Again, it’s not the food stereotype alone, it’s the use that stereotype has been put to historically. If you want to defame Jews, you don’t caricature them with lox and bagels, it’s the “hooked nose and moneybags” image (look at some recent anti-Israel cartoons coming out of the ME, they might as well have been done by the Nazis) - you can’t tell me Jews now “own” that offensive imagery. It’s the same with the watermelon-eating picaninny or the chicken-eating coon.
The other thing offensive about those images, BTW, is that the picaninny or coon is often hinted at having stolen said food. So it’s not just a statement about food choices.
Disclosure: I hate watermelon, and it has nothing to do with me being being an Angry Black Man. I just don’t like the taste or smell. I’m not a melon fan really, but my mom thinks I’m making a “statement” in my disdain of watermelon.
A colleague of mine researches mammies/pickaninnies and other Black caricatures in American history (he was actually a consultant/artist for Spike Lee’s Bamboozled years back). As a kid in the UK I remember Robertson’s Marmalade had the Golliwog on the label. And yes, I recall being called a golliwog as well. Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are still on the boxes, as is the Cream of Wheat Black dude. To me, it’s the freak show aspect of it. I’m uncomfortable when any group is stereotyped to like any food, especially if there’s an insinuation that the food is (perceived to be) nasty, unhealthy, associated with filth and/or poverty, or that the people in the group are “crazy” for it. Which is pretty much true of every food that Black folks are alleged to like en masse.
**YogSosoth **: That slate article was one of the lamest I’ve ever read, there or elsewhere. It completely misses the point. Commentary on African-American’s allegedly universal love of fried chicken and watermelon was a form of racist bullying for a while, one of many. Even when done relatively innocently it was a form of tiresome stereotyping: but it was often done pejoratively, a form of racist humor. It’s the buffoonery that it’s associated with which is the problem. See the links in this thread.
Separately, every person, group and family has a culinary tradition. So recipe discussions aren’t necessarily offensive; just steer clear of ridiculous assumptions about individual taste.
I’m not going to perpetrate that I’m some enlightened, non-racist/prejudiced person, but I cannot see the utility in doing this. Associating foods with ethnic groups, that is.
I’ve known a whole heap of Jewish people. Atlanta Jews, New Jersey/New York Jews, South Florida Jews, and New Orleans Jews. Jewish people are kinda everywhere in my professional arena, and I have been fortunate to befriend some of them.
If they eat lox and bagels, they do so secretively. I understand that these foods are traditionally Jewish, but when it comes to individuals, I do not use these foods as a “safe guess” about what they like. If I’m not seeing a bagel hanging out of their mouth, why would I?
Same with people of Hispanic origin. I have worked alongside Cuban Americans more than any other Spanish-speaking group, both down in Florida and up in NJ, and never once did I think to myself, “Hey, I bet Raul likes Cuban toast!” Their diets mirrored the conventional diets around them. In other words, at least in public life, they ate just like I did.
When it comes to exclusively “black people” food, fried chicken is actually not the first thing that comes to my mind. Nor watermelon (which, like Hippy, I detest with a passion.) I can usually guess if someone is black based on what they tell me they eat for Thanksgiving dinner. My ears are not waiting for “fried chicken and watermelon”. No, “macaroni and cheese”, “collard greens”, and “sweet potato pie” are much better, culturally-specific clues of a black American palate. And for me, a Thanksgiving dinner that lacks these things would make me more irate than a table that does not feature fried chicken.
So if someone were to guess that I eat fried chicken at Thanksgiving* (or any major holiday feast, for that matter), that would piss me off because it’s so very wrong. So I guess that’s another reason why the stereotype annoys me. There are actually much better representations of black American foods than fried chicken and watermelon, but for some reason (well, we know the reason), those are the only two that most Americans seem to know.
Sure, but this says too little. Racial stereotypes of black people in America are objectively worse than other kinds of racial stereotypes in America, because they were part of a pervasive and long-lived social, political, and economic system maintained to keep them down.
If you walk around with a chip on your shoulder you can get offended by ANYTHING.
And when people discover that you can be offended by this, that or the other, then the not so nice ones will have found a new insult to offend you with.
Sometimes it comes across rightly or wrongly, when the ethnic group try to deny aspects of things associated with them, that they are either ashamed of their history or even of their ethnic group.
