No Stupid Questions

Watermelon and chicken were two of the ways that black people started supporting themselves after being freed from slavery. They were agricultural products they could raise with very little investment and start building wealth from essentially nothing. Racists, not wanting them to prosper, mocked them for their preference for these things, but it's important to note that the mockery didn't stop them from supporting themselves with the foods they were able to produce. To this day black people enjoy these foods, and there's nothing wrong with them enjoying the foods. If you're with your black family, and you want to celebrate your own heritage, this isn't actually a bad way to do it.

However.

When a corporation, particularly a corporation run and staffed by white people, makes a choice to celebrate a significant black cultural date by presenting people with foods that white people used to mock black people, it reads as mockery. (This is especially true in North Carolina, a place where racism is rampant and open.) At best, this is tone deaf; someone along the way should have said "hey, do you think any black people will feel like you're doing this as a racist attack?" And if any one of them had answered "yes" to that question, they wouldn't have done it. It made it through the pipeline to being something they actually did because nobody in the decision chain cares about the racist overtones of what they were doing.

If you're going to do anything to celebrate black history or black culture, failing to ask any black people what they think about it is racism. Cultural sensitivity would have meant getting some input from a few black folks about how they think it should be celebrated--and, had they done that, they would have avoided this mess.

And, just in case anyone was wondering, the VP in charge of this situation is white.

Fried chicken has historically been used to mock black culture, not celebrate it

Probably a lot of black families actually do have fried chicken, barbeque and cookouts are apparently a big part of the festivities traditionally.

If you find yourself becoming such good friends with a black person that they actually invite you to one of these cookouts, don't bring fried chicken, or watermelons, or most of the stereotypical "black" foods, they're considered black people food because the post civil war south fostered an environment of chronic black poverty on purpose that led to black families tending towards raising cheaper animals and growing cheaper crops for their own consumption.

So a white guy cracking watermelon or fried chicken jokes or bringing that kind of stuff to a black celebration comes across less as trying to share in the culture and more as rubbing salt in a, in many ways still open, wound.

As for what you should bring, bro just ask. Just making it known ya want to bring something for folks to enjoy will be good and appreciated, and if they decide they'd like to take you up on that, they'll either give you a recipe off their list of stuff they've decided they want or ask what you think you can handle making and take your word on that if anything you feel confident making sounds good. Who knows, maybe that year will go down as the year that corned beef ya mentioned becomes a staple of the annual cookout!

I'd argue it depends on who is serving it and what their intentions are. I don't think it's necessarily bad. I went to a local Juneteenth celebration and the food stands were serving some fried chicken, collard greens, jollof rice, etc.

This question reminds me of when that school in NY got in trouble for serving "stereotype food" for black history month.

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

I have the same confusion as you do, OP. It appears to be a liked dish by all accounts across many races, upbringings, or religions. Unless you have dietary restrictions like Vegan or something.

I'm assuming this is one of the things that racists ruined. Like yeah people like fried chicken, but racist made it a "bad thing." It's kind of like now, you got to look out for the number 88, vikings, the okay sign, the gadsden flag, or punisher flag. It's not that mentioning fried chicken is necessary bad, but people are on edge because Nazi's are back. 1 of the dog whistles might be a coincidence, but you start collecting them and I start side eyeing my co-workers more.

Those damn dog whistles need to end, so we can all enjoy fried chicken and watermelon on Juneteenth.

Historically fried chicken and watermelon are stereotypical foods associated with black Americans as part of minstrel shows, which were usually performed in blackface, and other racist portrayals of black people. Watermelon in particular was turned into a negative racial stereotype because growing watermelon was one way that emancipated slaves could be financially independent.

Fried chicken has been associated with enslaved black people since before the Civil War, because chickens were the only livestock they were allowed to keep. Well into the 20th century there were also white-owned restaurants and brands that drew on these stereotypical images over the protests of black people.

At best it is very ignorant of the history of racism in the US to have a fried chicken and watermelon special on Juneteenth, because the thought process is just black people holiday = fried chicken and watermelon. At worst it’s just signaling to other racists, which is definitely not an unviable business strategy in some parts of the US.

Others have given you solid answers on why the chicken and watermelon thing was really stupid so I'll try to answer from the Irish perspective on the second part of your question:

You can serve me corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's day as long as you're not being a dick about it. I'd probably consider it a nice effort actually if I happened to be abroad on the day.

My dad used to love corned beef, cabbage and potatoes with parsley sauce. It's a grand meal but not my thing.

If you were a unionist who served it to me in a leprechaun outfit I'd be inclined to tell you where to go though.

Edit: I hope this answers your question. It's a good question and the answer is nuanced so if I can offer you more perspective let me know, I'd be happy to help.

Irish people are white.

They didn’t start out that way in America, because race is a social construct used by the state to achieve its ends and when a shit ton of Irish people were coming over to the United States to escape the manmade potato famine the terms of their acceptance into American society was that they’d be doing the shittiest work.

American society dealt with this contradiction by adopting the racial pseudoscience that put Irish people below “real whites”.

Whiteness isn’t something innate that can be measured objectively (although pseudoscientific methods claim to be able to do so!), it’s a basic subjective measure of where one stands in the white supremacist power structure.

