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Watermelon and chicken were two of the ways that black people started supporting themselves after being freed from slavery. They were agricultural products they could raise with very little investment and start building wealth from essentially nothing. Racists, not wanting them to prosper, mocked them for their preference for these things, but it's important to note that the mockery didn't stop them from supporting themselves with the foods they were able to produce. To this day black people enjoy these foods, and there's nothing wrong with them enjoying the foods. If you're with your black family, and you want to celebrate your own heritage, this isn't actually a bad way to do it.
However.
When a corporation, particularly a corporation run and staffed by white people, makes a choice to celebrate a significant black cultural date by presenting people with foods that white people used to mock black people, it reads as mockery. (This is especially true in North Carolina, a place where racism is rampant and open.) At best, this is tone deaf; someone along the way should have said "hey, do you think any black people will feel like you're doing this as a racist attack?" And if any one of them had answered "yes" to that question, they wouldn't have done it. It made it through the pipeline to being something they actually did because nobody in the decision chain cares about the racist overtones of what they were doing.
If you're going to do anything to celebrate black history or black culture, failing to ask any black people what they think about it is racism. Cultural sensitivity would have meant getting some input from a few black folks about how they think it should be celebrated--and, had they done that, they would have avoided this mess.
And, just in case anyone was wondering, the VP in charge of this situation is white.
Thank you! TIL Black people were mocked for liking those foods. They are the best, racists are only hurting themselves if they don’t eat it!
Ah, but here's the real hypocrisy: they absolutely do eat those foods. Southerners of any color love fried chicken and watermelon. That doesn't stop them from being racist about it. Racism doesn't have to make sense.
Every time this comes up I gotta say, who the fuck doesn’t like fried chicken and watermelon?! It’s like making fun of someone for liking sunshine and the ability to breathe. Not that I needed another reason to point at racists and call them a bunch of fucked up morons, but goddamn they are bunch of fucked up morons.
Came here to say that. Barring a few contrarians, EVERYONE likes both watermelon and fried chicken. I know vegetarians who will admit that fried chicken tastes fantastic, even if they no longer eat it.
I also wanted to link to some info about the "Coon Chicken Inn" chain -- founded by a white guy, of course.
off topic piece on collectors' racist items
Holy fuckin shit
He has blue eyes, confirming a depiction of a white man in black face, as opposed to a racist caricature of black people. 😠
People are literally killing people who's ancestors adapted to more exposure to direct sunlight than theirs did. I can't not see it in just that simple way and think "what the actual fuck is wrong with people?" You can't even say it's a culture thing they don't like, because they don't actually know the people they cast hate at other than the color of their skin. It's absolute insanity.
At the risk of completely derailing the conversation, I've met a lot of people in the PNW who don't like warm weather or sunshine. When summer rolls around they start complaining about it being too sunny and want the grey skies back. Frickin weirdos!
That's me! The life giving sun can fuck off behind the clouds!
I really tried to pick two things that couldn’t be argued with so now I’m just waiting for someone to tell me they don’t like breathing either.
C'mon guy/gal, don't kinkshame (/s)
Haha!
PNW weirdo here. I like things to be green and alive, I like my skin unburned, and I like being able to poke around tide pools on a lonely beach. Clouds and rain help all of that.
It's currently sunny and about 77°F, which is about as warm as I want it unless I'm going swimming. Late summer when it approaches 100° is miserable, but for now the bright weather is fine and good for the plants.
It's so beautiful today! I'm wearing shorts and flip flops for the first time in months, and I started working on my bike again now that we may have a period without rain for a while.
I'm too pale AF to have a loving relationship with the sun. I've been burned too many times. I always use protection, but last weekend the sunscreen failed me :(
I mean, climate change being what it is, I'm literally brainstorming ways to inject artificial rain clouds into the sky.
My current idea is giant poles all over the city. They have blades at the top. They start rotating like a helicopter, but not designed to takeoff. Instead, it sprays cool mist above the blades so the cool mist gets swirled around in the hot air, that makes the whole city artificially humid. Eventually this should all rise up, and create rain clouds! Which then cool down the entire city.
Edit: Also, I have zero idea if this conceptually is even feasible.
Haha. Dubai had success with cloud seeding recently. But they forgot that they're a desert without adequate drainage or runoff, and flooded their whole city.
Well, shit! Pass that technology over here! We could test it in Nevada, on a daily basis for 10 years. Maybe raining over a section of desert that has literally zero life can turn it into a livable habitat. It could be a test. With the added benefit of cooling a portion of the earth as they do it.
The sun is actively trying to kill me, you're the weirdo in this situation! I have freckles in places that have never seen sunshine by just EXISTING for a few days in Oklahoma!!
I like watermelon for the first 1.2 seconds where it actually has flavor. Though I did see a picture floating around Lemmy here that made me think the watermelons I've had that gave me that opinion were probably a quantity vs quality issue.
My mom eats it with salt. It’s actually not bad, I enjoy it either way. The salt does give it an interesting flavor, so maybe try that if it might enable you to like it more.
Melon with something savory is a widely popular choice. See: honeydew with prosciutto/parma ham and cantaloupe/honeydew with tajin (Mexican mix of savory spices.)
