Another Year, Another Racially Insensitive Cafeteria Menu
Do these stories happen every year? This was posted yesterday at the Daily Caller:
A California university says it was bad taste to serve chicken and waffles on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Officials at the University of California, Irvine, say the menu of stereotypical black food was served on Jan. 17 — the first day of the school’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. symposium.
The dining hall advertised the meal as an “MLK Holiday Special.”
The co-chairman of the school’s Black Student Union and another student lodged formal complaints.
University spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon tells the Los Angeles Times that the cafeteria staff made a last-minute decision about the menu. She says the intention was to offer holiday comfort food. The company that runs the cafeteria says it will conduct cultural sensitivity training for its chefs and managers.
Last year, the NBC commissary at Rockefeller Center in New York featured this menu:
As somebody quipped on twitter back then, “I’m simultaneously offended and hungry.”
Presumably they too had cultural sensitivity training in response. Is there a firm that first supplies these menus to cafeterias and then the requisite cultural sensitivity training afterwards? OK, I didn’t think so, but why do these things keep happening amongst our enlightened betters in the media and academia?
(H/T: SDA)
Update: Welcome Insta-readers. For a flashback, the links in this post from 2005 to items from Mark Steyn and PJTV regular Scott Ott of Scrappleface dovetail quite well with the above post, both illustrating the often corrosive clash of the two poles of the left, political correctness and multiculturalism.
Yeah, they should save the waffles for Obama’s birthday.
Other than Obama, are waffles ‘stereotypical’ black food? Are we just inventing new BS reasons to be offended? I thought Waffles were Western European food.
Also, I grant that the ‘in honor of blacks, here’s fried chicken’ is obviously an attempt to link the two, but what if someone just serves Fried Chicken and it happens to be MLK’s birthday? Do we have to ban accidentally serving that food on his day now?
And let me be honest, I think a lot of black people do like this food (and so do a lot of white people). If it happens to be that we want to celebrate black culture, and this is part of it, what’s the big problem? Why not have pasta on Colombus day, some vegetarian crap on Ghandi day, and mac and cheese on Jefferson’s birthday?
Everyone with a soul likes fried chicken. Let’s be happy about American culture, instead of pretending this victimized someone.
There never has been anything specifically “black” about a predilection for fried chicken, watermelon, collard greens, etc., etc. These are SOUTHERN favorites.
It would never have occurred to a native Southerner to associate these foods with blacks. That stereotype originated in the Northern cities to which so many Southern blacks migrated. It has since taken on a life of its own, divorced from any present realities.
In any case, your suggestion that we all might enjoy an old-fashioned Southern (or “black”) meal to celebrate King will fall on deaf ears. The last thing the fastidious school-marms of the Left want is for us to CELEBRATE anything or anyone.
They have FORMAL complaints about the menu?
Is there a special form?
Well then, I guess it’s rude to serve maple syrup on Canada Day, and crumpets on the Queen’s birthday, and wine on Bastille Day. How insecure are these people?
The Queen and ethnic French people are white, so they can be insulted with impugnity. Canadians are increasingly non-white, we’ll have to ask their “Human Rights Commission” what we are and are not allowed to serve on Canada Day.
“I guess it’s rude to serve maple syrup on Canada Day”. Well, yes. If you truly understood Canada, you would know that the menu for Canada Day is Tim Horton’s donuts and Labatt Blue.
Blue? Blue? Good grief, man. Get an Ex.
Indeed. Somehow it’s not racially insensitive to have kung pao chicken on Chinese New Year, tacos on Cinco de Mayo, or latkes at Hanukkah, but serve watermelon with fried chicken and all of a sudden you’re a stereotyping racist!
(Personally, I think they should serve collard greens more often, but Portuguese style, with garlic and olive oil.)
That sounds delicious! Could you post the recipe?!
It used to be that at least black people could avoid the cries of “Racist! Culturally insensitive!” when dealing with black culture and history. But IIRC, the chef who came up with the NBC menu was actually a black woman, and that didn’t seem to slow anyone down with the aforementioned charges. Reportedly she was fairly upset about the firestorm of criticism.
Sigh. I wonder whether she was required to take remedial sensitivity training.
There is so9mething really really sad here.
We used to have holiday-0food associations that were looked-forward-to.
Corned Beef and Cabbage, and the list is too long for here.
I don’t see tat menu as “black”–I see it as “southern”. and tasty.
It’s certainly offensive that on the day to honor one of America’s greatest heros, African Americans are deprived of the food they love. Next they would not be allowed to consume water melons on hot summer days.