The white supremacist power structure informs all sorts of stuff like can you get a loan, can you get insurance, do you need to be more afraid of dying to the cops than usual, how loud can you play your music, pretty much every aspect of life in America.

After Catholicism became more widely accepted in the us, and a shit ton of Irish people became cops (so that the white supremacist state could surveil their communities) Irish people were eventually considered white.

Black people in America aren’t white. That might seem like an obvious thing to say, but it’s important to be clear that the process of integration that the Irish immigrant wave went through was never really offered to black Americans.

A person could argue that we are living through that process right now and I think there is a process of integration going on but it’s not making black Americans part of the broader white American group but instead giving black Americans a seat at the table of capital. That’s a significantly different deal.

Anyway, there’s this thing called racism, which is where a society uses the completely made up category of race to discriminate against groups of people to achieve its ends.

Some examples of American racism are slavery, segregation, redlining, the treatment of agricultural workers, the treatment of rail workers, etc.

What’s important is that racism is when a society (or its members) discriminate against some group. There is power in the discrimination and it’s being used against a group.

If a bank decides not to lend to white people it doesn’t hurt white people because there’s literally all the other banks that they can go to and get loans. There is discrimination being used against a group in that example, but it has no power over them because they’ll just go to all the banks that (and I’m quoting directly from a Bank of America sign here) don’t “serve coloreds”.

Okay, so why am I saying this? We’re talking about food!

There’s an old stereotype that black people eat watermelon and fried chicken. There’s a long and storied history to the food stereotypes of black Americans but I’ll spare you the tangent and just say it’s visible in all sorts of Jim crow and segregation era media and arts and crafts stuff.

If you got one of those “antique mall” type places you can probably see some of it there.

During and before Jim Crow and segregation, those stereotypes were deployed to depict black Americans as at best ignorant country bumpkins and at worst subhuman apes.

So to serve the stereotypical food of a racist caricature on a day that is intended to remember the freeing of the last slaves is at best thoughtless reproduction of a racist stereotype and at worst malicious intentional reification of a racist stereotype!

But why isn’t it racist to serve corned beef on saint patricks day? Well for one thing, saint Patrick’s day isn’t seriously celebrated as a remembrance of Irish American culture or the experience of immigrants almost anywhere in the us. It’s one of the big four, a drinking holiday with a dress code.

It’s also not perpetuating harmful stereotype to run a homemade Reuben special on saint Patrick’s day. No one bites into a Rachel and thinks “lol, those dumb micks are only good for driving spikes, drinking and swearing allegiance to Rome” or “if only they could multiply the way they multiply, maybe they wouldn’t be so poor, sad!”

Now that’s not to say it’s racist to prepare or eat fried chicken or watermelon. As a southerner I got strong feelings about both.

But pretty much it boils down to Irish people are white.

E: I fucking made a stupid ass mistake and substituted greenwood for the freeing of the last slaves when describing the context of Juneteenth. My dumbass brain was going “tell em about how greenwood and Parrish street were about giving black Americans a seat at the table of capital, instead of equality under white supremacy” over and over again the whole time I was writing this stream of consciousness ass post and when I couldn’t find a place to shoehorn it in the ol’ brain took over and did it anyway. Thanks to fryhyde for pointing it out!

Fried chicken should be served EVERY day.

About a century ago, blackface was a form of comedy where white people would make their faces black and put on comedic shows. They would take some elements of black culture, like mimicking accents or saying they love fried chicken and watermelon, and make fun of black people for being idiots.

Giving out fried chicken to an event like this feels like you don't really care about the event. Instead, it is a token gesture at best where the decision makers thought "well, black people like fried chicken, so give them that."

Watermelon and other red food is served on Juneteenth. But, if watermelon is the only red food there, they likely didn't pick it because of cultural sensitivity to the holiday.

I think it's not really a holiday for sharing culture. I don't know, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Adopting black traditions is a touchy topic in the US. Some encourage it, and others decry it as appropriation. Considering that its a holiday commemorating the end of owning black people, I can see how 'appropriating' a tradition on that day might be found distasteful.

That said I personally think the concept or cultural appropriation is nonsense. You do not own your culture. That is for everyone. What you own is your own experiences. Those are yours and no one else's.

I'm a white man from Ukraine migrated to America in 1989.

I love fried chicken, I live in the south of America the deep South and man oh man do we have good fried chicken!

Fried chicken is a universally loved dish and is only stereotyped by the most ignorant of people!

Not only should fried chicken be served for Juneteenth it should be served on every holiday as well!

I gotta say, I genuinely love this issue.

Like I'm a left leaning generic progressive white guy with a degree that includes a Sociology minor. This shit is so fascinating to me.

I don't know many black people, personally. Maybe 10 humans I know (like... Might send a social media message to because we are casual acquaintances) are black. I live in a rural area. Two are vegan, but the rest do indeed love fried chicken. We joke, I'veasked. I mean fuck, So do I. What meat eater doesn't? It's such a bizarre stereotype from the start. I believe I've heard it has to do with slaves being given the wings and appendages of chicken? But I don't know the veracity of that. Seems plausible?

Anyways, this.

Ignore what everyone on the internet says. They are wrong. Eat what you want. Just make sure everybody participating is comfortable. If you're not sure then ask them directly and listen to what they say.