Personally I’m tired of the stereotype of black people rioting over everything, while all the other minority groups are supposedly “good” when it comes to their stereotyping.
That is all I’ve got to say on this tired, talked-to-death subject.
<goes to the kitchen to eat some fried chicken>
Maybe some groups are overly sensitive and need to get the hell over it.
Anyone for spaghetti?
Look, I really don’t want to ruffle your feathers, but since you brought it up - it’s not really a stereotype about the blacks rioting, is it? Many, many major riots in American cities in the past few decades were predominantly black, right? It’s not that “black people like to riot,” but just that black enclaves in cities with severe economic problems do it.
And nobody cares to eat Dutch, expecially Dutch treat :mad:…
Most riots in American history have been committed by whites.
Most race riots in America have been committed by whites.
So yes, “blacks will riot!” is a stereotype.
This is a great read, if you’re at all interested in the subject of American race riots.
It’s not just “the blacks will riot” stereotype that I’m tired of. I’m also tired of this idea that black people are always on the verge of violence, just ready to beat someone down for saying the “wrong” thing. In all my life, I have never seen a black person get violent when a white person says something offensive. Angry, yes. But everyone gets angry when someone is being stupid around them.
It’s like a lot of people think black people are set to “attack” mode and we are unable to let crap just roll off our backs like everyone else does. Or it’s like people don’t understand that just because a black person doesn’t like something (like people always talking about black people and fried chicken…or being cold…or not drinking coffee), that they are angry. Being annoyed is different than being angry.
And it’s funny, because at least around here you hardly ever see angry race-related rantings by black posters.
The offensive part isn’t the notion that black folks like fried chicken. Of course they do; so does everyone. The offensive part is the notion that black folks find fried chicken completely irresistible: That a black person, on being presented with fried chicken, will lose all vestige of humanity and do anything to try to get it.
First part, true, but if you’re talking about history as in older than 30 or 40 years, that makes it pretty irrelevant to most people nowadays. I can’t remember any race riot started by whites in my lifetime. But the Rodney King riots are burned into peoples’ minds, as are several other incidents over the past two decades.
Second part, absolutely true. But I do think blacks have more tough people among them who are likely to stand up for themselves when insulted, which is a good thing in my book, not a bad one.
See post #16.
Cough Cough, Frogs vs Rosbifs.
But the major race riots perpetuated by black people–the Watts, Newark/Detroit, and the Rodney King riots–were all sparked by perceived (and real) police brutality. Not the result of people throwing out the n-word or laughing at black people’s love for fried chicken. Or a myriad of other small things that black people roll with every day. I’m not saying that black people have never rioted or that there’s never been over-the-top violence in response to racism, but it’s stupid to pretend that black people have a history of rioting over racial insults. This is patently untrue, and it also plays into the racist stereotype of black people being wild and crazy. I love how everyone in the thread just glosses over this line in the OP:
Not only is it not literally true, it’s not even true figuratively. Because if it were true, all the black Dopers would be piling into this thread and others like it, posting crazy walls of text and being all indignant. But the fact that this rarely happens is never used as evidence of black people being calm and rational like everyone else. I’m wondering why this is the case.
Well, I’m glad you think it’s admirable. I think it’s a rather insulting to be thought of as a brute thug rather than a level-headed individual. But we’ve been around this mulberry bush a couple of times, haven’t we?
To the OP: are you Chinese-American, or Chinese from China? I think that while it’s not offensive to assume that someone from China has certain food preferences, I would imagine it’d be offensive if you were to tell someone who was born and raised here that they “must like chow mein and egg rolls” because they look Asian.
I guess maybe that’s just me. I dunno. But as an Asian-American, if someone automatically assumed that I must like Asian food- at least at a level beyond how most people like Asian food- I’d be a little offended, or at least put off, since, you know, I was born here and raised on hamburgers and pizza like every other red-blooded American (and for that matter, I have absolutely no love for stinky tofu and pretty much think the stuff should be used as fertilizer).
At the heart of it, I think it’s the assumption that there’s something “foreign” about people of color, even people of color who are just as American as any Caucasian person. Add on top of that decades of insulting caricatures of blacks eating watermelon and fried chicken, and I think you’ve got a racial stereotype that’s especially offensive.
iirc, There was a Slate article years ago that said back people who were polled associated fried chicken with their culture. As an Asian-American (and I’m not quite sure what that means) do you have a subculture with certain foods?
One thing I’ve noticed is that ‘stereotypes’ of certain kinds are with black people everywhere. It’s not geographically limited. Take AAVE, for example. What may have started as a Southern dialect is now a black one. You can be in Kansas or Detroit, but 99 per cent of the type, AAVE is used among African Americans. I think it’s an identity thing. There’s nothing wrong with that.
That sounds like a lot of my cooking these days. And if you guessed my heritage based on that, you’d be wrong.
And I also like grape soda.
Instead of “ugly,” would you rather be called “exotic”?
