Based on my experience hanging out with all the international students in grad school (lots of Latin Americans, a couple of Russians, a few Indians, an Italian, a Ukranian, etc.), I think that black people are probably about on World Standard Time. So far as I can tell, it’s just the English and Germans (and their cultural descendants) who are on the freaky weird time where everyone shows up at the time the invitation actually says.
It took me a long time to learn World Standard Time. Near as I can figure, it goes something like this:
1: Wait until the time you’re supposed to be at the event.
2: Wait some more, until the next time you happen to glance at your watch and notice that you’re late.
3: Get to a good stopping point in whatever it is you’re doing.
4: Leave for the event.
5: Arrive at the event.
When I was in grad school, one of the more brazen undergrads in my lab asked me why black people eat nothing but Cheetos and grape/orange soda. I laughed and said he was crazy. Doesn’t everyone eat Cheetos? And grape and orange soda are gross! Ew!
But later that year, I went to the family reunion. I was helping my mother shop for provisions and I noticed she’d loaded up the cart with nothing but grape and orange soda. I was shocked and asked her to explain herself. “That’s what people like” is what she told me. And she’s right. They were all gone by the end of the day.
All it takes is for the minority group to show a disproportionate preference for a food item for it to be a “food stereotype”. I don’t drink Kool-aide or grape/orange soda. But I have noticed that black folks consume these things more frequently than whites.
Jarrito is the Mexican pop sold around here. Fanta is sold about everywhere, but only the orange and grape reliably, although sometimes I’ve found strawberry. Wildwood and Crush are the Black pops at independent fast food places, although you can find Crush in White grocery stores.
Long before I’d ever heard about any stereotypes, I did observe at my job running kids’ birthday parties that the White kids were big on chocolate sauce on their ice cream, and the Black kids overwhelmingly chose strawberry. It was consistent enough that we could use our reservations to refine our supply ordering, so we wouldn’t run out of the favored flavor or end up with too much of what we didn’t need.
As per Wendy Wasserstein, to begin to think of WASPiness is to think of “faded cardigans; Lilly Pulitzer dresses; egg salad sandwiches; Pappagallo shoes; prep schools; running and sculling; cocktails; candy dishes (and uneaten candy)”.
Hold up, deviled eggs are WASP-y? I would assume it’s an American standard (like pizza or mac and cheese). I can throw down on some deviled eggs. Once as a kid we had a block party of sorts and my friends’ mom made the deviled eggs. They were fucking awful. That day I learned people ate sour deviled eggs. Like, she put vinegar or something in it? Who would do that to food? I’ve never trusted another white person to make deviled eggs unless they were southern, and even then I’m skeptical (eta: no, not really). My oldest brother’s wife is white, and while she prefers dill relish to sweet and I question why he ever married her, her deviled eggs aren’t bad. OTOH, my aunt made a tray for a family cookout and I would’ve fought a little cousin over one if I had to. I just don’t think I’m comfortable putting deviled eggs into some white food category.
Martha Stewart is down. She’s an around the way girl on the low. Plus, she can cook so your grandma is chill with her. She would know her weed and give you stock tips (just you know, avoid insider trading). She’s the type to put orange slices and pineapple in her koolaid.
I was not born in the South, but I was damn sure reared here. In my working class neighborhood we ALL drank Kool-Aid. The grape sodas that the Black kids preferred at school parties was called Purple Drank by one and all. Fried chicken, watermelon, grits, okra, and collards or other greens were on everyone’s tables. (Okra and greens did not find a place on MY plate, but that is just me.)
All that being said, the way the guy just blurted out “are you making Kool-Aid?” apropos of NOTHING was what made it racist to me.
Fair enough. They’re just served beside quiche in the standard “white lady baby shower” menu, along with mimosas and something with kiwis or peach. I suppose it’s not particularly Protestant, but any subculture with money.
It might mean something else NOW, but when I was a kid (60’s and 70’s) purple drank was grape soft drinks. Purple Jesus was vodka or everclear and grape soft drink or grape Koolaid or grape juice or all of the above. Some people added ginger ale or Sundrop.
For decades, particularly when Jim Crow was at its worst, there was a lot of migration by black people out of the South, to nominally less racists parts of the country. There was a particular explosion of black migration to the West during WWII, when a lot of shipyard jobs opened up, while a lot of the white workforce was in uniform. When they moved, they brought their cuisine with them. Which meant, in California, if someone was talking about how much they liked grits and okra, they would almost always be black. So outside of the South, a lot of standard Southern cuisine came to be viewed as specifically “black” cuisine. Since the resrt of the country was only nominally less racist, this tended to be self-enforcing. A white Southern guy in New York looking for a plate of okra in the '50s is probably only going to be able to find it in restaurants in black neighborhoods - so he just doesn’t eat okra anymore.
Even if you weren’t aware of the “black people like Kool-Aid” stereotype," the classism in that statement is impossible to miss, and in this case, the classism could have only come from racism.
Thanksgiving is a special occasion, a time when we bring out the good stuff. We cook special foods and use the good china and silver and dress up and all that. Even if we don’t go all out or we cut corners, we still try to make things nicer and more special than everyday.
He implied that the lady was so declasse that to her family, Kool-Aid WAS the “good stuff!”
There was nothing low-class about her - unless one considers having visible African heritage a marker of such things.
I’m sure plenty of non-low-class people do drink Kool-Aid at Thanksgiving because they happen to like it, but to make it out to be some sort of special holiday thing…just wow.
I’m smiling at the scene in Houseparty where the Kool-Aid is prepared with half a bag of sugar – RIP Robin Harris.
We were a middle class white family and we kids were given Kool-Aid, and in later years store-brand sugar powdered fruit drink, as a cheap alternative to soda or juice.
"Many black people in America come from poor backgrounds. Chicken always used to be a cheaper meat (than, say, beef), so it’s the protein they could afford. Of course chicken is bland in flavor (it tastes like, uh, chicken) so what can you do to spice it up? Flour is cheap, oil is cheap, and deep frying anything makes it 127% tastier. Tah-dah! Fried chicken. Same thing for Kool Aid (cheap and easy to make). Both are less a “black” thing and more economic and regional (the South) in origin but were grafted onto blacks as a dehumanizing mechanism.