I never knew about the prosciutto/ham, but tajin makes everything better!
Tajín makes watermelon so much more refreshing!
Thats why you just gotta keep eating more. More flavor! Also yes some definitely have more flavor than others, I’m no good at picking them but if you cut it open and it’s deep red you’re probably in for a good tome.
Dave Chapelle had a whole bit about this before he decided to double (and triple, and quadruple) down on transphobia. He makes the very salient point that these things are delicious.
Bullies don’t make sense.
Actively working against your own species is fucking brain dead. Especially a species you share the fucking planet with.
The nice part about tolerance is it’s a contract. If you don’t agree to it, nobody who does agree to it has to be tolerant with you. It’s simple
I dont know a single person who has said they hated fried chicken or watermelon. Watermelon isn't my favorite because it's never as sweet as I think it is going to be but I will never turn a cold slice down.
I hate watermelon. Even the best, most ripe watermelon sucks. But usually they're mealy and watery in flavor. They also remind me of the taste of cucumbers, which I hate more, unless they're pickled.
I heard white racists make fun of black people for that a lot when I was younger. But we ate it when I was a kid because we were poor and that was cheap and delicious.
looks at username
Well......yeah. You're going to run into racists in TEXAS!!! Jesus! That's the same place that seceded from Mexico to defend their ability to have slaves. Then seceded from the usa to defend their ability to have slaves. Then they complain about building a wall to keep Mexicans out.
If Florida didn't exist, Texas would be the king of racism in America.
Texas is racist, Florida is racist, but ain't neither of them got shit on Alabama and Mississippi. Texas and Florida are just louder.
Fried chicken and watermelon is still used to mock black people as well. There were racist memes about Obama eating fried chicken and watermelon.
I was a child of the 90s when I feel this humor was more prevalent. Until now, I always thought of it as a common stereotype, like white guys in khakis, old white women and wine, or country folk and cheap beer. Something that does poke fun of a group, but generally in a light way. Now I know there's a more significant back story. I figured it was just culturally something that developed in black communities.
It's kinda sweet you didn't know this actually.
If I recall correctly, some states even had laws against black people raising animals like cows (and maybe pigs too?), so chickens were their only option.
Ok, everything you just said is true, and a great answer if the question is "Why is chicken and watermellon a bad food to be assosiated with February/Juneteenth?".
However, the question is "Why is it different from corned beef on St. Patricks day?" And everything you just said is ALSO true about how Americans treated the Irish upon their mass immigration to America during the 1800s. They were mocked for corned beef, potatoes, and alcohol. The Irish were assosiated with those items in Ireland for the same reasons black people were assosiated with chicken, and watermellons. It was cheap, and it fed a poor mans family. The non-poor (whites) mocked them for being poor.
So......you gave a great answer, but not for this exact question. And yes, I know the original question didn't mention potatoes or alcohol, but it also applies for the same reasons.
I'm not saying what the company did was right, I'm saying those same racist stigmas for the holiday it was compared to is equally wrong.
I think a better answer is "It's not so different. Both are wrong."
I mean, OP replied to my answer and apparently liked it, so I think I got him squared. But here's a real response:
When the concept of whiteness was invented (yes, invented) it didn't originally include Irish people, and they did endure abuse and marginalization comparable to what black people have endured and continued to endure. Irish people were worked as near slaves, so they even have a lot of that in common. As you say, I think that if you were Irish in America in the early 19th century, people who already belonged to the White club would have mocked you for your corned beef. We still make fun of Irish people for these things.
But there is a difference. Irish people in modern times got access to whiteness. They were accepted as part of the in-group and no longer marginalized. When this happened, and it took decades to gradually go this direction, the mockery didn't disappear but, if you were Irish (and, in fact, I am) it would have started to feel less like someone who means you harm, and more as friendly teasing, precisely because you have access to the same power as the Germans and the British and so on who already belonged to the club.
Black people don't have that. Black people are still very much marginalized, still the victims of racism and violence and institutional exclusion. So piling the food-based racism on top of that, is going to feel a lot more painful.
It's one thing to be mocked; but to be mocked by someone else who is punching down is much worse.
An interesting aside that you probably know: corned beef and cabbage is a distinctly Irish-American tradition. The Irish were economically forced to raise cattle for corned beef for British folks. Despite raising and curing the beef, they could not afford it and subsisted on potatoes. Britain's wealth and insatiable appetite for corned beef was so immense that those who made it could not afford the price. On the other hand, the reliance on potatoes for subsistence during this period as well as its outcome is well known.
It’s a real tell that they had no black person high enough in management to raise this concern.
In this day and age, either diversify or sign a contract with a “cultural awareness” agency to run your ideas by first.
You just made me so happy to be on Lemmy and not Reddit. Great answer!
Who's the company involved in this? I'm not in the US so I've probably missed a lot of context here.
Spectrum. I think they're mainly an ISP, cable TV, stuff like that. We don't have them around here but I understand them to be a fairly big company.
This one doesn't fall on the whole company, mainly just this one call center, but still, Spectrum corporate should get interested in how this happened.
Ah okay. Thank you!
I am in the US and this is the first I've heard of it. I thought it was just a hypothetical question until I started reading the comments.