The British don’t get offended by being associated with tea and “Fish and Chips”, even if they don’t personally like either.
The Japanese aren’t outraged by foreigners asuming that they eat sushi, the Chinese rice, the Italains pasta, the Scots Haggis, Scandinavians Smorgasbord and so on.
Those African Americans who look for things to be offended by have only made more rods for their own back.
It also weakens sympathy for the victims of real racism.
And now we get the “But your racial group wasn’t oppressed in history etc etc”
And of course "only OUR ethnic group knows what REAL racism is, you may THINK you know etc.etc "
Yes we do understand, many ethnic groups have suffered terrible persecution in history and even in modern times.
The Jews suffered mass murder within living history for one example, but they don’t use that as an excuse for non achievement, or bring it into the conversation at any given opportunity.
The Chinese also suffered from mass murder and rape when the Japanese invaded their land.There are many more examples that could be used.
The African American community needs more Obamas, more Colin Powells, more Bill Cosbys and less people walking around looking to be offended, looking to lay a guilt trip on everyone else as some sort of reason for not getting on with their lives.
You might as well be asking why we periodically have threads lamenting the “niggardly” offenderati, the oppressive horribleness of the term “African-American”, and the evil that are slavery reparations.
The answer is because a certain segment of the population enjoys getting themselves riled up over black people, even when the issues driving their complaints stopped being topical in the mid-1990’s.
While there are certainly people with a chip on your shoulder I think you’re being unfairly dismissive towards African Americans.
And most Americans aren’t going to be offended by being associated with hamburgers and french fries. The thing is, fried chicken and watermelon can only be construed of as offensive within a cultural context. If I were living in France and someone referred to me as a “burgers and fries” guy I would laugh. What if the burgers and fries statement had a wider connotation though? What if people in France uses that as a short cut to say that I had no taste, culture or refinement of any sort? I’d probably start getting pissed off at being connected with burgers and fries even though I like to eat burgers and fries.
But it also seems silly to dismiss their experience at the same time. The experience of African Americans throughout the history of the United States has been different than that of whites.
I don’t usually hear my black coworkers or my fellow graduate students bring it into conversations at any given moment. The Dopers I know who are black certainly don’t bring it into the conversation at any given opportunity.
I haven’t seen any “hilarious” pictures of Yoshihiko Noda eating sushi, or Hu Jintao digging into a big bowl of rice, but that is beside the point.
This isn’t just foreigners, not even mostly foreigners. This is largely Americans stereotyping Americans, based on nothing more relevant than their skin tone. I don’t see a good reason to associate Obama with fried chicken more closely than Bill Clinton (pre- bypass surgery of course). A link upthread shows that Whites and Blacks consume nearly identical amounts of watermelon, so it isn’t as if the stereotype allows for useful food inferences based on race. What’s left? All I can see is a desire to differentiate Us and Them, perhaps based on the deep impressions left on American culture by a long history of discrimination.
Japanese, Chinese, Italians, and other racial groups have certainly been oppressed at various times in American history, but in terms of severity and duration it is hard to see how comparing their history with that of African Americans can reveal anything useful. Ascenray put it more eloquently in post 54.
[QUOTE=Ascenray]
(1) Racial stereotyping of American blacks ran deeper and stronger and was more pervasive than any other kind of stereotyping in the history of this country and possibly any other country ever. Blacks were the subject of a centuries-long, pervasive, thorough, embedded campaign on political, professional, social, commercial, educational, cultural, literary, and every other level of society to demean them, restrict their options, and to prevent them from enjoying many of the freedoms of living in our world that other people enjoyed.
[/QUOTE]
Note of course that this is over a period of between 200 and 300+ years, not a generation or two. Yes, African Americans have the same rights as everyone else in America today, but a Civil Rights Act doesn’t reach into our culture and systematically root out all the fruits of oppression. Without a systematic campaign of oppression, I think that culture is improving. Maybe in another century, we’ll get to a real post-racial America, but until then I don’t think it is fair to tell people to come to the table without this baggage.
