School Apologizes for Serving Fried Chicken and Watermelon for Black History Month

A California school is under fire for planning to serve fried
chicken and watermelon for Black History Month. Black students
and parents at Carondelet High School rushed to the media
complaining bitterly about the items on the lunch menu at the
all-girls school.
According to the outraged students, the watermelon, fried
chicken, and cornbread items on the menu are offensive to black
people. Why? Because the food is served by white people?
For whatever reason, our people tend to choose the wrong
battles and lose focus on the real enemy.
Carondelet bought into the drama. The school immediately
removed the items from the lunch menu and apologized for
offending the sensitive students and their parents.
“I’d like to apologize for the announcement and any hurt this
caused students, parents or community members,” Principal
Nancy Libby said in an apology letter sent to parents. “Please
know that at no time at Carondelet do we wish to perpetrate
racial stereotypes.”
Claire Schmidt, a professor at the University of Missouri,
attempted to explain the social stigma attached to watermelon
and fried chicken.
Schmidt tells NPR.org that chickens had long been a part of
Southern diets, but they had particular utility for slaves. They
were cheap, easy to feed and a good source of meat.
But then, Schmidt says, came Birth of a Nation .
D.W. Griffith’s seminal and supremely racist 1915 silent movie
about the supposedly heroic founding of the Ku Klux Klan was
a huge sensation when it debuted. One scene in the three-hor
features a group of actors portraying shiftless black elected
officials acting rowdy and crudely in a legislative hall. (The
message to the audience: These are the dangers of letting
blacks vote.) Some of the legislators are shown drinking.
Others had their feet kicked up on their desks. And one of them
was very ostentatiously eating fried chicken.
“That image really solidified the way white people thought of
black people and fried chicken,” Schmidt said.

Thanks to loyal reader Robyn W. for the link.