Where Did That Fried Chicken Stereotype Come From?

May 22, 2013 — The golfer Sergio Garcia made a joke about Tiger Woods and fried chicken. (Nyuk nyuk.) Where'd this idea even come from?

Sports-talk radio was abuzz this morning with some comments that Sergio Garcia, the professional golfer, made about his frequent foil, Tiger Woods.

"We'll have him 'round every night," Garcia said. "We will serve fried chicken," Garcia said.

The comment came after Garcia was asked if he would invite his rival, with whom he has a frosty relationship, to his house during next month's U.S. Open. Woods responded to Garcia's tweets on Twitter: "The comment that was made wasn't silly. It was wrong, hurful and clearly inappropriate...I'm confident that there is real regret that the remark was made." (Garcia offered a textbook non-apology apology.)

Wait. This again?

This black-people-and-fried-chicken thing is really old. — it's not even the first time a professional golfer made a joke about fried chicken and Tiger Woods.

What is it with this stereotype about black people loving fried chicken?

I asked Claire Schmidt for help. She's a professor at the University of Missouri who studies race and folklore. Schmidt said that chicken had long been a part of Southern diets, but they had particular utility for slaves. They were cheap, easy to feed, and a good source of meat.

But then, Schmidt says, came Birth of a Nation.

D.W. Griffith's seminal and supremely racist 1915 silent movie about the supposedly heroic founding of the Ku Klux Klan features a group of actors portraying shiftless black elected officials acting rowdy and crudely in a legislative hall. (The message to the audience: these are the dangers of letting blacks vote.) Some of the legislators are shown drinking. Others had their feet kicked up on their desks. And one of them was very ostentatiously eating fried chicken. (1:35:19)

"That image really solidified the way white people thought of black people and fried chicken," Schmidt said.

Schmidt said that like watermelon, that other food that's been a mainstay in racist depictions of blacks, chicken was also a good vehicle for racism because of the way people eat them. (According to government stats, blacks are underrepresented among watermelon consumers.) "It's a food you eat with your hands and therefore it's dirty," Schmidt said. "Table manners are a way of determining who is worthy of respect or not."

But why does this idea still hold traction since fried chicken is clearly a staple of the American diet? Surely, KFC, Popeye's and Church's ain't national chains because of the supposed culinary obsessions of black folks.

"I's still a way to express racial [contempt[ without getting into serious trouble," Schmidt said. (Among the Code Switch team, we've started referring to these types of winking statements as "racist bankshots.")

"How it's possible to be both a taboo and a corporate mainstream thing just shows how complicated race in America is," Schmidt said.

It's also worth citing the great social theorist Dave Chappelle who quipped that when it comes to race and food, people of color suffer from some real information asymmetry.

"The only reason these things are even an issue is because nobody knows what white people eat," Chappelle said.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Christopher Guest at NPR West. (NPR)

Christopher Guest Hearts NPR

May 22, 2013 — Christopher Guest joined Weekend Edition to talk about his new HBO show Family Tree. The filmmaker wanted to personalize his public display of NPR love, and it turned out to be meta, er, mega fun.

Christopher Guest, known as a leader in the mockumentary style after his 1984 film This is Spinal Tap, has a new show on HBO. It's called Family Tree, and stars Chris O'Dowd as a man tracking down his family lineage after receiving a mysterious box from an aunt he didn't know existed. Guest came in to talk to Weekend Edition Host Scott Simon about his career, inspiration for the show and working on a funny set.

Guest has an interesting family history himself; for example, one of his relatives was a ventriloquist who performed for King George III. Guest has been interested in ventriloquism since childhood, and even included himself doing some uppercutting in his movie Best in Show. It wasn't until after the film that Guest learned of his own family connection to ventriloquism in a diary he found among the dozens of boxes left when his father passed away.

That's when Guest realized he might have an interesting subject for a new show. Family Tree even features a sort of ventriloquism (per Guest's handiwork), in the form of a monkey puppet worn by the main character's sister to help cope with a past trauma.

"The monkey tells the truth invariably," says Guest.

