Not making this up: School serves fried chicken and waffles and watermelon on 1st day of Black History Month

Sounds delicious but school admins should have read the room

I would have taken that. I go eat tacos on cinco de mayo. It’s almost like people aren’t happy unless they have something to complain about. What a sad life to live.

Agreed. Those looking for a problem will find it. I suspect most kids would not only not have a problem with it, but would actually celebrate the eating options.

shameful. only food allowed should be cornbread and pork right?

it's a shame we live in a world where it's considered racist or insensitive to celebrate the food choices of a particular culture. but this is our reality, and most ADULTS know this.

On the same date, my school’s BSU chose to sell soul food.

Good for them, way to acknowledge black history and take back harmful stereotypes. Fried chicken does have its roots in African American history, it's just sensitive wokes in the past decades who have made the association a racist connotation. I'm sure that meal would have went over better with the kids than fried chitlins and collard greens.

I remember a few years ago, there was a similar thing at one of the colleges in NYC, and they fired the food service manager who organized it... who was black. Ridiculous!

Nothing like a bunch of white people lecturing us all on what black people should be sensitive about

The room isn't rich insular white liberal racists.

Watermelon was brought to the US by African slaves. It is part of their culture. In every African American historical gallery or museum you will find images of watermelon on paintings, fabric, ceramics.

In every soul food restaurant in America the menu will feature fried chicken, ribs, collards, greens, cornbread, mac and cheese, black eyed peas, and grape soda. Pigs feet anyone?

Vices in which blacks dominate the consumer market include menthol cigarettes (Newports), malt liquor and cognac.

Hillary Clinton carries a bottle of hot sauce will just in case she has an opportunity to pander to the black voter. Of course Hillary has never used that hot sauce in her life.

All of those are delicious foods but the combination says that they were just going by a stereotype, which is negative not because it alleges that black people eat those three foods in particular but because they were continually caricatured in illustrations, films, tv, and minstrel shows with grotesque images of black people eating those particular foods.

(behind paywall)

bostonglobe.com

Fried chicken, watermelon, and the origins of racist food stereotypes - The Boston Globe

How some foods have been weaponized against Black people.

Link:www.bostonglobe.com/2022/02/13/opinion...

nmaahc.si.edu

Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans

Stereotypes of African Americans grew as a natural consequence of both scientific racism and legal challenges to both their personhood and citizenship. #ANationsStory

Link:nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/popular-...

Didn't that museum say showing up on time is whiteness?

In all reality, what culture doesn’t like those foods? I love watermelon. I love waffles. Fried chicken is delicious if prepared properly. When I was a kid, if the cafeteria was serving waffles and watermelon, I would have been stoked.

^This. This is the right way to think about this.

I still remember the first time I ever heard a racist thing about ANY group of people (at least that I recognized). I was in the 2nd grade, and another white kid told me we shouldn't like black people because they liked fried chicken. My young mind thought, "well, I must be black then, because I love fried chicken." Who the f*ck doesn't like fried chicken?

Dang near every culture has a version of fried chicken, it is not just an African American entity:

italians - chicken parm

japanese - chicken katsu

chinese - half their chicken offerings are fried chicken with different sauces

French - Chicken Cordon Bleu

Ukraine - Chicken Kiev

Etc. It goes by different names, but it’s all fried chicken.

Now that is racist! Now you are getting it!!

I am as woke as the next guy, but we do need to stop insisting that everyone is the "same". Equal should be the goal, opportunity should be the goal, not sameness. I lived in the deep south, yes there is a culture and it its not racist to have a culture. I sat down many times to eat with my african american colleagues and sometimes we ate the standard american diet and sometimes (often) it was precisely what they served these middle schoolers. Because that is tradition. Black people dont want to give up their entire culture and identity. Nor do germans, italians etc... Just be treated fairly and given equal opportunity as best I can tell. Just call it southern food it guess?

I should have said it's a staple in African American cuisine and has ties to AA history. It's just sensitive, white libs who frame the association between fried chicken and AA culture as a racist stereotype. It would be like saying the idea that Italians enjoy pasta is "harmful stereotype."

Was the PE exercise activity for the day cotton picking? Unintentionally, of course.