Tell me you’re a white guy stirring shit that doesn’t matter to you but hide it badly.
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Did you READ the many comments on why this is problematic? Or did you just decide that you know better than everyone else and don’t need to hear what others say about this topic?
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Definitely. You wouldn’t believe some of the inane things people take the time to post here, often even after they’ve been addressed.
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Oh, so the systemic racist problems facing BIPOC in America are not “real?”
Duly noted.
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One of the most pervasive and loathsome forms of hatred is ingrained self hatred; one need look no further than the recent horrific murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis for a prime example.
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Right? Who in their right mind and LIVED EXPERIENCE would roll over for that line of b.s.?
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It takes a willful effort to ignore context this blatant. Let’s look at your hypothetical diner. If they offer chicken and waffles as a part of their standard daily menu, no that is just another menu item and would be a pretty good description of where I like to grab my late night chicken and waffles. If, on the other hand the restaurant generally doesn’t serve such things and decided to once they found out they would have a school trip stopping in from a nearby majority black school, then yeah it would be super fucking racist. We are all literate and don’t have to pretend context evaporates as a way to make racists feel better. We have the context, the company changed the food and has a history of making comparable changes. We are also aware that no major national food service provider is unaware of the history of these stereotypes, but we can be even more sure than usual, because this is at least the third time this company has done the same thing, prompting weak apologies each time.
Given that you aren’t familiar with the national context, yes this set of foods is deeply tied to a huge history of cultural stereotyping. There is a history of a few hundred years of demeaning jokes centered on the fried chicken and watermelons in particular (the waffles thing isn’t as deeply tied to history, but has some modern threads along the same lines). The idea of food being tightly coupled to racism isn’t a unique or new phenomenon. Stigmatized groups often have distinctive foods that mark them out culturally, either because of a history of oppression, or religious/cultural taboos. These serve as really sharp divides for marking in group and out group dynamics. Most famously, in a European context, would probably be the blood libel. Hopping over to modern India, you’re beginning to see food bans as part of a culture war issue to target politically unpopular groups. Food has nothing to do with religion, says dalit writer | India News - Times of India
Context matters, and while the foods aren’t racist, yeah people can engage in racism using food.
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It’s only a difficult concept to those who don’t want to believe it…
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This quote is 6 decades old and it is infuriating and exhausting that the primary conversation on racism in the US is still arguing whether the damage is real or not FFS
exactly
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