As Guest is known for making such humorous films during the interview, Simon asked him if there's a lot of laughter on the set of Family Tree.

"I will not permit that. [pause] I'm kidding." Guest explained, "I think people aren't laughing in the middle of the work; they're laughing before and afterwards. But they're professionals and they do these scenes and we do the work and there's laughter before and after."

And as you might guess, there is no script for Family Tree. He and co-creator Jim Piddock wrote outlines for each of the shows and detailed character backgrounds, but no dialog.

Now, I've asked a whole lot of people to pose for I Heart NPR pictures. Every so often I still get nervous, and because I'm such a big fan, this was one of those times. When I asked Guest if he'd mind posing for us, I showed him some of the previous photos we've taken at NPR West. He had the idea for how to personalize his shot: hold up a picture of someone else holding up the I Heart NPR sign.

"It's funnier this way, right?" he said. So we looked at the gallery on the front of my desk, and when Guest spotted Jane Lynch (who has been in a number of his films including For Your Consideration, A Mighty Wind and Best in Show), he said in an affectionate tone, "Oooh, Jane."

We grabbed her picture and headed out to take his picture. And of course he's right it is meta, I mean mega, fun.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Supporters say Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger's trial isn't just about raw milk: It's also, they say, about the right to get foods from farmers without government intervention. (AP)

In Raw Milk Case, Activists See Food Freedom On Trial

May 22, 2013 — Activists say the case against Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger is about raw milk -- and much more. His supporters have turned the case into a rallying cry for personal food freedom and the rights of farmers and consumers to enter into private contracts without government intervention.

See this

---

Share this

---

Explore this

Reported by

Maria Godoy

Related Topics at NPR.org

community supported agriculture

Producers

raw milk

The Salt

FDA

Around the Nation

Food

U.S.

Home Page Top Stories

News

What is the case against Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger really about? It depends on whom you ask.

To hear the prosecution, it's about licensing, not raw milk: Hershberger, a dairy farmer hailing from the town of Loganville, is on trial this week for operating without three licenses. He's also accused of continuing to sell raw milk to members of his private club after he was ordered not to.

If convicted, the father of 10 faces more than a year in jail and more than $10,000 in fines.

Prosecutors say they aren't debating the safety of raw milk - and the judge in the case has pretty much banned all mention of the stuff in the courtroom. His defense team tells us that one trial spectator wearing a T-shirt expressing support for raw milk had to turn it inside out before he was allowed in the courtroom.

But activists say the case is about raw milk and much, much more.

Fundamentally, they say, it's about personal food freedom and the rights of farmers and consumers to enter into private contracts without government intervention.

"As a mother, I have the right to choose the nutritious foods that I want to feed my son. I don't want the government making that choice for me," says Jen Morrison, a member of Hershberger's Grazin' Acres private food buying club.

In addition to raw milk, she gets beef and poultry raised by Hershberger and his family. In return, she pays a $25 annual membership fee — considered an investment in the farm — plus the cost for each product she buys (such as a gallon of raw milk). Occasionally, her family volunteers on the farm.

Across the nation, private food clubs - where members claim an ownership stake in the farm - have become a popular way to skirt laws that limit or bar sales of raw milk. (The Food and Drug Administration bars the interstate sale of raw milk, but laws regulating intrastate sales vary from state to state.)

Club members argue that if you own a stake in the farm, then you're not technically buying or selling raw milk. But regulators aren't buying it: From California to Minnesota, prosecutors have cracked down on private food clubs selling raw milk.

Some food activists see these cases as an assault on all private contracts between farmers and consumers — which is why Hershberger's case has become a rallying point for the dozens of activists from around the country who've shown up in Baraboo, Wis., for the trial. They've set up camp across the street from the courthouse — in the Al Ringling Theatre, no less - where they're hosting a week of "Grow Your Own Food Freedom" events.

"I'm concerned that producers of other commodities — not just raw milk, but eggs, meat and produce — will start to put burdensome regulations on farmer's markets," says Wisconsin Raw Milk Association board member Margo Redmond, who has been at the trial.

