University Apologizes For Fried Chicken On Black History Month Menu

In Depth

Some of you are probably reading that headline and thinking “oh, this must’ve been a coincidence and it’s just people making a big deal out of nothing.” Yeah, not so much.

Ohio’s Wright State university, who you may vaguely remember as a team that got bounced from the NCAA tournament one time (or maybe that’s Weber State, who the hell knows), found itself in hot water after the electronic menu screens at the school cafeteria featured items like fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread under photos of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other black leaders throughout US history. It’s unclear what sequence of extraordinarily stupid events led to this happening, but Wright State has, of course, removed the menus and apologized:

“I apologize to anyone hurt by the display,” [College President David] Hopkins wrote. “To our credit, the menu was quickly removed. But the larger question remains: Why was it done? I will find out. We will take steps to prevent this kind of behavior occurring in the future.”

No word yet on whether Wright State is planning to cancel their “everybody wear big hooked prosthetic noses” Holocaust memorial weekend or their “everybody make a lot of gong noises and half-assedly switch their l’s and r’s”-themed week-long remembrance of the Japanese Internment, though.

On the one hand, this is funny in a “you have got to be shitting me, how the hell did you think this was a good idea” kind of way. On the other hand, it becomes less funny when you consider that this has happened before: a high school in Concord, California did this exact same thing last year. Oh, and in 2010, the cafeteria at NBC did it, too. Come the fuck on, white people. Could we at least make some new dipshit racist mistakes rather than the same ones on infinite loop? That wouldn’t be better, but it might be more interesting.

On the plus side, this whole thing did lead to a Fox affiliate running this sentence:

Fried chicken is often associated with racial stereotyping in the United States.

Yes, thank you, I’m glad we cleared that up.

Image via Darryl Brooks/Shutterstock.

 
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