How America Normalized Racism: Fried Chicken
IN 1997, Tiger Woods won his 1st Masters tournament becoming the first golfer to win a Masters. But that wasnt the history that many remember. The history itself involved Fuzzy Zoeller, a golfer who had won the Masters in previous years, his first being the first tournament he ever did.
Zoeller did have to say a racial slur or say much of anything in this interview. However, the stereotype that he placed in the interview sent shockwaves throughout the world.
This was a hard one to trace down and understand how fried chicken, America’s favorite food, was seen as a stereotype directed solely at African Americans.
To understand a bit deeper, we have to go back to the most problematic movie to ever exist, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. In the scene were congress is led by mostly African Americans, there are scenes where blacks are unruly, drinking, taking off there shoes and in a very telling instance, eating fried chicken while presumably talking to the members of congress.
Many credit this movie to create many stereotypes, some that we will discuss much later in this series.
In 1925, Maxon Lester Graham opened a chicken restaurant in Portland Oregon, Seattle, Spokane Washington and Salt Lake City called Coon Chicken Inn. It was a restaurant that focused heavily on the black minstrel imagery and in order to go into the restaurant, you had to enter through the mouth of a black man.
Many restaurant leans into the fried chicken stereotype towards african americans. Popeyes spokeswoman, Annie can be seen by many as a modern mammy character right down to her speech and mannerisms.
Even though fried chicken is universally loved and enjoyed by many, it can easily be seen as a food associated with african americans than not. Keep in mind, that the next time that you are enjoying that amazing Nashville Hot chicken, that even though everyone enjoys that food, it has a very disturbing history.