Have you noticed that the Shoah, in less than a decade, made a huge and lasting impact on Jewish culture? My best friend avoids going home for Passover because his uncle’s Seder is one long holocaust remembrance. He tells me this is not uncommon. I haven’t heard a Jewish person use this as an excuse for “non achievement” but I think it is fair and understandable that many Jewish people have a very strong reaction to any implication that that Jews or Judaism should cease to exist, or even to jokes and caricatures that are reminiscent of pre-Nazi Germany. How much more would this be the case if the holocaust had taken place deliberately and systematically over a century or three? How many pieces of European culture in Germany and occupied Europe would be subtly or overtly Anti-Jewish, and how many would be continually argued to be totally innocuous? Maybe the refrain would be that, because Romans are often drawn with giant noses, it isn’t offensive to draw a hook-nosed Jew.
Similarly, I would hope that Japanese people especially refrain from making rape jokes to Chinese people. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about that relationship to say much more about it.
Every community needs more great leaders. If you get a guilt trip laid on you, ask yourself if you can avoid the behavior that provoked it easily and without compromising your principles. If you can, try to avoid it in the future. If not, you can examine the behavior and figure out what is most important to you, but I don’t see that anyone would have to go far out of their way to avoid using stereotypes you have already been informed are hurtful to some people, even if those people do have a chip on their shoulder. It’s not like offending them intentionally is going to show them that they are wrong, you’ll just hurt them (and perhaps others) and reinforce their convictions.
I think an important distinction to be made is that these foods (Soul Food) are the foods of their Master, not their true ethnic African foods. And it is really sad and ironic that they can’t own perhaps the most American pedigree of fine dining, because black folks epitomize American Cooking definitively. I would even say that African cooking is perhaps the most important sub-influence in real American cooking after the English. And I think the Cream of Wheat Man, Aunt Jemima, and Sambo should be worn as important and historical badges of culinary respect.
Yes, I agree… it is almost as ridiculous and ludicrous in concept as being offended for enjoying two very popular American foods. I wasn’t saying that they should cleave to African foods, so much as cooking techniques and knowledge. Lotsa African food tech passed on in American Cuisine, only precedented by the Native Americans.
It is poor people’s food. Chickens wander wild around my neighborhood needing no help from anyone to thrive. I have collards and turnips growing in my garden right now which I plan to have with dry limas tomorrow. Watermelon overtook my garden this summer needing only regular rain to produce tons of the stuff. These cheap crops are very nutrient dense and they kept the south alive during very hard times. But poor people’s food is also gooooooood stuff so we southerners, many of whom are poor blacks do love our chicken, grits and collard greens.
But routinely we get requests on Cafe society from Americans married to someone who supposedly have an Irish ancestry, and who want to make them a meal that Irish people enjoy on Paddys day.
It goes down like a lead balloon when I post that Irish Irish,as opposed to what the Irish call so call Irish Americans, which is Plasitc Paddys, enjoy Chinese.
Real Irish don’t eat cabbage any more then they can help it, and corned beef isn’t what Americans think it is .
Over here it comes in a tin and isn’t a Deli salted item.
Also the Irish don’t live for potatoes
for every meal.
But the fact is the Irish have been opressed in history, it pisses them off when its assumed that they get drunk all of the time, start fights and beat their wives…
But they don’t get terribly offended by stereotypes about their food preferences.
I identify more closely with my Irish ancestry than with any of the smaller parts, so now I can speak from a position of more personal experience. I have never had felt prejudged for my Irish ancestry (obvious in my last name) and nobody has ever treated me as anything other than “white”. I have not heard of any prejudice against even my 100% Irish grandfather (also american). If there are lasting cultural effects of anti-Irish prejudice, I have neither seen nor heard it. In contrast, my wife’s mother was made to use separate facilities because she is black. My wife was specifically and systematically excluded and physically threatened by both white and black groups (she is 1/2 black) in HS. I think that those of us with Irish ancestry are a lot less threatened by stereotyping and can choose when and to what extent we fit in the “Irish” box. My wife often does not get to choose; she is put into a “black” or “mixed” box and has to deal with the prejudices that come with those labels.
I don’t think it takes too many experiences with serious discrimination to make black people a lot more wary of stereotyping than I have ever needed to be, even if the stereotypes are not immediately threatening.
Remember that this discussion relates to the US. There isn’t an offensive narrative suggesting that Irish-Americans are drooling morons who’ll do anything for potatoes and cabbage. Or that if you deprive them of canned corned beef, they’ll riot because they’re naturally angry and aggressive and you have to watch those people.