Question: Is it culturally insensitive to provide tacos and other Mexican foods on Cinco de Mayo?
Keep your mitts off my cerveza.
I would have said margarita, but it seems an American created that in Mexico.
This is the dumb, dumb, dumbest complaint ever. I thought we were supposed to be sensitive the the cultures of minorities. Do the Mexicans complain we they serve tacos on Cinco de Mayo?
Waffles are “stereotypical black food”? Since when?
The combination of Waffles and fried chicken is indeed soul food. My guess is that the leader of the Black Student Union was behind on his quota of filing complaints and picked this to complain about. Sad that he does not know the history of the food as it goes back to colonial times.
These children need to get a life grounded in reality and serious issues. Yes, it is a typical “black” comfort food menu. So what? White Southern folks eat the same food; I’m a white man from the North and it is making me hungry.
Off to brunch of Waffles and Chicken. Yummy!
Idiots!
The solutions is sooooo simple…..We’ll make up the menus for all the holidays throughout the year, and then simply shift the menus forward one holiday….Hopefully that will both avoid such instances, and simultaneously play into the hands of the libs who wish to destroy our entire remembrance of special times and days.
Damn, this is just S-A-D!
Bah – what I want to know is why they added jalepenos to the cornbread? I know some people out west do it, but it’s not a Southern thing!
Because it’s delicious!
next – no beer on st patricks day
I didn’t see waffles on the menu.
Funny, the exact same thing happened at my college and nobody complained or sued or anything, although I did think it was sort of stereotypical. However, it was more like “southern day” than anything else, so as a southerner I thought it was awesome.
Celebrate diversity. But if you mention any diversity that makes us diverse, you are a racist.
Heck, everyone knows they should have served pork chops instead of fried chicken.
This site recommends eating food African-Americans like on MLK Day including collard greens.
OMG! This man who actually knew MLK says, “A favorite meal was the Sunday feast of fried chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas and corn bread.” MLK was so culturally insensitive. How does he rate a holiday?
I’ve got to agree with Larry, above. I don’t think “black” when I hear chicken and waffles. It’s a Southern thing. Being a New England boy, I never heard of putting chicken and waffles together until I was in college, and introduced to the mix by a bunch of Southern friends. All of whom were white. It’s about as offensive as having corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day (even though the dish isn’t particularly Irish).
It used to be that people wouldn’t live their lived looking to be offended at the littlest things. Now it’s expected. Seriously, how thin-skinned can you get? I’m Irish. If people want to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by eating Corned Beef and Cabbage, who gives a flip?
Chicken and waffles, by the way, is delicious!
What, must we now avoid spotted dick & custard on Guy Fawkes Day?
This is terrible; I think everyone should write the California legislators, city councils of San Francisco and Los Angeles, demanding that they ban the establishment and operation of fried chicken restaurants in predominantly black neighborhoods. Why it’s racist.
Any why no menu items that are actually African?
Seems the best way to handle this is to offer a racially sensitive American menu of hot dogs and hamburgers with french fries. Then when someone complains about no special menu, they can answer that the civil rights movement was 40 years ago and African-Americans eat just like Americans now and not any racially specific menu.
I don’t get it, did I miss something here? What’s on that menu is what used to be referred to as “Soul Food”. How on Earth is offering “soul food” (very much part of the black cultural experience) being “racially insensitive”?
Larry Sheldon, agreed. It is southern food except for the bottled water, we need ice tea.
It’s the Aquafino water. It was meant to be Aquafino watermelon.
I know I’m offended, anyone else in?
This isn’t about any genuine feeling of discrimination; it’s about leveraging alleged victim status in order to gain and wield power. As said above, this is, or should be, no more noteworthy than corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day. But you can file a complaint and this not only allows you to shove people around but also, I would guess, tends to insulate you from complaints about your own habits or work, since everyone will be very careful about such things.
Yes, Forest, stupid is that stupid do. Really would you send your kids there to be educated? Food for thought.
Serves them right for falling for one of the greatest scams perpetuated on the liberal, pretty ignorant, I’ve got to feel with it and guilty, and, IMO, pretty dumb white psuedo intellectuals. I’m from Eastern NC. We raised hogs, watermelons, collards, yams, peas (field, crowder and black-eye), turnip, mustard greens and the like. We had salt cured ham, fried chicken and the whole “soul food” thing. That’s what the cafeteria in my segregated, all-white elementary school served. I ate with blacks and found the food they cooked to be not much different than I had at home. My meals now are soul food, Pennsylvania Dutch with a touch of cajun and creole thrown in from the time I lived in New Orleans.
