people talk about black people loving watermelon, they're talking about a lot more than food. They're talking about a stereotype with a lot of racist history—history still embraced by some of the worst people on the internet. History is important—any Black History Month celebration that ignores the experiences and portrayals of black people in this country is shallow at best. If you want to acknowledge black history this month, learn it.

(full article online)

Making Fried Chicken and Watermelon Racist

A private girls' school in Northern California wanted to incorporate Black History month into lunch time, so they decided to serve fried chicken, watermelon, and corn bread.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Batcat]

Is there something wrong with fried chicken?

MLK decided peaceful demonstrations were the best way to go. I agree. I dislike riots.

 

[Blues Man]

Never meet your heroes. You'll always be disappointed

 

[mak2]

I think we should all eat more fried chicken. Actually I really prefer broasted chicken. I am going to have to have if for lunch today. Thanks for the thread.

 

[22lcidw]

[Simple research would clarify things for the uninformed ]

Sports-talk radio was abuzz Wednesday morning with some comments that Sergio Garcia, the professional golfer, made about his frequent foil, Tiger Woods.

"We'll have him 'round every night," Garcia said. "We will serve fried chicken."

The comment came after Garcia was asked if he would invite his rival, with whom he has a frosty relationship, to his house during next month's U.S. Open. Woods responded to Garcia's tweets on Twitter: "The comment that was made wasn't silly. It was wrong, hurtful and clearly inappropriate ... I'm confident that there is real regret that the remark was made." (Garcia offered a textbook nonapology apology.)

Wait. This again?

This black-people-and-fried-chicken thing is really old — it's not even the first time a professional golfer made a joke about fried chicken and Tiger Woods.

What is it with this stereotype about black people loving fried chicken?

I asked Claire Schmidt for help. She's a professor at the University of Missouri who studies race and folklore. Schmidt said chickens had long been a part of Southern diets, but they had particular utility for slaves. They were cheap, easy to feed and a good source of meat.

But then, Schmidt says, came Birth of a Nation.

D.W. Griffith's seminal and supremely racist 1915 silent movie about the supposedly heroic founding of the Ku Klux Klan was a huge sensation when it debuted. One scene in the three-hor features a group of actors portraying shiftless black elected officials acting rowdy and crudely in a legislative hall. (The message to the audience: These are the dangers of letting blacks vote.) Some of the legislators are shown drinking. Others had their feet kicked up on their desks. And one of them was very ostentatiously eating fried chicken.

"That image really solidified the way white people thought of black people and fried chicken," Schmidt said.

Schmidt said that like watermelon, that other food that's been a mainstay in racist depictions of blacks, chicken was also a good vehicle for racism because of the way people eat it. (According to government stats, blacks are underrepresented among watermelon consumers.) "It's a food you eat with your hands, and therefore it's dirty," Schmidt said. "Table manners are a way of determining who is worthy of respect or not."

But why does this idea still hold traction, since fried chicken is clearly a staple of the American diet? Surely, KFC, Popeyes and Church's ain't national chains — and chicken and waffles aren't a brunch staple — because of the supposed culinary obsessions of black folks.

"It's still a way to express racial [contempt] without getting into serious trouble," Schmidt said. (Among the Code Switch team, we've started referring to these types of winking statements as "racist bank shots.")

"How it's possible to be both a taboo and a corporate mainstream thing just shows how complicated race in America is," Schmidt said.

It's also worth citing the great and very NSFW social theorist Dave Chappelle, who quipped that when it comes to race and food, people of color suffer from some real information asymmetry.

"The only reason these things are even an issue is because nobody knows what white people eat," Chappelle said.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/05/22/186087397/where-did-that-fried-chicken-stereotype-come-from

Talking of legislature, Progressive come close to that in all colors. They put a show on and behind the scenes for all parties the alcohol may pour freely. Drugs also.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Talking of legislature, Progressive come close to that in all colors. They put a show on and behind the scenes for all parties the alcohol may pour freely. Drugs also.

It is Saturday. Have you had a few already? Happy hour?

You put a lot of words together that absolutely do not make any sense at all.