The Racism Bogeyman
December 13th, 2007by Doc Opp
Falcon’s owner Arthur Blank is in the middle of a media firestorm this week about some supposedly racist statements he made about Michael Vick. Here’s the rundown:
Michael Vick ran a dog fighting ring and was put in jail until 2009. Many animal rights activists want him suspended from football forever as a punishment for animal abuse. The media asked Blank if he would consider bringing Vick back. Blank said that it may be a moot point if Vick wasn’t in shape to play football, didn’t keep his conditioning up, and ate to much in the way of fatty foods.
Only, instead of “fatty foods” Blank said “fried chicken and fries”. Apparently fried chicken and fries are demeaning to minorities. Huh?
I love fried chicken and fries. When I was an undergrad in the south I basically lived off of fried chicken strips and fries - it was a staple of my diet. And in grad school KFC was my dinner of choice. Sure, minorities eat fried chicken, so do non minorities. And importantly, fried chicken and fries are MUCH more associated with the concept “fatty food” than with the concept “minority”. Were Vick white, Blank would probably have said the same thing.
Here’s the thing. There is real racism in the world. Serious, terrible, life changing racism. And then there’s this - a completely innocuous statement that you have to actually work hard to interpret as racism. Why is the media focusing on this? All it does is trivialize the notion of racism - its like the boy who cried wolf - if we’re inundated by claims of racism for a comment like this, we’ll find it hard to believe in racism which has teeth.
I mean, for goodness sake, if we really want to reduce racist phrases, lets take a look at the blatant examples thereof in rap lyrics. That lyrics like that go unnoticed while the media scrutinizes words about dinner selection… its a real shame…
December 13th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
It was a tactless thing to say, given that fried chicken is traditionally “soul food”–or at least is seen that way in the north and Midwest. (My mom was from Texas, where it’s not soul food, it’s just food.) In that sense, the comments play into a stereotype of what the black diet is like, so I can understand why some people might be rankled by that a bit.
But on the whole, I agree with you: as far as racist comments go, this one just doesn’t rank, especially when I haven’t heard any accusations about Blank running the Falcons in a racist manner. His support for a black QB up until this point, through Vick’s somewhat tumultuous career, would in fact seem to belie that point.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
“(My mom was from Texas, where it’s not soul food, it’s just food.)”
And Blank is from Atlanta, where the same is true. When I heard the charge of racism, I couldn’t even figure out what the supposedly racist statement was until the reporter elaborated that fried chicken was a black food. Who’d have guessed?