The origins of so-called soul food are probably a grand duke’s mixture of English, western European and black blended by what could be grown and what people liked. The first time one of my liberal college buddies decided to have soul food, he served the greasiest mess I’ve ever had.
BTW, I haven’t noticed that KFC customers are 100% black. These “soul food” days in honor of a black leader are multi-cultural silliness.
Everyone loves fried chicken… and waffles.
I am from MN, but went to grad school in a city in Southern Louisiana. There were two cafeterias, side by side (separated by a wall). One was the unofficial “White” cafeteria which had salad bar, sandwhiches, and generally healthier fare. Over on the “Black” side, it was fried chicken twice each week, blackeyed peas everyday, and all the vegetables had bacon. Yum! I wasn’t the only white to swap sides every once in a while, but I knew it wouldn’t be Doctor approved for me to eat over there every day. No racist signs were necessary to effect this almost complete segregation of the students.
My mother, who is white, moved to Chicago in the 70s and took a pot of black eye pees to a party with a group of black friends. One of her friends ask, “Where did you learn to cook soul food?” My mother said, “That’s not soul food, that is the food I grew up with.”
The truth is that the food stereotypes attached to African-Americans is a purely an invention of Northeastern whites. African-Americans were the only Southerns to migrate north in great numbers and they brought Southern cuisine with them. Racism in the North quickly caused white northerns to label all Southern food as “negro” food. Northern whites were simply to insular to understand that everyone in the South, white, black, rich, poor etc all ate a very similar cuisine.
This has led to many episodes that seem baffling or humorous to Southerners. For example, if a white Southerner mentions eating fried chicken or watermelon in some political or social context, Northerners immediately cry “racism!” because in the North fried chicken and watermelon are “black” food. This is inexplicable to the millions of white Southerners sitting down to the traditional Sunday dinner of fried chicken followed by eating watermelon on the front porch.
Because MLK was a Southerner and most African-Americans are Southerners it seem fitting that we celebrate MKL and African-American history month with Southern staples. People who see Southern staples as derogatory and racist are revealing their own regional, cultural and racial bigotries.
(BTW: Waffles, honey and fried chicken is a dish that most food historians say originated in the Bronx during the 1920s. Like many great American foods, its invention is credited to the innovation of a cook who had to whip up something at the end of a long night that exhausted normal stocks. Supposedly, it was created to feed one the Jazz greats. The two way migration of African-Americans from New York to the Carolinas and Georgia carried the dish back south were it is now considered another Southern disk.)
Chicken and waffles are “stereotypical black food”?
Damn, now I’m gonna have to have a reverse Michael Jackson skin job or give up my favorites.
Can we protest every time we see Al Sharpton gnawin’ away on a filet mignon–also known as “stereotypical white elitist food”?
How times have changed. On the first MLK day, I was in the Navy, somewhere off of the Atlantic seaboard. They served chitterlings and collard greens – the only time in 12 years that I saw chitterlings served on a Navy vessel. We went up and relieved the bridge watch early. A couple of the southerners told me I’d missed a treat, but they didn’t take me up on the offer of cooking them a lutefisk dinner either.
I was listening to Limbaugh discuss this incident just this last Friday when the “outrage” broke. A little while later somebody faxed him a menu from a restaurant in Harlem that had “fried chicken and waffles” listed as the “Al Sharpton”. Apparently, this combination is quite popular in the ‘hood.
So once again, another manufactured incident of “racism”.
If you’re a language wonk and like to look at the root meanings buried in words, you’d find that my last name basically means “Really, really, really white people from Wales.”
So why is it that my family’s dietary staples are being served for “Black History Month”?
It’d be more appropriate for “Appalachian Appreciation Hour,” which occurs on the Umpteenth of Septober. Well, except for the jalapeno cornbread. That’s just wrong.
OK, I am white and Southern…I grew up eating this stuff everyday…would eat it now everyday but trying to keep from dying early…
…and if the cafeteria hadn’t marked the day, there would be formal complaints fired about that.
At my law school the Black Student’s Law Society prepares this exact meal (for sale as a fundraiser) during Black History months.
…what pray tell was the desert/fruit option ?
lol …I am already on enough enemy of the state list already …you will have to figure it out on your own
The ability to be offended by just about anything certainly projects a cultural weakness. Sack up, people.
Nobody is offended that they want $7.50 for that lunch?
There’s the real scandal.
In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King day, we present:
Sashimi platter
kombu salad with ginger or sesame dressing
choice of red or white miso soup
jasmine rise
These same people will be wondering if not saying, “WTF does that have to do with MLK?”.
