There are lots of stereotypes about black people. They really like fried chicken, watermelon and grape flavored beverages, for example.
This question is not being asked to be racial, it is asked to get facts.
How true are the above? In my own experience, those traits seem spot on with the “majority” of black individuals I have met (and was able to glean, through conversation or observation, their dietary habits).
Why do “so many” black people, as the stereotype claims, like fried chicken, watermelon and/or grape flavored beverages?
And please, no answers like “well I’m black and I don’t like fried chicken.” Well duh, there are always exceptions to the rule, so to speak.
If it is true, it is attributable to cultural differences. It’s the same reason white people like pickup trucks and coffee, or Indians like curry and cheesy action flicks.
If you are basing this on your experience, but you don’t want others to say it’s not true for them, how do you want people to answer the question: Is it true? If you get enough exceptions to the rule, then perhaps it’s not a rule?
Uh oh, the semantics game is being played already. “Exceptions to the rule” is a common adage, a cliche so to speak. I’m not claiming it is a rule, I was just using the term so as to avoid people from saying “Well I’m black and I don’t like…” I’m not asking if you specifically don’t like it, I’m asking as a generalization if a “majority” of African Americans fit the above stereotypes.
I’m not basing this on experience, I am basing it on what the stereotype says, adding my experiences so as to add another dynamic to the original post.
I’m not asking people to answer the question “is it true” in such a manner that can be answered with “yes” or “no.” I’d prefer a more grey answer than black and white.
I understand. I guess a question to be asked is why do we as different cultures (say American black, white, Hispanic and so forth), who have been intermixing for so many years, have these cultural idiosyncrasies?
I understand it is cultural, but I’m asking: why, as the stereotype claims, fried chicken, watermelon, et cetera? Why not, for example, beaver tails, tree bark and grass roots or vanilla extract, monkey testicles and ground mouse bones?
You asked if the stereotype was true, because in your experience it is. Yet you specifically are asking other people to not come in and say that their specific experiences are different for themselves. I am actually asking what kind of info is left to answer your question: “is it true”? If someone speaks for themselves that not ok, but if they speak for themselves and their neighbors, themselves and their whole family, need to cite studies, etc? What then do you want?
I know what the saying exceptions proves the rule is, I’m suggesting that if enough people individually tell you that it’s not true for them, then the exceptions add up and perhaps the rule is not true.
I’m not discounting them as a group, I am discounting individuals because a single individual is hardly a fair representative of a group. It’s just one person.
Yes I would like a cite. If anyone has done a study on the claims put forth in the stereotype, I would love to read it.
Those stereotypes are USAnian, do they even exist in other English-speaking countries, maybe acquired from media, maybe referring only to African-Americans? I hadn’t even heard them until I read them here, despite living in the US for five years.
Note that some of them can’t even exist in other countries referring to their own black folk: what’s called “fried chicken” in the US has entered Spanish cooking only recently, for example - grape soda doesn’t exist here. Grape juice does, but it’s not “grape flavored”, it’s grape-for-real and the white variety sells much more than the black one (the grape flavored beverages I’ve seen in other countries were black).
Foods like chicken, collards, watermelon, etc. were once commonly considered poverty foods in the Southern US, eaten by blacks and whites alike. I can’t figure out how it gets hung on black people specifically. Maybe it’s a meme that evolved as a way to mock people of modest means and tastes. It should have dropped away when these foods started crossing the socioeconomic spectrum, but hey, everybody likes a good racial stereotype.
I am guessing the soda thing also has roots as a more modern poverty-food slur, but I wouldn’t hazard more of a guess than that. Anecdotally it seems to have some validity, in my observations. I have worked concessions in some predominantly African-American areas, and basically, if you didn’t offer fruity soda, you weren’t selling soda.
I’m not that interested in a thread collecting all the stereotypes attached to blacks in the US but that point:
“I guess a question to be asked is why do we as different cultures (say American black, white, Hispanic and so forth), who have been intermixing for so many years, have these cultural idiosyncrasies?”
sounds pretty interesting.
It does look, from abroad, that American blacks have distinct cultural practices that, in another country, you would more likely find from first or second generation immigrants. Obviously, that isnt the case of black Americans.
So, why?
Very true, because as it turns out, people love fried chicken, watermelon and grape soda. You’re just noticing when it’s a black person. Get 100 white people and 100 black people to take a survey and you’ll not find much of a disparity.
I hate to deflate your righteous indignation with actual observational data, but the watermellon thing is 100% true. I was a supermarket bagger in my teens, and I can say with confidence that black people bought watermellons at a far, far greater rate than white people. It really was that obvious.
Until, say, 1900, the vast majority of American blacks lived in the South (i.e., the states that were in the Confederacy, so maybe the Southeast would be a better description). Furthermore, the vast majority of those that did live in the South lived in the rural (and usually quite poor) parts of that region. Why they lived there should be obvious. They were nearly all the descendants of slaves, and mostly they hadn’t moved away from where their ancestors lived. It was only in the twentieth century that many American blacks moved north and west from the South. The fact is though that something like 55% of all American blacks still live in the South.
Most of the stereotypes that have developed in the twentieth century about American blacks came from interactions with whites in northern and western American cities when there first developed large neighborhoods in them consisting of mostly blacks. This is why the stereotypes developed about blacks eating things like fried chicken. Previously such food had been mostly confined to the South, but they weren’t black food so much as foods of rural poverty. In a sense, the blacks who moved to northern and western cities during the twentieth century were immigrants. They were immigrants from the South.
Good point Wendell, does that mean that Southern white people dont have those clichés regarding blacks (as they were actually having the same eating habits as blacks are supposed to have or had have)?
The travelling well story about fried chicken is almost certainly true. Wish I had the book to hand, but one of the big highway history books confirms it. The only African Americans I see in fried chicken places around here are the workers.
Fruity sodas–might be a grain of truth there. Went to a college with a fairly high percentage of black students, and the drinks in the spray jet machines were usually what they drank, and Fanta to a lesser extent.
Watermelons? Not that I ever see. Seems to be even across the board, maybe more a Hispanic purchase.
Here’s an article about the development of fried chicken as a common dish in the American South. As you can see, there are references to both white and black contributions to how it was cooked: