Time for a test of your social sensitivity. The following is a public service announcement that was run by the Tennessee Department of Health. It was broadcast statewide to a comprehensive listening audience, and not targeted in any particular way:
“‘What you eat now can affect you years later. You have a choice in what you eat. Choose to help your heart. Cut down on salt, fat and serving sizes to help your heart. Try baking your chicken, eating a fresh tossed salad on the side and scrumptious watermelon for dessert. Eating healthy foods will help lower your risk of heart disease and diabetes. Someone is counting on you to eat healthy. Heart health is a numbers game. A message brought to you by the Tennessee Department of Health.”
Do you notice anything about this ad that is offensive, vulgar, or politically insensitive? No? Then you’re normal.
But apparently there are people in Tennessee who find this ad “racist”:
The Tennessee Department of Health pulled a radio public-service announcement yesterday after some people complained that it played to racial stereotypes about African-Americans.
Um, ok. I’m guessing that they mean the watermelon and chicken references, which is what Scott Norvell on Fox News speculated.
One radio station in Nashville said they received “a couple of complaints”. So of course they pulled the ad immediately, because God knows we can’t have 2 people in a city of 545,524 be offended.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that people who are offended by this ad are 1) Liberal, and 2) Not originally from Tennessee or any other Southern state. Or perhaps it’s just because it’s Nashville. That city is quite a different place from most of the rest of the state (and then there’s Memphis which I think is officially in another dimension entirely).
But lemme ’splain something to people who aren’t from the South. Southerners eat chicken. We even eat it fried a lot of the time. We also eat watermelon. I have many childhood memories of eating half of a big watermelon in the summer on the deck during a barbecue, or even just a regular meal. And if you have people over, you have watermelon. It simply isn’t strange, and it certainly isn’t limited to people of a certain skin color.
To suggest that simply mentioning chicken and watermelon is racist is just stupid. It’s like saying that the word “salad” necessarily implies vegetarians and is thus somehow discriminatory against vegetarians. Even the NAACP isn’t bothered by this:
”That’s a wonderful advertisement. Tell them to put it back,” said the Rev. Enoch Fuzz, who heads the health committee of the local NAACP. ”African-Americans are dying at a much higher rate than other populations, and we’ve got to turn that around. That’s a stereotype we’ve got to get past. We can’t get sensitive.”
I never thought I would agree with anyone from the NAACP (especially someone named Fuzz), but I have to say this guy is on target.
April 7th, 2004 at 8:59 pm - Edit
I had a Black friend in Chicago many years ago who would have found this very funny, as he once made a nice batch of money off of liberal guilt about this stereotype.
The Hyde Park Art Fair is always held on the hottest weekend of the year, and draws artsy intellectuals from all over the city. My friend loaded the back of his truck with watermelons and ice, dressed in bib overalls with no t-shirt and a frayed straw hat, and sold slices of “Wawdymulyun” cut with an old machete at a considerable markup.