Paula Dean and her all black waitstaff

[Losethem (imported)]

I remember my nursing textbook saying that people in the South ate soul food. Just try telling a white person in the South that they eat soul food, or try serving it to them randomly and see how fast you get hung in a tree.

Frankly, I think this whole Paula Deen thing is being blown out of proportion. Should she have said certain things, probably not. But really people, take it for what it is and get past it.

--LT

[moi621 (imported)]

Now a GWTW themed event is a

P.C. sucks.

Moi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9VoLcP7xGI

[moi621 (imported)]

there's nothing racist about any of those foods. What is racist is when someone uses those foods as a way to racially stereotype others.

I have known Black people not to eat watermelon at company picnics. It took a while to figure out why.

And I have had discussions with some about this unique cultural trait.

"They" maintain it is racist. And we have to fall in line with "them", for P.C. sake.

Moi

[Dave (imported)]

I have known Black people not to eat watermelon at company picnics. It took a while to figure out why.

And I have had discussions with some about this unique cultural trait.

"They" maintain it is racist. And we have to fall in line with "them", for P.C. sake.

Moi

Why do you believe racism didn't exist?

When I was 18 years old and freshman in college a black student told me I was the first and only white man ever to shake his hand.

That's all I am going to say about racism.

I started the thread to make fun of Paula Deen who should have known better than to admit these things in the goofy and ignorant way that she did. No one is a saint but to admit without regret is poor form. That type of stupidity is enough to get the extremes of right and left on any subject carrying on and shrieking like banshees...

It's the same with her weight problem (she hid it and went out to sell a pill for it) and the same with her cooking which has some of the highest fat recipes I've ever seen.

[considering (imported)]

The Food Network has only shown that they'll cave in to a fear of retribution. Whether the lady was candid, too candid or just not bright in making her admission, The Food Network has recast itself as an old Testament Prophet and, were it possible, would have had the lady stoned. It is their privilege, I suppose, to do what they did but since they've raised the bar to include anything utterance every through all of time, I think it only fair if every employee of the network, whether on camera or not, be given a polygraph and asked if they have ever used any sort of racial, sexual or religious slur in the whole of their life. Any person connected with the network who fails should be immediately fired and word of that given to the public. These public pilloryings of noted persons has to have a point at which someone realizes that many of their motives are hardly noble but reactionary to pressure of the few. One would hope that Ms. Deen would consider legal action against The Food Network. What they have done is effectively say that telling the truth, even an unpleasant one, is wrong, that seemingly they would prefer a lie however inartfully told.

[Paolo]

The fat content of her food isn't the problem.

It's all the sugar and wheat flour and various other products she heaps in on it.

All that high-carb garbage. No wonder she developed diabetes, tried to hide it, then got in to pimp Novartis, I think it was?

The woman disgusts me, racial slurs or not.

[Sweetpickle (imported)]

I think you're overlooking some background on the racist foods issue.

Blacks in the south in the period when these stereotypes came into use

were poor and uneducated. They did not eat off white linen with silver

and porcelain. Whites had "refined" and highly structured eating habits,

and thought of blacks as unrefined and ignorant.

Whites couldn't eat cheap fried chicken at dinner, too messy. Or watermelon.

Foods that blacks might flaunt. And carp. And yams.

The English have always looked down on all foreigners that way. I think

some of the Australians think of the aborigines like that.

Anything that poor or ignorant people do can be looked down on.

[jemagirl (imported)]

Yes, but why is fried chicken an offensive racial stereotype but not BBQ? Why aren't all those other stereotyped ethnic foods offensive? Native Americans have almost as many negative stereotypes as blacks, but I serve Indian Fry Bread to them without offense. None of it makes any sense to me. Every Soul Food Restaurant in town sells fried chicken. How did it become a negative stereotype? Were I trying to be rude and insult someone, it wouldn't occur to me to try to link them w/ a delicious food.

Transward

I maintain that there is no such thing as racist food, only racist people. Therefore I cannot answer your question.

[StefanIsMe (imported)]

With crackers.

Sorry, had to say it.

You just gave me my first honest burst of laughter of the day. Thanks!

[transward (imported)]

Because there are the images of the "negro" with a white-toothy grin holding a slice of watermelon and spitting the seeds out.

There were lots of "names" associated with this image that I don't want to revisit on the page or in my mind. But think of the worst black-face minstrel show and then add a dozen ra

cial epithets that we don't use anymore.

I have known Black people not to eat watermelon at company picnics. It took a while to figure out why.

And I have had discussions with some about this unique cultural trait.

"They" maintain it is racist. And we have

to fall in line with "them", for P.C. sake.

Moi I suppose this makes a certain amount of sense, but it seems a lot like the scene in Blazing Saddles where the Black Sheriff, threatened with slaughter by the good citizens of Redrock, pulls his own gun, sticks it under his own chin and shouts to the crowd, "Keep back or this N****r gets it!" They are saying to a bunch of mouth breathing troglodytes, newly crawled out from beneath a slimy rock in some dismal swamp, "Keep back! Unless you stop being racist assholes, I'm going to refuse to eat this delicious food here, and there's no way you can make me." As always, living well is the best revenge, and it seems to give ignorant jerks far too much influence over how you choose to live your life.

I think the Buddha's Sermon on Abuse is relevant here.

the Buddha said: "If a man foolishly does me wrong, I will return to him the protection of my ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go from me; the fragrance of goodness always comes to me, and the harmful air of evil goes to him."

A foolish man learning that the Buddha observed the principle of great love which commends the return of good for evil, came and abused him. The Buddha was silent, pitying his folly. When the man had finished his abuse, the Buddha asked him, saying: "Son, if a man declined to accept a present made to him, to whom would it belong?" And he answered: "In that case it would belong to the man who offered it."

"My son," said the Buddha thou hast railed at me, but I decline to accept thy abuse, and request thee to keep it thyself. Will it not be a source of misery to thee? As the echo belongs to the sound, and the shadow to the substance, so misery will overtake the evil-doer without fail."

The abuser made no reply, and Buddha continued: "A wicked man who reproaches a virtuous one is like one who looks up and spits at heaven; the spittle soils not the heaven, but comes back and defiles his own person. The slanderer is like one who flings dust at another when the wind is contrary; the dust does but return on him who threw it. The virtuous man cannot be hurt and the misery that the other would inflict comes back on himself." An insult has only the power over us that we choose to give it. And if we refuse to accept the abuse, there is no need to pass up all those good eats.

Transward