To "celebrate" Black history month, school planned on serving fried chicken, cornbread and waterme

Xaphan

People are getting too sensitive and blowing this all out of proportion. Why don't Jews get offended with Matzah balls or bagels? Why don't Italians get offended with spaghetti or pizza? I think some people just want an excuse to start a ruckus over any little thing.

Because there aren't a lot of references to Jews being lazy while eating their bagels, or Italians being stupid while eating their spaghetti.

reply to post by kaylaluv


Point taken that these themes were meant to be insulting...but really where would have a person under 40 have seen these images besides in a museum or web search looking specifically for these?

...and also "Meatball" is/was an ethnic slur for an Italian-American but I wouldn't get offended if meatballs was served during a meal celebrating Italian heritage. I know not exactly the same thing but older members of "The Family" can be somewhat sensitive about such things. That last part was a joke.

Question: If I suggest we "go Dutch" on a dinner check will people from the Netherlands accuse me of labeling them all as cheap bastards?

ketsuko

Hoosierdaddy71
The ghetto Olympics sounds like something from Saturday night live.
How did anybody look at that menu and not see a problem? Fricken idiots.

Well, if they went online and researched Soul Food and pulled the menu from there ... then maybe not, especially if they really weren't operating from a place of racial animus but one of racial innocence, you know one of MLK's vision.

This! This here.

Some kids researched soul food, and didn't even realize there was a racist aspect associated with watermelon. That is progress. As long as we keep obsessing about petty, non-reasons to be offended we will only perpetuate the racial divide.

reply to post by RedParrotHead

Point taken that these themes were meant to be insulting...but really where would have a person under 40 have seen these images besides in a museum or web search looking specifically for these?

You really have a fair point here and perhaps it's something the older generations need to start considering more often. Unlike some past generation gaps, this one can make the Grand Canyon look like a crack in the sidewalk at times. It's a matter of just HOW MUCH has changed and HOW radically fast that change has come over a half dozen to a dozen years ..depending on which change one considers. Change before this has been slow and generational. Rarely has it occurred in such great degree over the span of a single generation, or less.

So, it's a fair point that what many of us sit here and ask ourselves "How COULDN'T you know?!' may literally be something that others actually never saw before or have even heard for context.

I guess it's like trying to explain to people born on or after 9/11...or just kids when that happened..what the United States of America was like as a nation at peace, and not perpetual war. Explaining what it was like for 'pre-preemptive war' to be seen as a hideous concept and absolutely against our very core values ..rather than becoming a value itself. (sigh) .. SO much changed..SO fast for it to happen ..and most of it? Bad.

reply to post by redhorse


I know it had to have been mentioned on ATS before, but ...
Your point reminds me of the South Park episode where the kids didn't see the town flag (that depicted some stick figures standing around a hanged stick figure) as racist. The kids just saw 5 (or however many) stick figures, colorblind to the detail of the stick figure hanging had a black head while the others didn't. They didn't realize that until the adults pointed it out.

The solution was to multicolor the stick figures.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Well, I think that is why Black History Month might be a good idea, and if the students had really learned black history, they might have learned some of the ways blacks were demeaned, made fun of, and insulted over the years. Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with watermelon - there is nothing wrong with blacks eating it, or whites eating it, or Hispanics or Asians eating it. It just might not have been a good idea to include it in a lunch specifically designed to celebrate blacks and their history.

reply to post by kaylaluv


I agree with black history month being a good idea. I haven't always felt that way, but I've never understood the depth of ignorance to current public school education, either. What they teach (and don't teach) is a night/day difference to what standards were in the 80's and try as I might, I just can't make the comparisons in a way to say things like Black History isn't needed.

Now I agree too with saying Native Americans and others could stand to have something ..but we get fast into not correcting an issue with crappy education, but again dividing the nation along lines to make one group special over another. That's a line hard to stay right with, given the problems our education system literally creates for society ..but we have to try, right?

As far as Fried Chicken and Watermelon for a specific Black History event? I really don't blame the kids, as it seems it was innocent ignorance on their part... I think it was 100% correct for adults who DID know better, to step up and say something.

Perhaps they really had no clue that it's been a derogatory and hateful stereotype to black people and about black people for many generations. Perhaps that ignorance means things are changing ...but total ignorance isn't the best way, I'd think. Awareness without concern for it, trumps unawareness of the issue itself.

redhorse

ketsuko

Hoosierdaddy71
The ghetto Olympics sounds like something from Saturday night live.
How did anybody look at that menu and not see a problem? Fricken idiots.

Well, if they went online and researched Soul Food and pulled the menu from there ... then maybe not, especially if they really weren't operating from a place of racial animus but one of racial innocence, you know one of MLK's vision.

This! This here.

Some kids researched soul food, and didn't even realize there was a racist aspect associated with watermelon. That is progress. As long as we keep obsessing about petty, non-reasons to be offended we will only perpetuate the racial divide.

Exactly. It's mostly a good thing that they were ignorant. As Morgan Freeman says, the best thing we can do is stop talking about it.

February 28, 2021

Thanks to ATS member EndTheMadnessNow, we're able to close out Black History month by spotlighting African American ANTHONY JOHNSON..a pioneer in American slavery litigation.

Pioneer Anthony Johnson: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I mean, who doesn't like Fried Chicken, Watermelons and Cornbread?

That sounds good AF 🤤

originally posted by: Arnie123
I mean, who doesn't like Fried Chicken, Watermelons and Cornbread?

That sounds good AF 🤤

Cornbread is better with Collard Greens than with Watermelon, in my experience.

I bet the black kids were upset they couldn't eat the meal.

chicken is good but I dont like cardboard bread or eating water.

Its only racist if youre out looking for racist things.


"You might be racist if you bait people into believing something might be racist" - Jeff Foxworthy..maybe