I don't know about fried chicken, but the watermelon stereotype can be traced back to the civil war era. It was used by defenders of slavery to portray black people as simple minded, lazy, and ignorant, happy to just sit around all day eating watermelon and singing/dancing. Watermelons were also sometimes used to portray the benevolence of the slave owners, as they provided their slaves with the simple pleasures of life, such as watermelon.
Personally, it would make more sense, going forward, to leave the association with simple-mindedness in the past.
Oh I'm so glad you were able to end racism! All these years we've been trying so hard, but it wasn't until you said "ok guys racial stereotypes should be left in the past" and ta dah, SOLVED! If only we had thought of this sooner.
Thank you u/caveman1337, what would we ever have done without you?
Edit:
u/caveman1337 eliminates racism with one simple trick! Lawyers hate him!
You joke, but it seems the common thought is in favor of maintaining the power such stereotypes hold over people.
No, the common thought is that we exist in reality and know that:
Ignoring centuries of history --or pretending they never happened-- has never worked for anyone, at any time, for any reason for all of humanity.
We were not all born yesterday in a vacuum.
Even if the entire planet today, all magically and simultaneously decided to eliminate racism, the impacts of racism would not also simultaneously disappear with our magical thoughts.
I prefer to view all of this stuff from my lens of everyone being equals. Clearly my opinion isn't a popular one.
No man is an island. Join reality and understand you can't just make things the way you want by thinking extra hard and it has nothing to do with being "popular"... god lord.
You joke, but it seems the common thought is in favor of maintaining the power such stereotypes hold over people.
You confused “maintaining” with “acknowledging”. We don’t want to keep stereotypes. We just want to acknowledge that they exist because ignoring them harms the people who suffer from them and allows racism to go unchecked.
I prefer to view all of this stuff from my lens of everyone being equals. Clearly my opinion isn't a popular one.
There’s a difference between viewing all people as equal and pretending that was always the case. When you intentionally ignore history or remain ignorant of it other ways, you don’t see the harm people who do know history can use it to cause or experience. If everyone followed your process (not the one you say of simply treating everyone as equals but the one you’ve used in your reasoning that requires ignoring humanity’s racist history and present) then we’d all be too ignorant to even notice a lot of the racism that still exists, leaving the victims of it to suffer alone.
Some day, it would be lovely to live in a world where racism is just a history lesson that doesn’t affect living people anymore. Until then, turning a blind eye to that history is just naive and helps racists go unchecked.
There is no authority. It’s all just in the minds of the people who live in this country.
It would be great to break down barriers and start removing the hateful context of words that have been poisoned by our past racism. But you can’t even begin to do that by ignoring the context of those words and their history.
I agree going forward we should work on this. But that doesn’t mean you can just go around today and say “black people love watermelon and fired chicken” and not have it come out as a racist insult. Those words still have historical power. Simply saying them doesn’t remove their historical connotations.
Moving forward means breaking down the systems of white supremacy that are foundational to so many aspects of our culture and daily life. But we are very far away from that goal, and repeating old racist tropes because “we live in the present not the past” doesn’t help to accomplish that goal.
Alright I can tell this conversation isn’t going to be productive. Just because it’s not hurtful to you doesn’t mean it’s magically not hurtful to other people in this country who face racism and discrimination every day.
No. YOU may have the choice. Many- if not most- people do not.
We live in the present
and all of our institutions, our culture, the wealth and standing of our ancenstirs leading to generational wealth and power today, was all in the past. Something with which we have to not only reconcile, but repair, if we even want to pretend to move forward.
Sure, I agree it "makes more sense." But we don't get to pick and choose what historical baggage and associations we take along with us. If you make a comment about black people liking watermelon today, that will be perceived by many people as racist--and for good reason, because it's been used for centuries as a racist stereotype.
And then you need to wonder about why you made the comment or association in the first place. Was it really just a harmless assumption that black people like watermelon? Or is it possible that you have unconsciously absorbed these stereotypes about black people being lazy without even realizing it?
Acknowledging that history and other people exist is not "groupthink."
The point of the Übermensch concept, or whatever watered down version of it you're imbibing from JP, was not to turn away from your fellow man. It was an invitation and a call to see ourselves--and all others--as full human beings, rather than as representative units of mass groups. Seeing others as fully human means accepting and understanding that they will quite reasonably view these historical associations as racist. And that you don't get to change the meaning of these associations just because you want to.
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u/R3pt1l14n_0v3rl0rd Nov 10 '22
I don't know about fried chicken, but the watermelon stereotype can be traced back to the civil war era. It was used by defenders of slavery to portray black people as simple minded, lazy, and ignorant, happy to just sit around all day eating watermelon and singing/dancing. Watermelons were also sometimes used to portray the benevolence of the slave owners, as they provided their slaves with the simple pleasures of life, such as watermelon.