Goes Hand in Hand with the FEMA Waffle House Index…
Terror Alert Tutti Frutti, fresh and frutti. Better than Threat Level Yellow.
When we did this after-school seminar at the high school a few years ago, we always ordered fried chicken to serve. It was a hit. A stereotype, but a hit.
Other stereotyped foodstuffs did not go over so well.
If we ever have Jewish Appreciation Day or something, I’m not going to object if the menu has falafel on it.
to add: Here in the SW, I often see my students or coworkers loving yucky drive through chicken (Popeye’s, KFC). Yes, they make their own as well, but unless you’re actually from the South, no one cooks up some Southern fried chicken. One of my professors was from Nuh-allins and she always brought us real Southern food. So I wonder if it’s a matter of identity: I am black, therefore I eat fried chicken.
That can certainly be said of American Jews and their odd choice of food on holidays.
Are there stereotypes that apply to all white people? Not really. You have East Coast, West Coast, redneck, southern, midwest, whatever. I feel like a stereotyped black person in LA is not much different than one in Cedar Rapids, Iowa or Denver or Mississippi. Even the language is the same.
edit: I just remembered this from my friend’s teacher twitter feed- Overheard, on the phone: “Can you put extra seasoning and butter on the green beans. Then I ain’t be tasting how green they is.”
Soylent Green and Soylent Dark Green?
Apparently you’ve never been to Brooklyn, where mac and cheese is a turf war. A lot of the bars sell it, and there’s even one spot that sells almost exclusively mac and cheese. Not to mention the places in Manhattan…
You’ve also apparently never been to an Italian thanksgiving.
One restaurant in Nashville served fried balls of mac and cheese. mmmm! And I keep Stouffers mac and cheese on hand all the time. I add hot peanuts. I didn’t know that whites are short on mac and cheese.
At my class reunion and my family reunion we served BBQ only. West Tennessee is known for its supreme BBQ. Nothing like it. Everyone in my hometown went to the same black man’s store to buy it and his secret sauce. The old store is still standing and there is a photo of it on my hometown’s Facebook page.
But every Sunday we had fried chicken for dinner. We didn’t eat it because we were poor. We ate it because it was wildly good tasting. The biscuits and gravy were mighty fine too.
Fried chicken was so widely prepared by rich and by poor that when I was in high school home economics class, he were taught how to prepare fried chicken – starting with the live chicken strung upside down in front of us.. Our school was not integrated at that time.
When I was growing up I would usually alternate between an Orange Crush and a Nehi Grape. As an adult I have added Peach flavored drinks to that. Also tea and coffee drinks. Now I am craving a Nehi Grape so badly that I will have to send hubby to the store.
Anyone remember that Radar O’Reilly loved Nehi Grape?
But there are stereotypes of certain white groups that do matter – white Southerners, for example. You would never know that the city with the highest number of Ph.Ds per capita is in the South by the way people talk about us. Or that Nashville voted for Obama in 2008 and has a Top Ten University and the #1 grad school in education. We talk funny and had slaves. (Like Northeners didn’t have slaves twice as long and don’t talk funny.)
Sorry…I get this from extended family…
Sometimes stereotypes come out of old prejudices and are based on nothing more than that!
That’s not a stereotype of white people, though. It can’t be used to humiliate or disempower someone solely on the basis of his or her skin color.
What about “white men can’t jump?”
And that has been used in what systematic way to keep white people in general in an inferior position in society?
Are you one of those people who declares black people are not capable of racism because they don’t have the racist power structure in place behind them?
No, I don’t. I am not denying that there are some stereotypes of white people, just that they have no significance in our society. White stereotypes are not functionally equivalent to black stereotypes.
This is relevant to the discussion as exemplified by questions in this very thread. Such as:
- What does it matter whether a particular group is subject to a stereotype about food?
It only matters if that stereotype is used as a social weapon against them, which is true for black people and fried chicken and watermelon. It is true, perhaps, for “beaners.” It might be true for other groups. It might have been true in the past, for certain immigrant groups, such as Irish, Italians, Greeks, etc. It has never been true in our society for white people as a whole.
- White southerners like fried chicken and watermelon too!
That kind of proves the point. White people aren’t socially or economically targeted by this. That’s why people don’t think about this fact and why, even if they did, they wouldn’t care.
Stereotypes are only objectionable if they are part of a systematic system of oppression against a group. Otherwise, noting that X group likes Y food is just minutia.
But then it becomes a matter of any observation one makes about X group whatsoever is taken as ipso facto racist.
