Food and the Media

Stereotypes of African-Americans and fried chicken seem to go together in this day and age. People have looked at this as a fact that all black individuals love chicken, even that they smell like chicken.   Sergio Garcia, a pro golfer once made a comment saying,   "We'll have him 'round every night," Garcia said. "We will serve fried chicken." In regards to Tiger Woods coming to his house. What people do not see is that the jokes are old and many black people feel some type of way to these comments. Many people do not know the background on why people use this racial slur or stereotype. When you really take the time to look into this saying; many would like to take their statements back. Even in the black race you can go down the street and ask someone why this statement is racist. I bet they will not give the right reason about it.

               

           In fact chicken was a good response for racism because of the way people eat it. It’s a food you eat with your hands, and therefore decades back they thought it was dirty. They believed table manners were a way of determining who is worthy of respect or not. When Burger King offered Mary J. Blige the opportunity to be a spokesperson for their new chicken wrap, she approached it as a business person. When the commercial finally aired, people of the black culture were in fact furious about the commercial. The people felt disrespected because they choose a black person as their spokesperson to talk about chicken and furious at her for not seeing that they were in fact trying to talk about the black culture. Mary went on record saying, "I want to apologize to everyone that was offended or thought that I would do something so disrespectful to our culture. I would never do anything like that purposefully. I thought I was doing something right. So forgive me." (Rolling Stone)  Even though the commercial was pulled it started a big controversy about chicken, but not only that. In fact it brought out the stereotype that all black people love watermelon and grape Kool-Aid. Many people made this action one of the worst times for Ms. Blige and when she thought it was over, things kept coming and people kept being outspoken about the situation. Many people do not realize how hurtful a statement can be towards someone. Today there are so many people that believe racism is over but in reality it’s here and seems like it is not going anywhere. No matter how much people talk about and want it to stop. It will not the only thing you can hope is that it does not escalate to violence.