But such fears are misplaced, says Susan Schneider, director of the LL.M. program in agricultural and food law at the University of Arkansas.

Raw milk has special status under the law, says Schneider, because of the public health risks involved. Though raw milk aficionados believe their drink of choice has extra nutritional benefits when consumed fresh from the cow, the FDA says pasteurization is needed to kill microbes that may linger in the milk.

"I really think that this case is about raw milk," Schneider says, "but even more specifically, it's about the right of the state to have some basic public health licensing requirements for food that is recognized as having some potential health problem." And that right, she says, is a pretty well-established legal principle.

Neil Hamilton, director of the Agricultural Law Center at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, agrees. Just because regulators are cracking down on raw milk buying clubs, he says, doesn't mean that other ventures that allow consumers to buy food directly from farmers — such as community-supported agriculture, for example — are in jeopardy. Unlike CSAs, he notes, raw milk buying clubs were devised "as a way to dodge or avoid food safety regulations."

No one has gotten sick from drinking Hershberger's raw milk, notes Pete Kennedy, president of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, which is representing the farmer in the case. So if no one's being harmed, he says, shouldn't consenting adults be allowed to make a private agreement about the foods they want to consume? "Do they have the right," Kennedy asks, "to be left alone?"

Nope, that's not the way the law works, says Hamilton. You can consent to whatever you want, he says, but it still "has to be legal."

With additional reporting in Baraboo, Wis., by Maureen McCollum of Wisconsin Public Radio.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Supporters say Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger's trial isn't just about raw milk: It's also, they say, about the right to get foods from farmers without government intervention. (AP)

Holder Acknowledges U.S. Citizens Killed In Drone Strikes

May 22, 2013 — For the first time, the Justice Department admits that it targeted American-born al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki and that three other U.S. citizens have died in drone strikes.

See this

---

Share this

---

Explore this

Reported by

Carrie Johnson

Related Topics at NPR.org

America

International

The Two-Way

U.S.

Home Page Top Stories

News

Food

U.S.

Home Page Top Stories

News

For the first time, the U.S. government has acknowledged killing four American citizens in lethal drone strikes far outside traditional battlefields, confirming information that had been widely known but has only recently been unclassified under orders of the president.

Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday explaining that only one of the four dead U.S. citizens was explicitly targeted. Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric born in New Mexico, died in Yemen in September 2011 after an American drone fired on his vehicle. Holder said al-Awlaki had become a senior operational leader in al-Qaida's affiliate there, helping to direct an underwear bombing plot aimed at Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009, and a separate, thwarted attack a year later involving bombs placed in printer cartridges in cargo planes.

Al-Awlaki's targeting required approval from several federal agencies and the highest levels of the U.S. government, Holder wrote, and appropriate congressional committees were briefed on the decision a full year before he was killed.

"The decision to target [al-Awlaki] was lawful, it was considered, and it was just," Holder wrote.

Three other Americans who have been killed under the drone program were not directly targeted. Samir Khan, an al-Qaida propagandist, died sitting next to al-Awlaki. And al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son died weeks later in a strike aimed at an outdoor café in Yemen.

The fourth person — Jude Kenan Mohammad — is much less widely known. A former North Carolina resident, Mohammad faced terrorism charges including conspiracy to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder people overseas in 2009. A federal indictment from that year said Mohammad left the U.S. in October 2008, allegedly to travel to Pakistan to engage in violent jihad.

In his letter, Holder characterized the release of information as one step in "extensive outreach efforts to communicate with the American people." Members of Congress and national security experts across the political and ideological spectrum have called on the White House to be more transparent about its targeted killing program, particularly when U.S. citizens are on the so-called kill lists.

But the attorney general said some information would remain under wraps, including a still-classified document that sets out the "administration's exacting standards and processes for reviewing and approving operations to capture or use lethal force against terrorist targets outside the United States and areas of active hostilities." He said lawmakers would get private briefings on that document, approved by the White House this week.

