Finger lickin' dumb

VIA IHE:

Officials at the University of California Irvine acknowledged Wednesday that serving chicken and waffles at a campus cafeteria in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day was not in "good taste," but said the chef is not being disciplined.

The menu and a sign reading "MLK Holiday Special: Chicken and Waffles" were thrown together at the last minute and not in the "best taste," she said.

I wish someone would explain the persistence of these fried chicken pathologies in our culture. It's wrong, and disrespectful, and stupid, but it's interesting to me that 99.9% folks would agree that it's not appropriate, but I'd love to read a book, or at least an article about how and why this association became so hurtful. Irvine's dining services are an Aramark jawn, and if they are like the Aramark at the Cod's day job, they probably crank out various theme menus for various holidays, without incident. My limited understanding is that the association between fried chicken and black people is a product of segregated trains, but I would welcome further light shed on this. 

Comments

[Ann]

The closest I've ever seen to a real examination of where this trope came from was in an epic MeFi 2008 ElectionFilter thread.

The meat (har) of the discussion about starts here:
http://www.metafilter.com/75675/Elections-are-fun#2301688

But doesn't get picked up on by other posters until a bit further down:
http://www.metafilter.com/75675/Elections-are-fun#2302349

(Basically, unless you want to read all 1600 comments, just crtl-f for 'chicken' and you'll get most of it.)

It was prompted by that fake food stamp mailer that some local Republican group sent out with an image of Obama surrounded by watermelon, ribs and a bucket of KFC.

[cinetrix]

It could be argued that chicken and waffles specifically is an indigenous Californian dish.

[Marco]

All I know about fried chicken is that the best dinners and most modestly priced ones always came from what my spouse-SO likes to refer to as "the church of the fried chicken", which church is in the only denomination that she would ever consider joining.