A Deeper Look at Our Racial Discrimination Through Food Stereotypes
Feb 6, 2022
A Deeper Look at Our Racial Discrimination Through Food Stereotypes
A few weeks ago, I sat down to write a celebratory Juneteenth blog that highlighted the myriad ways that African Americans have shaped so much of the foods and cooking techniques that we know and love today. As I began reading and learning, I quickly realized how unfairly certain African American foods and traditions have been culturally weaponized and used against Blacks, intended to make them feel inferior to white people and to reinstitute white supremacy. I had no idea how deeply rooted in white insecurity/supremacy these stereotypes and discriminations ran; but needless to say, as a Dietitian who works in and around food all day, every day, I felt compelled to dive in deeper in order to better understand it. Not only to take ownership for any of my own deep-seeded stereotypes, but also to ensure I don’t ever inadvertently weaponize food to my patients.
Food should be a fundamental right. However, even as a first-world country, the United States has consistently shown that poverty, which we know is directly tied to race, limits access to quality health foods only to those with financial means or who live in financially abundant neighborhoods. (For more information on the downstream effects of Red Lining, please see my video and post titled “Demanding Better Access to Quality Food for Our Black Neighbors” from June 9, 2020). As a Dietitian, I intimately know how a person’s insecurities around food can run deep and could even result in unhealthy eating patterns or unfair food bias. Both are unnecessary barriers to accepting health and wellness as our natural rights, as they should be. Adding actual food insecurity and/or having our social system use food as a weapon for perpetuating racial injustice is an outrageous “invisible disease” in which we may all unknowingly partake.
I am hoping to use today’s article to shed light on some deep-seeded food stereotypes that are still perpetuated today. And hopefully, by bringing these harmful tropes to light as yet another form of white supremacy, I hope we can all recognize them as harmful reinstitutions of racial injustice, and work to expel any of these pre-existing stereotypes out of our bodies and our thought processes forever.
Let’s begin by talking about one of the most pervasive of the stereotypes: African Americans and watermelons. Watermelons are a native African crop that was also brought over when Africans were kidnapped from their homeland and taken to America. (Side note: the voyage over to America, which is called the Middle Passage, was horrific for the Africans taken prisoner on these ships. So many of them died of unimaginable, unsanitary and cruel conditions. Considering the brutal conditions of these ships, it’s a shock that any of the crops that were brought along were able to stay alive; but being a hardy plant, the watermelon survived the trip.)
The stereotype around African Americans and watermelons actually did not exist until the emancipation in 1863, and the instigation for the trope was highly politically charged. Free Black people grew, ate and sold watermelons because they were cheap and hardy plants that were easy to grow and delicious to eat. As a result, the fruit quickly became a symbol of Black freedom and Black self-sufficiency which threatened Southern whites. One way ignorant and insecure white people responded to the emancipation of Black people was by reformulating the meaning behind the symbol of the watermelon fruit to represent Black people’s perceived “uncleanliness, laziness, childishness and unwanted public presence” (The Atlantic citation below). This stereotype exploded in American popular culture, so much so that the warped origins became obscure. This is one reason why education on these topics is so important!
Prior to emancipation and the connected racial meaning behind watermelons and African American stereotypes, watermelons had also been a food traditionally eaten by “paupers” because it was cheap, filling and sweet. This is true even in early European cultures when Italian and Arabs were among the very poor. Even then, watermelons were considered to be unclean because they were messy to eat, and you did so with your hands. In fact, wealthy white Americans were just as likely to associate watermelons with white Kentucky hillbillies or New Hampshire yokels as they were to enslaved Black South Carolinians. The racial stereotype only sprung into existence relating to Black people upon emancipation, a direct downstream effect of white supremacy culture and white insecurity.
Another example of racial stereotype and weaponizing food is African Americans and fried chicken. The origins of this stereotype, too, can be hard to place. According to Claire Schmidt, a professor at the University of Missouri who studies race and folklore, this stereotype can be dated back to the release of the movie Birth of a Nation in 1915. This popular movie solidified a lot of pre-existing stereotypes of Black people in society. One scene in the movie depicts a seemingly boisterous and unusually casual group of Black legislators, one of whom was standing up and proudly eating fried chicken amidst the discussions.
Chicken has always been a staple of the Southern diet. It was a particularly important food for enslaved Black people because chickens were cheap, easy to feed and a good source of protein/meat. This very popular movie, at the time, solidified many cruel stereotypes about African Americans. Fried chicken among them. Not to mention, like watermelon, fried chicken is eaten with your hands, deeming them both “unclean” foods, another delineation of “class” and wealth.
If you think that these are old problems and/or that we are post-racial, think again. During the Obama presidency, The Boston Herald published a cartoon of a White House fence jumper offering the President watermelon-flavored toothpaste. How about the high school football coach from Charleston South Carolina who was fired for a traditional post-game ritual he’d do with his players where they’d smash watermelon while jumping up and down making ape noises. You might also remember a dig from Sergio Garcia to his golf rival, Tiger Woods, claiming he’d have him over every night and “serve him fried chicken.”
As we are trying to dismantle racism, we must first start by questioning some of the stereotypes that we may unknowingly participate in. This isn’t to say that Black people can’t still like fried chicken or watermelon. That’s certainly not the case. In fact, people of all racial backgrounds do too! Both are regular staples of the traditional American diet. But whenever we reinstate these stereotypes, even if we mean them to be funny or playful, we are poking at a very real trauma that has pervaded over many decades for Black and African American people. Looking for information like this that is consistent with stereotypes (whether they seem neutral or harmful in nature) will help us dispel damaging stereotypes that can be hurtful and harmful to others.
This is especially crucial for those of us in the healthcare industry or in Dietetics, like I am. It is essential for us to know and understand the history behind these stereotypes so that we not only can work to dispel them from our own deep-seeded racial bias, but also because “not knowing” is not acceptable. We must know because, on the large scale, knowing is a part of patient “best practices.” On an ethical scale, it’s part of how we can be able to better serve populations that we may not personally identify with. It’s part of our JOB to know. An on a moral scale, knowing allows us to bring the empathy and understanding we need in all of our patient encounters, so that we might be better health and wellness allies for our community.
REFERENCES:
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/how-watermelons-became-a-racist-trope/383529/