Yeah, I can hardly think of any heritage that couldn’t be described by “pork, veggies, and cabbage all thrown in a pot”. Well, I guess not Jewish or Muslim, but not much beyond that.
Ah, racial food stereotypes. A topic near and dear to my heart living here. At least once a day, I’m told–not asked, mind you, but told–that I cannot handle spicy food because I’m not Korean. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been eating Korean food far longer than the persons telling me that. It doesn’t matter that in my home state, the food is quite often much more spicy than Korean food could ever hope to be.
But I have a cure for the problem. Whenever I have to go to a 외식 [way-sheek/staff dinner], I always take with me a habanero chili. Every time someone tells me (again, tells me; they don’t ask me) that I can’t handle spicy food, I simply take a bite of the chili, nod in agreement, mutter, “Of course, you’re correct.” Then I offer the chili to the person who’s appointed himself my teacher on non-Korean culinary matters. Then I laugh myself silly as the person bolts for the water cooler. Good fun, that. One of my Korean friends described her experience with the habanero as, “It was like I was actually eating fire from a volcano.”
As panache45 said, all racial stereotypes are offensive. It doesn’t matter if it’s a so-called “positive” stereotype or any other kind. It’s offensive because it’s assigning characteristics to a person that the person may not have based on the person’s membership in a group. And that person may not even be a member of the group the person doing the assigning believes.
I love fried chicken and kool-aid. Watermelon? Not so much. Yes, blasphemy, I know.
Still, I think the people who get offended by stereotypes, much less food stereotypes, are a riot.
I don’t think it’s necessarily food associations with a given race or culture that are offensive, so much as food stereotypes that reinforce a particular image.
Saying that a Chinese or Japanese person probably likes rice isn’t offensive, it’s awareness of the culture that, yes, rice is a very big part of the culture, is very important in their meals, and is generally considered a staple food there. It would be like being offended because somebody assumed an average American likes bread, eggs, or milk. Sure, not everyone does, and some have intolerance, but they’re “staple foods” around here and if you’re from this culture then it’s very likely that you enjoy them, even if they’re not your favorite foods.
Fried Chicken and Watermelon, on the other hand doesn’t really fall into the same category. Perpetuating the stereotype that black people like them is insinuating that it’s their “staple food” when it’s really not, it’s not a common food that is consumed by all, and it has insinuations of lower class (cheap or unhealthy for the most part). Insinuating most American black people probably like bread, eggs and milk would probably be fine, it’s the insinuation that greasy, cheap, or generally low-class food is part of their “staple diet” that’s insulting.
Now, there’s some grey area, Korea being the land of Kimchi straddles the border of stereotyping and truth, and probably the only reason it’s NOT offensive is that most Koreans are rather good sports about it (many of the jokes even being self-inflicted), but in general I think the delineation is between politely acknowledging that a food is a staple of that culture and insinuating that less common foods (McDonalds, fried chicken, whatever), or foods that are notorious for one reason or another (poor quality, unhealthy, derives from slave connotations) are a culture’s “staple.”
I think “black people and fried chicken” is treated differently than the other racial/ethnic food stereotypes because of history. Almost all stereotypes of black Americans are tainted by slavery.
If you ever watch old films of minstrel acts, you’ll often see the whites in black face stealing chickens and celebrating their bounty by dancing and eating watermelons. So lurking behind the “chicken” stereotype are additional stereotypes involving criminality and buffoonery. Other racial stereotypes do not have this double-image.
A lot of black people eat low on the hog. Chitterlings and pig’s feet, for instance. Again, these are cultural artifacts from slavery, when black people were given scraps off of Massa’s dinner table. I admit that it embarrasses me sometimes when I catch my mother eating chitterlings. Not only are they unhealthy and unpleasant to my senses, but knowing how they got into our culture makes them unpalatable to me.
I honestly don’t think there’s another ethnic/racial group that’s as stereotyped as much as black people are in this country. We can talk about how the Irish are stereotyped as being hot-tempered and devoutly religious…or how Jews are stereotyped as bookish and greedy…or how Asians are stereotyped as studious and well-mannered. But these stereotypes do not carry the same weight as those relating to black people…and it has nothing to do with black people’s oversensitivity. For most of this country’s history, black stereotyping was rampant and went unchallenged. It is only relatively recently when black people have held enough of the microphone to be able to say, “Alright, we need to stop this!” But the stereotypes are so enmeshed in our culture that they have been accepted as “truth”. So simply saying “stop” is now “making a big deal out of nothing.” No, it’s an expression of frustration about an entire history of stereotyping. Once people start understanding that black Americans have had a history that’s totally different than what other ethnic/racial groups have experienced, they will realize why this group handles things differently than other ethnic/racial groups. Intimitating that they are hysterical or oversensitive simply because other stereotypes don’t carry the same baggage shows a lack of understanding.
when there’s a plethora of offensive imagery along the lines of this relating to Chinese eating chow-mein or Mexicans eating tortillas, you’ll have a point, OP. Not before.