In the last few weeks, a major media controversy has been caused by golfer Sergio Garcia’s mentioning that he would have Tiger Woods over for dinner and feed him fried chicken. A European PGA official then tried to stick up for Garcia by saying he had many “colored friends”. Some commentators claim the following media storm is overblown since fried chicken and the term “colored” is far less offensive in Europe. Is this true? (Please don’t make this an argument over whether the original statement was wrong or comparisons between European and American racism.)
In my part of Europe, the term “coloured” would probably be considered offensive. There is no particular association between black folks and fried chicken in the UK. To my mind, that’s what got Garcia into trouble - he knew about the US/black/fried chicken thing and chose to bring it up. It wouldn’t normally bother Europeans.
I agree. No-one says (or ought to say) “coloured” these days, but the fried chicken association with racial stereotyping I ONLY know about through the Dope. Really, I could see it as a stereotype of of U.S. southern cookery, perhaps, but with no colour attached. And the “southern” thing is probably only because of Colonel Whatsit’s Kentucky Fried Chicken.
However, this Garcia guy would probably have known about the USA’s fried chicken/racism connotations, so that was bad of him.
Anyway, isn’t the whole “some of my best friends are XYZ…” thing usually a sign of the speaker being, shall we say, a bit disingenuous? :dubious:
Just to add that Colonel Sanders of KFC has nothing at all to do with the association of fried chicken and African-Americans, which was around long before Sanders. Fried chicken is a traditional Southern dish.
Another golfer got in trouble for a similar statement. In 1997, Fuzzy Zoeller made a comment about Tiger Woods at The Masters. The tournament has a banquet at which the menu is chosen by the previous year’s winner; Zoeller made a reference to Woods selecting fried chicken. It seems he was kidding, but did lose sponsors over it.
According to Wikipedia, Garcia turned pro in 1999, but that may have been where he heard about the stereotype.
He should have known better, yes. But I agree, I only know about the black/fried chicken thing because I lived in the USA for three years and yeah, also from the Dope.
But I can see him thinking along the lines that it was the same as if Woods had offered to make him paella - he just didn’t realise quite how offensive it might seem.
A lot of Irish people would know that black American/fried chicken thing and would know it’d be a shitty thing to bring up with black Americans. The term “coloured” is outdated. I don’t think everyone who uses that term now here is a racist but it does seem outdated.
My God, I’m glad I stumbled across this post. I’m a White Englishman and only last week I was invited out for a meal. What was I fed? FISH AND CHIPS. Only now I realise what a filthy RACIST INSULT this is to me and my race. EVERYONE knows the stereotype connection between White English-persons and FISH AND CHIPS. We will take to the streets - burn baby burn.
From what I find, Sergio has apologized and said he meant it as a joke, knowing that there is a reputation that black people like fried chicken but not that it’s offensive.
But the details on some of the explanations I’m finding are as bad or worse… el País calls that kind of remark xenófoba (no, dearies, racist - not the same thing!) and explains that “it is considered insulting because it implies that black people have no taste for the good things in life and only eat fried chicken” (uh, no, that’s not what it’s about either; that’s the connotations fried chicken has in Madrid*, which I’m reasonably sure is the capital of Spain and not of the USA, ok?).
20 minutos (a freeebie) and ABC seem to be using the same source, which actually gets the explanations right. Libertad Digital gives the most complete explanation of the background.
- There’s a musician from Madrid who, back in his punk days, used to go by the nickname el rey del pollo frito, the king of fried chicken, meaning that he was about as “from the bottom of the social pyramid” as they come.
As for the “colored” thing, saying de color in Spanish is an old-fashioned, polite way to say “black”, it could have been a problem of trying to find the right term; I agree that “some of my friends are X” sounds real bad out of context, but in context meh. Does “hell dude, I don’t have any problem with him for being black, I have problems with him cos I consider him an asshole” sound better? It’s probably closer to the truth than the official statement, but it’s not something you can say in public - not if you want to keep your sponsors.
Sergio has been in the US long enough and he’s certainly heard about the Fuzzy Zoeller comment, so no excuses. I mean, really, did he just randomly pick “fired chicken” without any reference to the racial stereotype?
These guys don’t like each other, and Sergio made a stupid comment. End of story.
I agree that it does seem a bit of an overreaction. It’s fine to stereotype us Brits as liking fish and chips or curry or warm beer (or all three), or the Germans is munching on sausage, or the Italians eating pasta, but mention fried chicken products and (black) Americans is way out of line? Definite double standards.
However, everyone knows that that is how it is, so Garcia’s comment was, indeed, crass and stupid.
As your (kinda sneaky) use of parentheses makes clear, the “double standard” here is the difference between a national stereotype and a racial stereotype.
Nobody would have cared if Garcia had used an actual American stereotype about food preferences, such as “we will feed him hot dogs and beer”. It might have seemed somewhat silly, but then national stereotypes generally are somewhat silly.
The “fried chicken” thing, though, is a pernicious racial stereotype of long standing (and by no means extinct even today). So hell yes, it’s offensive. No double standard there.
I’m a 52 year old American male who grew up in New York.
Were there plenty of white racists in my neighborhood when I was growing up? Sure. Did many of them throw around racial slurs? Absolutely. I heard the N-word regularly in my old neighborhood, along with “spade” and “jungle bunny” and all kinds of other insults.
But I NEVER heard a white racist make jokes about watermelon or fried chicken. In fact, I learned about those stereotypes from liberals in the media who used those stereotypes as shorthand for racism. When MAD magazine wanted to show that a cartoon character was a stupid bigot, they’d show him making a crack about fried chicken. And when Norman Lear wanted to show that Archie Bunker was an ignorant racist, he’d have Archie make a joke about the Jeffersons eating watermelon.
In the USA, most of us are well aware that such remarks connote racism, even if we’ve never actually seen or heard a genuine racist make such remarks! That’s why most of us were amazed that golfer Fuzzy Zoeller made the remarks he did about Tiger Woods.
Now, I don’t expect any European to know all the foods or phrases have racial implications here in the US. But Sergio Garcia is a pro golfer, and he should have known all about the trouble Fuzzy Zoeller got into, and should have known better than to make fried chicken jokes.
Exactly. As an Israeli, I would have no problems with jokes about falafel. Make a crack about gefilte fish, though…
Indeed Sergio was trying to make and old racist remark as a joke, and he should have known better. If he really wanted to stir Tiger up, he should have instead made it about him stealing all the white women…
Times change and your personal experiences, while interesting, don’t have anything to do with stereotypes that may be believed by a Spanish golfer. Unless he watches a lot of All in the Family and reads 30 year old copies of Mad the counter examples you gave probably aren’t apt.
Whether or not he knew how loaded the stereotype is, he did know that it was something that is attached to race. Otherwise he wouldn’t have used that specific food item. I think that in 2013 anyone in the US or Europe knows that making comments based on someones race is at the very least unprofessional regardless of how mild or harsh the comment was. If Garcia made a comment about Tiger’s good grades due to his Asian ancestry it would still be an unprofessional and stupid comment.
Were Brits, Germans and Italians taken captive in one country and enslaved in another? I don’t know, maybe that whole overreaction and double-standard thing has a lot more to do with a long, sordid history of racial injustice and discrimination.
Historically, the ancestors of the Brits and Germans were taken captive in one country and enslaved in another by the ancestors of the Italians.