In fighting so hard to create a cultural identity for themselves, they have succeeded in creating nothing but an identity defined by taboos.
I remember when black people called it soul food and considered it a point of pride. And they were right to, since most ethnic groups have their own type of food, and take great pride in that food, why shouldn’t black people have their own food as well?. But now its racist?? Is there anything now that these PC morons wont call racist? Will corn beef and cabbage be banned on St Patricks, Bratwurst on Octoberfest, enchiladas on Cinco De Meyo, Chow Mein on Chinese new year.
Having each ethnic group have their own distinct food used to be a great thing about america. It was a point of pride for each ethnic group, and added great variety to american food, and added extra distinction to each groups holiday. Now its racist?? These PC tyrants have to be stopped now. They wont stop calling everything under the sun racist, as long as they continue to be rewarded for it, instead of being punished, which is what should have happened. The people that should have gone to racial sensitivity training were not the black cooking staff that wanted to have a distinctive food for their holiday, but the morons that made the bogus racism accusations.
Well, I, as a white person, am highly offended by the offerings of hot dogs, hamburgers, and apple pie on the 4th of July. Exactly what are they trying to say?
Sorry guys but the menu is just Southern Sunday after church dinner. I am a person of European descent who was born and bred in the South. Fried chicken and collard greens? Damn son, save me a place at that table, I don’t care who is doing the cooking. If it’s African – Americans, all the better! It’s home and it’s good eating.
Political correctness is a tool of tyranny.
So I guess KFC and the like should close on MLK Day, so as not to offend anyone. PC is the dumbest thing ever devised.
HUH????
Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles is a Hollywood, California-based soul food restaurant chain founded by Herb Hudson, a Harlem native,
Gladys Knight and Ron Winans’ Chicken & Waffles
Lo-Lo’s Chicken and Waffles
Larry “Lo-Lo” White
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-09-27/best-of-phoenix/soul-man-larry-white/
HUH???
What they should have done, is ask the King family what comfort foods were prepared for family gatherings. If (as I suspect) they included the “menu of stereotypical black food”, but were authentic King family repasts….
Then throw the complaints away.
There is a reason it is “stereotypical black food”, and that is that during that era many, and probably most, black families prepared and ate those foods.
Truth should trump P.C. preferences.
Where was my haggis last week? I DEMAND that you quit ignoring me and my culture. I DEMAND the chance to be offended as well.
It is insensitive to have:
* hot dogs or burgers on Labor Day, since we have to recognize all those smelly, bloody laborers in the meatpacking plants.
* turkey on Thanksgiving, since the United Turkey Workers Union will have a snit fit.
* rice on White People’s day, since it will remind Caucasians what they have to be guilty about.
* food on Farm Day, since we raped the land to feed ourselves. (But there will be a candlelight vigil.)
* arugula and Gruyer Wraps on PC elitist days, since they’d rather simply breathe their own farts than deign to eat that trash.
That’s just normal food. BTW, I had to eat in a soul food restaurant in the Philippines to get pork chops, fried okra, turnip greens and corn bread—like I said—just normal food.
Isn’t it sad that these types of Blacks (or any minority) are their own worst detrators. They are just making idiots of themselves.
My mom was English. Would she be upset if they had a holiday for the Queen & served Yorkshire pudding? When I lived in Mexico, no one seemed offended at traditional Mexican cooking for any of their holidays. Really, get a life.
Yeah, god forbid a black man might have a meal he likes on MLK day.
If only I knew how racist my Irish mother was for serving corned beef on St. Patty’s day (and how insensitive I was when I showed up drunk for that same dinner; oh wait, that was insensitive).
And do Asians complain when we hold the M.S.G. during Asian Pacific Heritage Month?
Or just the D.O.G?
Who doesn’t like fried chicken and watermelon? How did pointing out that someone likes delicious food become an insult? It’s like teasing an Italian for liking pizza or a German for liking chocolate.
This reminds me of that clip showing Frances Fox Piven lecturing Dr. Thomas Sowell on ”what black men feel”.
Fuzzy Zoeller will conduct the sensitivity classes.
I’ll confess. I’m an ignorant northern white Damn Yankee who a) loves greens, with or without fried chicken, b) is angry that the local KFCs no longer have Mean Joe Greens on their menus, and c) until today, has never heard of “chicken and waffles”. What is this dish, please? It sounds interesting.
You know what really sucks?
It’s great food. And you can’t get it often or easily enough. So, for me this is an opportunity lost.
Sigh.
