Fried Chicken Is Soul Food & Should Be Honored And Embraced As Such

[fishwax]

79. It's *also* fodder for offensive stereotypes, and should be addressed and critiqued as such.

That is something that Adrian Miller, the author of Soul Food, points out repeatedly. His perspective is complex, containing both a recognition of the history behind decades of food being used to demean African Americans and position them as other on the one hand, and a desire to celebrate the resourcefulness of African Americans to develop a notable food culture from the limited resources they were allowed on the other. Your simplification of that position to "it should be celebrated" does Miller--and the discussion itself--a great disservice. (Pairing that oversimplification with the implication that those not quite ready to embrace chicken and watermelon as an ideal lunch special for black history month are just ignorant of history pushes that even further.)

"African Americans," Miller says, "should share the stereotype’s history, explain why it hurts and show how we all have a collective responsibility to refrain from denigrating others through the use of their traditional foods. We should then celebrate fried chicken as a source of pride in the African-American experience."

I find it pretty odd that your response to people doing the former has been to keep hammering on Miller's book as a reason why they shouldn't be doing just that. Of course, not everyone will agree with Miller that a fried chicken dinner is a fine way to celebrate Martin Luther King Day or Black History Month, and that's fine. Not being African American myself, my impulse is primarily to watch and learn from that discussion--and to provide comfort and a ready ear to the hurt and frustrated--rather than trying to jump into the fray and tell people how they ought to feel about the deployment of such baggage-laden devices. And certainly, I would never want to deny the complexity of such an issue, nor to dismiss the pain people feel in order to focus on the pride someone else thinks they ought to feel.

And all of this, it's worth noting, relates to the use of fried chicken only. Throwing in watermelon changes things entirely, because those two stereotypes have been used so forcefully against African Americans for decades. As Miller said (in reference to a different controversy), whenever "the words 'chicken' and 'watermelon' are in any sentence that references African-Americans, whatever their motivation, the speaker is just asking for trouble."