Says who? The point is why and how and in what context you’re making the observation and what effect is has on the status of the observed class.
Well, honestly then, how does “black people like fried chicken” systematically keep black people in an inferior position in society?
Well, honestly then, have you never experienced a situation in which systemic racism is demonstrated?
By itself no word or set of words keeps anyone in an inferior position. It’s only within a cultural context that it takes on meaning, whether it’s “black people like fried chicken” or “jungle bunny.” That’s why there’s no white equivalent of “nigger.” Words like “whitey,” “honky,” or “cracker” may be used, but they have no power.
It’s never been “black people like fried chicken”, more like “them niggers jes go CRAZY less they get they fried chicken!” or something. The first one is a generally true generality (as has been said of pretty much all people too) and not racist, the second is historically used imagery to promote the ideas of blacks as savages with poor impulse control who could go crazy at any time (unlike staid, level headed whites).
The same thing with watermelon, the imagery was not “blacks like watermelon” it is “those niggers will steel your watermelons”, promoting images of poor impulse control and criminality. It’s a lot easier to systematically subjugate a people when you think of them as a criminal class who are glorified children.
My own anecdotal experience based on my time as a student cook in my dorm:
1- Blacks do seem to like their fried eggs a bit more done than whites. When I worked the egg shift, we cooked them all over easy unless requested otherwise. I had several black students tell me they wanted their eggs “over hard”. I don’t recall any white student doing that. It got so if I saw them in line I just waved at them and they would wave back and I’d start their eggs even before they got to the front of the line.
2- Blacks make much more liberal use of tobasco sauce, particularly on boiled eggs. I’ve noticed this both in the students in the dorm and black adult cafeteria staff.
3- Blacks like their french fries fried much longer than whites. The sample size is much smaller, so it may be suspect. I do know that our full time adult black woman cook was forever after me to cook the fries well past the light brown stage. I did get bitched at if the fries didn’t have at least a few really dark brown/black ones in the bunch.
4- Fried chicken- I didn’t see any pattern. Most people like it and I don’t see a racial thing.
That being said, I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything. Those black ladies in the kitchen taught me more about cooking than my own mother ever did.
My Canadian family always has baked mac and cheese at festive dinners.
When I was a teenager, my mom made it for some work function. A woman asked for the recipe. My mom has been preparing this dish for ages, so she just wrote it done right there for her. About a week later, the woman comes back and said she must have done something wrong, the macaroni did not come out right. My mother inquired and the woman neglected to boil the noodles before putting them in the casserole dish with the cheese, etc.
Most of the black people I’ve known/seen want their steaks cooked well done and most of the whites I know eat it medium to rare. When I waited tables, I found this to be true 9 out of 10 times.
White people are stereotyped a-plenty. Just watch five minutes of Chris Rock or Richard Pryor stand-up. Watch that SNL sketch where Eddie Murphy goes undercover to discover what white people do when black people aren’t around.
The whole “black people do it like this, while white people do it like that” is a comedic device used by black people who are relying on the stereotypes of white people.
That they are very uptight and anal.
That they are very trusting and overly friendly.
That they speak in 1950s vernacular (by golly! you betcha, mister!)
That they try to reason with police officers instead of doing what they are told.
That they are not street smart and will investigate obvious signs of danger rather than getting the hell away (hence why black people have conniptions fits during horror films…the characters behave in ways that make no sense to us).
That they cannot dance. Or they dance like Carleton from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (the “white man’s over-bite”).
That they emphasis the 1 and the 3 instead of the 2 and the 4 (musicians know what I’m talking about).
That their children are hellions, as exhibited by screaming “I HATE YOU!” at their parents.
That white parents are effete and try to reason with their bad-acting children instead of disciplining them. (“time outs” are often perceived as a white people thing)
That they eat bland foods. Like egg salad.
That they are too skinny and neurotic.
That they are rich and powerful.
That they are too happy and chirpy.
That they have a certain smell when they get wet.
That they are sexually perverted and given to sex with animals, furries, and dead bodies.
That they just up and kill random people for no reason. (Black people kill too, but at least we have a motive or a justification, the reasoning goes.)
That they are naturally racially prejudiced and clueless about everything non-white.
These are just a few.
Really, if ya’ll don’t think white people don’t have any general stereotypes, ya’ll haven’t been watching enough BET.
And just like the “black people love fried chicken” stereotype, I have found a grain of truth in all these stereotypes. Yet, I also realize that they are also ridiculous and that they don’t tell me anything about a particular white person I meet. I know so many varied white people that it’s hard to find anything they share in common except for the color of their skins.