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Fried Chicken and watermelon cause for outrage? or foods brought to all of us by the slave trade?
Yesterday I replied to a post about a school apologizing for serving fried chicken and watermelon during Black History Month.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1218111443
It generated a fairly long discussion with a few seeing my point and others vehemently arguing that this meal was racist- I had said that it was a southern meal. Matter of fact fried chicken in my youth was called southern fried chicken. I don't know if there was northern, western or eastern fried chicken.
A comment from the piece in Talking Points Memo gives a little history on the offending foods. I for one find a silver lining in the horrible black cloud that was the slave trade. The Africans brought foods that have fed me and other southerners well- fried chicken, okra, peanuts, watermelons and here's one that was a mixed blessing sugar cane.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/school-apologizes-for-black-history-menu
JacksonSquire
21 Hours Ago
This is Black History Month, correct? Here's some culinary history:
Watermelon is indigenous to Africa and is a regularly-eaten food there to this day. My brother who did charity work with the Red Cross for 15 years went to Africa a lot, and people who didn't have anything would usher him into their homes and offer him watermelon to eat. Watermelon isn't native to North America and was brought over here by slaves. Battered fried chicken is a West African dish believed to originally be prepared using palm oil. It entered the Southern cuisine through the slave trade as well. Most Southern cuisine is either African (like watermelon, black eyed peas, okra), Native American (like cornbread and grits), or a mixture.
Fried chicken and watermelon is a stereotype of black people, but why get angry over it? It's a stereotype in the vein of German cuisine where people think Germans eat nothing but sauerkraut and nasty, greasy sausages. People think Americans eat nothing but hamburgers, french fries, and hot dogs. No, black people don't always eat fried chicken and watermelon, but it is in reality a dish that's 100% African American. People attacking the school saying it's racist are the uneducated here. Sometimes political correctness isn't correct at all.
JacksonSquire
21 Hours Ago
This is Black History Month, correct? Here's some culinary history:
Watermelon is indigenous to Africa and is a regularly-eaten food there to this day. My brother who did charity work with the Red Cross for 15 years went to Africa a lot, and people who didn't have anything would usher him into their homes and offer him watermelon to eat. Watermelon isn't native to North America and was brought over here by slaves. Battered fried chicken is a West African dish believed to originally be prepared using palm oil. It entered the Southern cuisine through the slave trade as well. Most Southern cuisine is either African (like watermelon, black eyed peas, okra), Native American (like cornbread and grits), or a mixture.
Fried chicken and watermelon is a stereotype of black people, but why get angry over it? It's a stereotype in the vein of German cuisine where people think Germans eat nothing but sauerkraut and nasty, greasy sausages. People think Americans eat nothing but hamburgers, french fries, and hot dogs. No, black people don't always eat fried chicken and watermelon, but it is in reality a dish that's 100% African American. People attacking the school saying it's racist are the uneducated here. Sometimes political correctness isn't correct at all.
Then last night I caught part of an American Masters piece on Alice Walker. There was footage of the civil rights protests in various deep south places. White and black protestors were beaten, whipped, jailed and some killed. Now I was not in Birmingham or Mississippi at the time and have no personal testimony, I don't remember any whining by the civil rights workers. They just took it on their backs and broke the back of white supremacy.
That was in the past, in the present we seem to have little of the piss and vinegar of those heros of the 60's that uncomplainingly put their lives on the line without consideration for their lives, liberty. They would not be happy until all were free. I doubt they would complain about a school serving fried chicken, watermelon and greens.
There are rare examples of courage without portrage. Some will risk everything including the lose of friends, liberty and country. I am thinking of Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova formerly of Pussy Riot. I say formerly since their fellow band mates have excommunicated the only members who were sent to prison for speaking truth to power. Truth like is not spoken in the US today to power that can only be compared with the southern white establishment of the 1st half of the 20th century.
The true American way is to take ridicule and insult and turn it on its head as in the state anthem of Connecticut, "Yankee Doodle'. Own it and love it and the insult is destroyed.
Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni'.
A-riding on a pony,
Stuck a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni'.
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