Something happens
like this every February. It's a known fact that there are three constants in the second month of the Gregorian calendar: 1) Groundhog Day 2) Valentine's Day and 3) Someone puts fried chicken on a cafeteria menu in honor of Black History Month.
Associating certain foods with Blackness in America is a time-honored tradition, even today as evidenced by
Obama Waffles and
Obama Fried Chicken as a some say offensive, some say honorific use of our first Black president's image to shill edibles.
In fact, America likes to associate almost all ethnicities and races with specific eats that we usually reference when launching culturally-based slurs. For example, you substitute almost any food into the phrase, "You ____-eatin' motherfucker!" such as:
1) taco
2) eggroll
3) curry
4) maize
5) corned beef and hash
6) kielbasa
7) strudel
8) haggis
9) bean
10) rice
11) sturgeon
12) latka
13) chicken kiev
14) calzone
15) agave plant
16) quinoa
17) shawarma
You get the picture.
So the issue of NBC and the Black History Month Fried Chicken Special has been polarizing. The Love of My Life and drummer for The Roots, ?uestlove, snapped a pic of the menu and Tweeted it. HuffPo got a hold of it,
Wanda Sykes got pissed,
?uestlove said it was all a joke, and Gawker seconded that motion because they love nothing more than agreeing with cool-ass people of color.
Meanwhile, people online are still debating over who's right, who's wrong, what's racist, and what isn't.
The "It's Racist" camp brings up a long history of racialized, demeaning images of Blacks, such as the pickaninny, the sambo, the coon, and the mammy, caricatures often associated with foods that have become symbolically racist such as fried chicken, watermelon, and corn bread.
The "It's Not Racist" camp says that a) The NBC chef and creator of the menu is Black b) the menu items are classic soul food dishes with a proud African American tradition and c) we shouldn't be talking about race anymore especially over something as non-racial as food.
I think both camps have something valid to say, but by virtue of being me, I tend to lean on the "It's Racist" side when it comes to historical imagery, particularly that of African Americans. The Southern soul food tradition of Blacks didn't just materialize one day on its own: it's rooted in 400 years of slavery.
In Psyche A. Williams-Forson's book
Building houses out of chicken legs: Black women, food, and power (2006), I learned:
"The agricultural surplus found in the New World allowed eastern seaboard settlers to be relatively self-sufficient...Chickens were a part of this surplus and the general exchange of foods, tools, and methods of production between European colonists and Native Americans" (p. 15).
"...some slaves were able to acquire possessions that would make their lives markedly more improved...other slaves acquired goods through barter, trade, recycling, and theft. Archaeological work on slaves' sites throughout the Americas reveals that chicken was one of many food items with which some Africans came into contact and used to gain access to other goods" (p. 15).
"Historians point to the economic, social, and cultural importance of African Americans in the profitable capacity of selling foods such as poultry, fowl, and chicken; as hawker and traders, enslaved and freed blacks entered the early commercial economy" (p. 17).
"Of Nat, slave [slaveowner Landon] Carter says: 'My poor slaves raise fowls, and eggs in order to exchange with their masters now and then...'" (p. 18)
"Ecomonic opportunities for blacks were severely limited by eighteenth-century policies. Nonetheless, some, particularly free blacks, continued to exercise their business acumen, drawing upon their knowledge and skills in cooking and preparing foods to open restaurants, inns, and boarding and catering houses" (p. 19)
Just as the Chinese weren't born to be laundrymen, Blacks were not born with a natural, essentialized hankering for chicken. There were economic and governmental policies (ahem, institutional slavery) as well as European colonialism that contributed to African Americans having access to chicken, knowledge of chicken husbandry, and eventual economic uses of the product, i.e. cooking and selling.
Where commonplace discourse gets sticky is when we try to negotiate between avoidance of stereotype perpetuation and denial of what may be a part of culture for some. Is there a moratorium on anyone talking about fried chicken and certain races of people?
In all honesty, everyone in the world should love fried chicken. It's about the tastiest damn thing that could ever nestle on your tongue. Most cultures have a version of it. Hipsters and yuppies are flocking to soul food restaurants en masse. I'm still pissed about not getting to eat at
Love Letter in Orange County...we ate at the soondubu place next door instead and my heart broke in half...
But it's only really tied to one specific subset of the world's population. And I think we need to recognize that. We shouldn't let it dilute our desires for crispy fowl, but we have to try to see it from different perspectives. Yes, my people happen to love and consume mass quantities of kimchi. It doesn't mean I want someone to honor my existence with a gallon jar of it. I'm not denying that I eat and cherish that delicious fermented cabbage, but it shouldn't be a part of any cultural uniform that society tells me to wear.
It's like being at the dinner party where someone you don't know tries to make small talk about your culture's food strictly because they think it's the only way they can communicate with you. Is that person as racist as a Klansmen? Of course not. But it signifies how many of us feel we have to tie attributes (i.e. cuisine) to a person's skin color in order for the world to make sense.
My way of dissecting this? Thinking that certain races of people are biologically hardwired to like certain foods and to find that "pre-disposition" to be hilarious based on their ethnicity/race is, drum roll please...
Racist.
Putting fried chicken on a menu simply because you think your fellow peeps will enjoy it during the one apportioned month that government recognizes the struggles and accomplishments of you and your ancestors is...
Not racist.
However, the reactions to the reactions to this menu definitely represent in the "Racist" category, per usual. Always remember, kids: Your ridiculously angry response to why race is being mentioned when we're supposed to be post-racial is the very reason why we are not post-racial. Think about it.
Enough chit-chat. If we leave now, we can make it to Popeye's before it closes.