Do we get pierogi and czarnina on Kasimir Pulaski Day?
Yummy except for the collard greens and rice. Country folk food everywhere in the U.S.
So when did fried chicken and waffles become “black food”? I though that fried chicken, and most of the items on the menu posted were typical “southern food” enjoyed by both whites and blacks. So I’m offended that some uncultured moron found it offensive.
Various aggrieved groups have taken to claiming ownership of cultural markers, and have not been challenged on it. In addition to claiming southern food, those speaking for the so-called African American “community” have also laid claim to the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. Native American activists have laid claim to the word “Warriors,” and various environmental groups think that green technologies belong to them. African Americans have even laid claim to ancient Egyptian civilization, and Muslims take credit for developing the scientific advances of the former Byzantine Empire that their tribal ancestors subjugated.
The list of cultural markers appropriated by victims groups is staggering in its length and breadth.
I see others have already pointed out that people serve corned beef and cabbage on St. Pat’s day. My Irish father and his family never took offense, as afar as I could tell. My father enjoyed eating it.
The idea of being offended by a menu is silly. These professionally offended people need to be laughed at.
“Black” or “Soul” food is actually Southern food, just as much of Kosher food is Central European cuisine (minus the pig part).
Much of the southern cuisine, at least in its earliest forms, was developed well before most blacks (who were almost entirely slaves) were even allowed to enjoy it but once in a blue moon.
Maybe one of these student activists should give Gladys Knight a shout out and demand an apology for her racist menu as well as the name of her restaurnat. Sheesh, what a bunch of maroons.
http://gladysandron.net/menu.html
Back in the 80s, when I attended West Point, each February (Black History Month) we had the “Flipper Dinner” in honor of our first black graduate, Henry Flipper. The menu included fried chicken and watermelon. We knew enough even then to know that something was just, uh, wrong with that. While I’m sure the honorary dinner still occurs, I don’t know if the menu is still the same.
I’ve got a solution:
Next year the menu to honor MLK should be lutifisk, potato pancakes, sauerkraut, and for dessert rice pudding with lingonberry jam.
These traditional Swedish foods have pretty much nothing to do with the history of blacks in America.
Will that satisfy the Black Whiners Union?
But seriously, it’s time for everybody to start telling these perpetually offended asshats to STFU, grow up, become responsible adults, and Get A Life. Until they do, they should be treated with open contempt by everyone.
Love me some soul food. Long time ago I worked on a gas co. street crew in Washington DC. 3 black guys and me, the white guy. Lunchtime always found us at one of the many mom n’pop restaurants in city, mostly ‘over in Northeast’. Whether you’re white and call it ‘southern cookin’ or black and call it ‘soul food’, it’s all good. Barbecue and greens, sweet potatos, cornbread and soup beans, mac n cheese, and cobbler. Lots of cobbler. Good times. I miss those guys.
How is it possible that sometimes when things are intentionally done, they are not to be considered sensitive, doesnt matter what was on the menu, what matters is the intent. I’m sure the intent was to serve, but some people are sensitive to race and it’s issues. Sorry that most of the White people that responded don’t, can’t or will not have that sensitivity because sthey don’t understand, were not subject to racism, and will never understand the devaluing of what other people suffered and still suffer. It goes deeper than the menu, deeper than the comment that someone made that KFC customers are 100% percent black, It goes to the fact that white people don’t understand and never will acknowledge or rectify what they did to black people, I don’t care if they had Bastille Day, Canada Day, or any other day…. they will never have a day that will ever forge a true understanding of their racist views, and values…while they joke about comfort food, and what should be ok with black people, they should know that nothing they do, will be enough to erase the stigma of their racist ways….. the magnitude of what they have done to black people is much to great, and yes, sometimes that hatred can be reflected in the smallest ways….. that food may be for comfort but it’s not food that all black people eat everyday…. peas, greens, the intestines of pigs were left over things that white people wwould not eat, they were cooked and turned into meals by black people…. food won’t change our history but neither will this self serving attitude that there is nothing inherently racist…. maybe there is…who knows
“It goes to the fact that white people don’t understand and never will acknowledge or rectify what they did to black people,”
Like my dear dead daddy said when talking with a bunch of black youths who tried to play the white-guilt card, “I was never a slave owner and you kids were never slaves, so you can take your act somewhere else.”
At this point in time, the white-guilt card has lost its meaning, and those using it are just posturing. And if someone is really offended by a menu, they need to seek professional counseling.
Black people are not helpless, emotionally retarded children. Stop infantilizing them by implying that they need white people to solve their problems.