Middle school apologizes for serving chicken, waffles and watermelon on first day of black history month

Just a you read it.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/06/us/aramark-black-history-month-menu-school-reaj/index.html

Honestly, don't know if it's because i am not American, or not very liberal but i was laughing my ass off.

Seems like an awesome lunch to me.

Pretty tone-deaf, but at this point I'm sort of wondering if maybe we should get over it? I'm not black though, so not my call to make.

Sounds like a good lunch to me, though. But I can understand black people not wanting to eat it. I'm overweight and I try to eat healthy in public because I'm self-conscious; I know that's not the same, of course, but it's still has to do with food and one's image and stereotypes.

It's definitely because you're not American. Not saying that to be a dick, it's just a uniquely American thing related to slavery.

Dave Chappelle did a whole bit about it, I can link it later. Pretty funny.

@mrbojangles25: i don't know to which extent you can relate Chicken and watermelon with slavery.

Not that I don't think slavery is a serious topic, but this is something else.

Seems like giving too much weight to harmless stereotype about liking certain types of food.

I vote this wussified generation as least likely to survive a zombie apocalypse

Imagine not being able to eat tasty food because it's considered racist.

Anyone who doesn't like chick and waffles is a loser.

Lmao!

I bet if they would have been smart enough to do the chicken and waffles and skip the watermelon they would have been just fine. The Black eating Watermelon was commonly used in smear campaigns against African Americans in the Jim Crow Era in the south. Schools really should just stick to one of the other 1000 fruits lol.

It's not a big deal to me personally but I do think it is important to be aware of this stereotype if only to keep yourself from blundering into it.

It's a very easy connection to make with a long, documented history if you look it up. I know it might seem weird to an outsider but it's pretty much common knowledge in the States.

It's dumb because if you take a people and put them in slavery and later poverty (when freed), of course they're going to eat a lot of fried food, cheap food, and stuff that's common and such. White folks do it too. Fried chicken, collard greens, black-eye peas, watermelon, etc..

I mean it's all delicious stuff when done right and I'd eat it together, but it is a stereotype and when done out of ignorance or maliciously, it can be hurtful.

Link 1 about Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia's spat over the fried chicken connection

"We'll have him 'round every night," Garcia said. "We will serve fried chicken."

The comment came after Garcia was asked if he would invite his rival, with whom he has a frosty relationship, to his house during next month's U.S. Open. Woods responded to Garcia's tweets on Twitter: "The comment that was made wasn't silly. It was wrong, hurtful and clearly inappropriate ... I'm confident that there is real regret that the remark was made." (Garcia offered a textbook nonapology apology.)

...

...like watermelon, that other food that's been a mainstay in racist depictions of blacks, chicken was also a good vehicle for racism because of the way people eat it. (According to government stats, blacksare underrepresented among watermelon consumers.) "It's a food you eat with your hands, and therefore it's dirty," Schmidt said. "Table manners are a way of determining who is worthy of respect or not."

Link 2 about the school going out of its way to reschedule the planned meal to this stereotype

School administrators added that the school’s food vendor, Aramark, provided a different meal than what had been scheduled.

Students were supposed to be served cheesesteaks, broccoli and fruit on 1 February, according to a menu posted on the school’s website.

Black people’s association with watermelon dates back to the US abolition of slavery. After emancipation, many Black people grew the fruits and sold them, and they became symbols of their freedom. White people who opposed the end of slavery then used watermelons to belittle Black people, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

So it's pretty clear someone at Aramark thought it'd be OK to switch meals up and remind black students, during Black History Month, of our country's shitty past.

Will we be able to offer black people chicken and/or watermelon some day without it being an issue? I hope so. But the timing seemed off here and I think someone was trying to be an asshole.

Food history is just fascinating and mostly awesome. Like, a lot of foods that are amazing came about from really terrible things like slavery and necessity, but are still really delicious and great and interesting.

Jambalaya, for example, is a creole slave dish...jambon being French for ham, and laya being Swahili for rice...mix it up and you get jambalaya (or ham rice), which later evolved into a dish that incorporates other ingredients like andouille sausage (the ham), shrimp, and chicken, etc. But originally it was scraps of hogs and rice.

Soul food came about in the 60's as a way to popularize traditional black food. It was just a dumb branding move that the black community would later regret since it gave rise to the high rates of diabetes and heart disease in that specific demographic. But the food is good! And the history of that food is interesting.

