I am reminded of this tidbit from 2002:
Supermarket apologizes for fried chicken slur
A Pennsylvania supermarket has apologized for advertising a sale on fried chicken in honour of Black History Month.
Giant Food Stores customer Lance Sellers brought the advert to the attention of the manager of the store in Union Deposit east of Harrisburg.
Paula Diane Harris, president of the Greater Harrisburg Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, said the sign reinforces racist stereotypes.
“Not all African-Americans eat fried chicken, greens and chitlins. We like salad, roast beef, low-fat chicken, just like everybody else,” she said.
The sign read: “In honor of Black History Month, we at Giant are offering a special savings on fried chicken.”
“I showed it to a few of the other customers ... and they all were stunned,” Mr Sellers said. “When I approached the store manager about the problem he had the nerve to ask me why it offended me so much.”
Giant Food Stores has apologized and said the sign was not meant to be offensive.
“It did happen. It was at that one store only,” said Denny Hopkins, Giant’s vice president of advertising. “We had a customer bring the sign to us and complain and we immediately took it down.”
A Pennsylvania supermarket has apologized for advertising a sale on fried chicken in honour of Black History Month.
Giant Food Stores customer Lance Sellers brought the advert to the attention of the manager of the store in Union Deposit east of Harrisburg.
Paula Diane Harris, president of the Greater Harrisburg Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, said the sign reinforces racist stereotypes.
“Not all African-Americans eat fried chicken, greens and chitlins. We like salad, roast beef, low-fat chicken, just like everybody else,” she said.
I used to teach network administration courses, and we had a lot of visiting students, so I used to give out advice on where to eat... I'm believable in that respect, since I'm built like the Michelin Man. Anyway, I used to tell them about the best restaurants in the area for burgers, tex/mex, italian, and "merkin." In the case of the latter, I used to recommend a restaurant called Stroud's, and I always used to always tell my students that Stroud's had the world's greatest fried chicken, but they might want to try the pork chops or steaks, since I'd been told that they had the best chops and steaks in KC too, but I was never able to get past the chicken (though I'd occasionally order their chicken/pork chop combo). Anyway, just after saying that, a student in the back of the room demanded to know what I meant by that? Sort of taken aback, I said that I've heard that they've got really good steaks, but their fried chicken is about all I've ever ordered. So he wanted to know why I was trying to push fried chicken on a black man! HUH??? He asked me if I was going to recommend a place to get chitterlings and watermelon too! I still didn't get what was going on. So he told me that black men ate other food as well. One of my other students turned around and told him that this was his third class with me, and that I started every class out this way, and that I was right, it was the best fried chicken. But if he didn't like fried chicken, then he might want to try the italian or tex/mex food I recommended first! That I wasn't being "racist" (actually prejudiced), just recommending the best places to eat. I was really shocked. Granted there weren't all that many black men or women in my classes (or women in general), but I was really shocked because it never occurred to me that recommending the best thing on the menu could be "racist!"
Afterwards, he came up to me and apologized for his outburst, and one evening when I found out a bunch of students were going to Stroud's, I admitted that the main reason I recommended the restaurant was because I was always looking for an excuse to eat there! During dinner, he really apologized to me, saying that the chicken was the best he had ever had.
Mark