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.
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. 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. Same deal. 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 , is titled "Nigger Love a Watermelon Ha!
Exhibit A—Urban Dictionary:. Exhibit B—This racist message board :. Niggers are attracted to bright colors and large amounts of sugar, not unlike their cousins who swing from trees. Niggers get obsessed by trivial pleasures like watermelon, fried chicken and bling because it stimulates a vesitigal [sic] part of their primitive jungle brains.
Exhibit C— This owner's manual , via a White Power website:. Experienced nigger owners sometimes push watermelon slices through the bars of the nigger cage at the end of the day as a treat, but only if all niggers 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. But with fried chicken it runs deeper.
Historically, chickens held special importance for enslaved black Americans, being the only livestock they were allowed to keep. Black domestic workers would cook fried chicken for their masters and, later, their employers. But while these black cooks and homemakers effectively invented what would become known as southern food, their contribution was erased. The white folk took the credit for its creation, while black people were mocked and parodied merely as greedy consumers.
The racist film The Birth of a Nation , widely touted as the first blockbuster, attempted to paint black people as aggressive, disorganised and untrustworthy. In one scene, elected black officials are seen swigging from whisky bottles and putting their bare feet on tables. And then one man is seen animalistically gnawing on a chicken drumstick.
In that one clip, the negative association was cemented. Later, advertising posters were printed featuring caricatures of black people with big lips and grinning smiles eating fried chicken.
One mini chain even went so far as to have such a character as its logo. Its name? Coon Chicken Inn. It remained open until the s. All this explained my discomfort in publicly asserting my affection for fried chicken. But it did not diminish it. I understood why some African American friends of Momofuku restaurateur David Chang refused to be seen eating fried chicken on camera, as he described in an episode dedicated to the southern delicacy on his Netflix series Ugly Delicious.
It all feeds into that same shame. During a recent podcast recording, I was asked what my final supper would be. The US comedian Dave Chappelle got it. In one sketch , he mimics white people watching him as he eats some chicken. But enough is enough. The time has come to start undoing the negative associations and start giving fried chicken its dues. I look to the US chef Edna Lewis for inspiration. In her seminal cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, Lewis, who died in , spoke affectionately of the fried chicken of her childhood.
She grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a town founded by freed slaves who included her grandfather. Frying chickens were produced only once a year in late spring through to early summer.
Imagine, fried chicken so special it was a seasonal dish. I should be proud that this food of my heritage has taken over the world. Yes, its most famous purveyor may be a white, bespectacled moustachioed colonel, but fried chicken is firmly rooted in black innovation and creativity.
It should be a source of pride for the African diaspora. Fried chicken: I love you.
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