The reason we have a lot of canned and jarred food today is because Napoleon needed rations that could last a long time in his quest to conquer Europe. That's another cool food fact.

Yeah, it's the watermelon and the last-minute change of menu that really shows their ignorance and possible ill-intent.

@mrbojangles25: that's the problem with analyzing each and every action through an historical perspective.

A much more simple analysis would be what are the present negative connotations of eating watermelon and fired chicken?

Do they apply to any of the students? Will black students be degraded if they are seen eating fried chicken and watermelon?

Otherwise we simply exist in a parallel universe in which historical societal views always coexist with present one.

No grape soda? Sounds like it was lacking a tasty beverage. Seriously, people need to calm down.

Hopefully it's just incredibly tone deaf and not say someone thinking their incredibly funny.

do i get offended for pasta? no i do not with being half Italian and what said country overall history of the world has been.

@firedrakes: hahaha whenever i meet Americans they always assume i eat very spicy because i am latin American, but my country's couisine is nothing like Mexico's.

I never took offense by that, i just assumed American people think all latin America is kind of the same.

Oddly enough the few times I travelled to the USA, i wanted to get some complicity with Hispanic Americans, since I assumed they would identify with me. But actually, people that had been speaking Spanish with each other would insist on speaking English with me. And one Mexican American guy, when i told him where i came from just told me, he didn't care because all southern south Americans are the same anyway...

@firedrakes: Italians are considered “white” in today’s world. When Italy won the World Cup or whatever a few years ago, news articles came out calling the team racist because they didn’t have darker people on the team.

I interact with non-white people daily, and they are always racially conscious in every situation. It might seem ridiculous to you, but to them, it’s serious. Therefore, I have to take it seriously on the job. When a student gets offended at the idea of calling a hard-shelled taco a taco, I have to address the issue and make sure people understand that real tacos are soft. It may seem petty, but the school in which I work has received complaints over “racism” over such issues. That sort of accusation can derail a school.

@The_Deepblue: you are just enabling over sensitivity on irrelevant issues...

In the US you can have hard or soft Tacos.

That sounds horrendous...

You did spell arse wrong though mate...

@LJS9502_basic: I think what he means is that for Mexicans and in Mexico tacos are always soft.

Maybe they see hard tacos as an Mexican American thing.

@LJS9502_basic: I think what he means is that for Mexicans and in Mexico tacos are always soft.

Maybe they see hard tacos as an Mexican American thing.

I know what he meant. But this is the US so you can have either. Seems pointless to get bent out of shape over taco shells though.

am kinky.... i combine both into 1.......

also. compare to my father. i look less dark. to him(when he was alive)

Soft tacos taste so bland IMO.

Seems like an American thing to do. Pretty tone deaf if they actually thought it was a good idea, and how it got passed down the chain without anybody piping up that it could be seen as mocking or insulting to blacks is mind blowing. There’s a song that perpetuated that stereotype in the early 1900s “N***** loves a watermelon ha ha ha ha” back in the day, just to show anyone that wants to argue it’s not a racial stereotype. Fun fact the classic “ice cream truck jingle” is based off that tune.

Soft tacos are "regular tacos" (or rather, regular tacos are "soft"), hard shell tacos are "gringo tacos".

You go to any taqueria and ask for tacos, you're getting soft regular tacos. They won't even ask your preference.

If you disagree with me, you're a racist bigot and I cancel you!

Nah just kidding, to each their own. Hard tacos are good too, especially if the shell is freshly fried! Nothing beats a good carnitas taco on a fresh-made tortilla, though. With lots of green salsa, cilantro, and onion. Maybe a squeeze of lime.

I think that's the biggest issue I have, is the whole tone deaf and management stance.

I mean, someone...at some point...had to realize "Woh wait, is this historical or is this just racist?" right? You would hope, at least.

I mean that lack of self awareness is just mind blowing. I mean, you have to have regional management. Then distributors. Then the manager of the cafeteria. Then the actual cafeteria workers. Then the school admin or parents or maybe someone saw something. That's a lot of people overlooking it.

It should also be noted that they changed the menu last minute. Was supposed to be cheese steaks.

It's a real "Are we the baddies?" moment, or it should have been.

i like the soft and crunchy aspect. also stuff in between them.

@firedrakes: Oh yeah.

I like smearing a thin layer of spicy refried beans (just mash some black beans up with some hot sauce) on a tortilla, then wrapping the hard shell taco in that.

Not as sexy as using cheese like Taco Bell does, but it's so good.

xD

.... i do the same thing.