Racist Food

So NBC had a big kerfuffle over having fried chicken and collard greens being served in the cafeteria in honor of black history month. I had something similar at college one year where the black cafeteria staff picked the menu for Martin Luther King Day and the results were the very racist fried chicken and collard greens. When we saw the announcement for it, we at first thought it was a joke in very poor taste, but despite our reservations we did eat it because, you know, it was fried chicken and collard greens.

I don’t really get food racism. It seems really really racist if someone makes a remark about blacks and fried chicken, though logically there is nothing to be ashamed about if you like fried chicken. I guess the problem was it was used in minstrel shows as a something about blacks to make fun of, and thus the history of it as part of a racial slur. So, if it all seems silly, blame racists; they ruin everything.

If I were black, what I’d do is go to order at KFC and as soon as I was told the menu I’d shout, “Why do you think I want fried chicken, you racist honkey!” Heh. Stupid honkeys.

I still have no idea what collard greens are, though.

36 Comments

  1. One of the coolest things about different cultures is the awesome variety of gourmet delights. I love trying food from other cultures!

    I also think the human race is more beautiful because of the wide range of hues.

    And don’t even get me started about music from around the world.

  2. My college cafeteria, an all-you-can-eat service, once went completely insane and served homemade strawberry pie, made with fresh, real strawberries and real pastry shells. I ate 12 pieces (1.5 pies) and could have eaten more if my friends had not wanted to leave. God, that memory still makes my mouth water.

    Nothing racist about it, AFAIK, but really good pie, FWIW.

  3. So, if my 1/2 German Mennonite, 1/8 Irish, 3/8 complicated mix of European ethnicities with just-a-tad-short-of-getting-a-casino-share-Cherokee thrown in for good measure palate LOVES fried chicken and watermelon, does that make me a racist or am I secretly NOT a a whitebread honkey cracker despite what my parents claim?

  4. White southerners eat Fried Chicken and greens as well. Hot-air had video of the cook lady she was black. Is this the current state of racism in America? If so the left better keep hyper-ventilating about it especially on election years.

    IMAO the left uses racism like the right uses terrorism except you know terrorist killed 3000 people in 2001. Hate crime deaths by white on black hover somewhere around the death totals by tea cozies and toilet seats. Where as black on black violence death tolls hover around cancer and car crash numbers.

  5. It started in the 60s with Archie Bunker as nearly as I can tell. He said something about watermelon and Lionel Jefferson and that was that. After that, if you said something about watermelon you were just like Archie Bunker and therefore, a “Racist!”. (Burn him!) That then extended into greens and fried chicken and

    I was watching a rerun of Match Game seventy something a few months ago and they had a black guy as a contestant.
    The question was something about “… and threw a blank through the window.

    The black contestant said, “Watermelon”, the crowd made the “holy crap, did he really say that?” gasp, one of the panel members (white guy, I forget who) said, “You realize that even if we thought that we wouldn’t say it?”

  6. What other groups get insulted if you talk about what they like to eat? is it rude to talk about Germans and bratwurst in the same sentence? Or Italians and lasagna? Is it even possible to speak in a derogatory way about lasagna?

    If someone tried to insult me by snearing about what I like to eat, I don’t think I’d get it. I’d just be all “mmmm…..cooooookies…”

  7. It can’t be racist, it’s not even in the top ten
    I think fried chicken alone is not a racist offense, once you combine it with a blatantly racist word like collard greens, it becomes a hate crime.
    They serve alcohol to the Irish people on St Patricks day as an insult but they’re all too drunk to notice.

  8. Rich white Repubs always think collard greens are a dress code requirement for the ground near the hole placement. An argument against this is made by the vegetable/human rights group NAACGP.

  9. Collard greens are actually a very tasty vegetable, but they’re often poorly cooked making them nasty. You have to remove the stems. This is very important, since the leaves cook much faster than the stems so you’ll get crunch, moosh, or (worse) both if you don’t cut out the stems. Slice the leaves and chop crosswise, then heat some olive oil over medium heat, saute a bunch of minced garlic in it for a minute to bring out the flavor, then add the leaves and saute them for a few minutes. They’ll change to a beautiful shade of green pretty quickly, and you want to stop the cooking somewhere between that and mushiness.

    I don’t know how they cook them in the South, but that’s the Portuguese way. We call them couves.

  10. Uh, as a proud daughter of the South (by way of I-75 and Illinois), I must ask, “no cornbread?” I’m also thinking that you need more starch (black eyed peas), a bit of fried (okra) and a fine pecan pie. (Okay, my Texas grandma would have done a peach cobbler, but, I’m a pecan pie kind of girl.)

  11. I found myself in the AAFES lunch counter on Ft. Campbell,KY many years ago,eating fried chicken,grape soda, AND, you guessed it,WATERMELON! I just looked at my plate and said, OMG,then I finished eating! 🙂

  12. You know what *I* hate? When people automatically assume that I prefer organic food just because I’m white.

    Screw that. I eat food coated with pesticides & insecticides for the same reason the Dread Pirate Roberts eats Iocaine powder.

  13. At the Army hospital where I work we often have collard greens (the cooks do a GREAT job on them — really, really, good) but not “just” during Black History Month. Also, fried chicken’s on the menu every third Monday. We also get ribs — pork and Cantonese, depending on the day. Bulgogi, Enchiladas, and sweet-and-sour pork also make their way to the lunch menu. Fried catfish, salmon, and breaded white fish of some sort also show up (on Fridays). So, it’s an ethnic-food wonderland.
    Or, you can just call it American Food.

  14. When I was stationed in Kassel Germany I got invited to this little, out of the way gasthaus where the chef was this enormous, six-and-a-half foot tall, three-hundred pound, ex-GSG-9 paratrooper.

    He used to prepare the biggest kerfuffels…served in a massive, seven-foot diameter, crockery bowl which would be carried around the Gasthaus on this two-wheeled wooden cart as the crowd chanted “Kerfuffels und Kugels und Kase ganz Gut!”

    The mere thought of a portion of Karl-Heinz Krugmann’s Kassel Kerfuffelchens sets my salivary glands into overdrive.

  15. Well, I was with a friend of the African-American persuasion when he came across this story of the racist cafeteria food.

    He was so upset, he snatched up his trumpet, put his watermelon under his arm and tap-danced right the heck out of here.

    Left his basketball, though, so I know he’ll be back.

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