OMG!!! A Restaurant Served Fried Chicken On MLK Day
By Brian Anderson, January 21, 2015.
It’s hard to get through Martin Luther King Day without hearing some fake outrage at a “racist” that had the gall to serve fried chicken. I know, it’s hard to believe that a delicious food enjoyed by most people is racist, but it is. This week’s offender is The Metropolitan restaurant in the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City.
As their MLK special on Monday, The Metropolitan offered up fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes casserole, and collard greens for the high high price of $24. People flip out whenever someone suggests that blacks like these foods, so you can imagine the reaction of doing it on the sacred holiday.
Black Titter erupted with cries of racism, but the funniest reaction comes from The NY Daily News:
Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Adam Firestone, 29, was visiting the casino Monday when he spotted the questionable MLK menu.
“Dude, that’s hella racist, but I’ll probably order it,” said Firestone, who added that others dining at the casino snapped photos.
Outraged, but hungry. You have to admire his convictions almost as much as the fact that he uses the term “hella.”
But the thing is, this “racist” menu was prepared by a black woman in honor of MLK. The AP explains:
Joe Lupo, senior vice president of the Borgata, told The Associated Press that The Metropolitan restaurant chose menu items that were among King’s favorite foods, as documented in numerous historical sources.
“Our general manager of the restaurant is an African-American female who wanted to come up with the menu to celebrate and honor Dr. King,” he said. “We allow our managers to run their restaurants. She did research and came up with an authentic recipe. It’s very clear these were his favorite foods.”
A 2008 article in the Knoxville News Sentinel quotes a contemporary clergyman, Rev. G.H. Williams, a guide at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. Leading a tour of King’s childhood home, Williams said, “A favorite meal was the Sunday feast of fried chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas and corn bread.”
Lupo says the casino’s restaurants offer menus geared toward holidays, including Chinese meals at Chinese New Year, and Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo.
Now, normally things that are racist when white people do it are okay when black people do the same thing, but The Atlanta Blackstar still has issues:
With a country whose racial history is as long and brutal as America’s, there’s a startling array of foods, words, images and messages that whites have used over the years to belittle and derogate Black people. Even today, whites freely pick among them to instigate and outrage the Black populace. So anyone who wades down that path without a working knowledge of American racial history can easily trip over some land mines.
The ABS also complained that the Borgata was, “trafficking in offensive stereotypes as a way to honor King.”
And the reason why Chinese and Mexican foods are okay but fried chicken is not:
The difference is that Chinese food has not been used for generations to mock Chinese-Americans and Mexican food has not been used to belittle Mexican-Americans.
Let me put this all together for you: A black woman, in trying to honor MLK, puts together a menu of MLK’s favorite food and that is racist because a lot of other black people also like fried chicken.
Keep in mind that this was only MLK Day. Just wait until Black History Month. I’m sure there will be protests and pressure to get KFC to close its door for the whole month of February out of respect.
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