President Obama is scheduled to deliver an important national security speech Thursday at the National Defense University, which will cover the legal and policy framework for counterterrorism operations.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (not shown), in the Rose Garden at the White House, May 16, 2013 in Washington, DC. President Obama answered questions on the IRS Justice Department invesigation. (Getty Images)

Think Obama's In Trouble? That Depends On Your Party

May 22, 2013 — Despite the scandals consuming Washington, the president's job approval ratings remain steady. Why? Reaction is breaking along partisan lines, with Democrats inclined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt.

See this

---

Share this

---

Explore this

Reported by

Alan Greenblatt

Related Topics at NPR.org

It's All Politics

Politics

U.S.

Home Page Top Stories

News

Food

U.S.

Home Page Top Stories

News

Public opinion about the scandals plaguing the Obama administration is decidedly mixed.

Republicans feel that the trio of controversies — concerning Benghazi, the IRS and the Justice Department snooping on media phone records — are evidence enough that President Obama is either running a government motivated by partisan politics, or is badly out of touch.

Democrats, however, are proving to be much more forgiving.

"These things are being used for political purposes," says Lois Yatzeck, a retired minister in St. Louis. "Obama's political foes are taking advantage of it."

Yatzeck's read on the situation is widely shared. Public opinion polls suggest that Republicans are paying much more attention to these matters and are much more likely to disapprove of Obama's handling of them. Democrats, meanwhile, have been more steadfast in support.

As a result, even as Congress and the rest of Washington has been consumed by these issues for more than a week, the president's approval ratings have yet to take any noticeable hit.

"Part of the issue is that people's opinion of the president is already baked in," says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. "These are rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats, not the leaders in Washington, and yet we found this very large gulf between them."

Consider The Source

A walk along Delmar Boulevard reveals that many people are considerably skeptical about the current trio of scandals — and whether they should even be considered scandals.

The retail-and-restaurant stretch runs through University City, a heavily Democratic enclave just outside St. Louis near Washington University. Some people there suggest that the current controversies represent opportunism on the part of Republicans and conservative media figures such as Rush Limbaugh.

"It's the same thing as always," says bookseller Scott Bartlett. "The people I hear pointing fingers aren't right about anything."

To the extent that there have been abuses, as with the IRS targeting conservative groups for heightened scrutiny, Bartlett and others along Delmar shrug it off as business as usual.

Michael Kelley, a high school teacher in University City, says that he's inclined to share Bartlett's skepticism about Obama's political opponents. "There's no doubt that the other side of the aisle is taking every opportunity they have to take advantage of these things," he says.

But Kelley is troubled by some of the stories. He feels there are more questions yet to be answered, particularly in regard to the administration's handling of the attack in Benghazi, Libya, last September.

Still, Kelley says, "So far, I haven't seen a trail lead back to the White House."

Not One Simple Scandal

The fact that there are multiple controversies on the political radar helps to complicate matters. And these are not straightforward stories about sex or money-grubbing.

There's considerable lot of back and forth about these issues and their interpretation. Congressional Democrats may express outrage about the IRS, but in general they have been willing to cut Obama a good deal of slack, as was clear from their questioning of administration officials Tuesday in the Senate Banking and Finance committees.

The public as a whole is more inclined to react strongly to scandals when leaders of both parties say there's something serious to be upset about, says Adam Berinsky, an expert in public opinion at MIT. That's not happening, so far.

Even as more evidence comes to the fore, the minds of partisans may not be swayed by it, he says. That was the case in 1998, when Republicans impeached President Bill Clinton for lying about his affair with a White House intern.

"People pick their teams and stick with them," he says.

It's normal for partisans to defend the leader of their party and their party's brand. What's striking today, Berinsky says, is that so much more of the public thinks in strongly partisan terms than they used to, meaning presidential approval ratings barely budge in response to changing circumstances.

"As with so many stories these days, it comes down to partisanship," says Regina Lawrence, a journalism professor at the University of Texas who has studied reactions to scandals. "Partisan dynamics are so much stronger now even when they were during the Clinton years."

Should Have Known Better

If you cross the Missouri River from St. Louis, you come into St. Charles County, one of the richest sources of Republican votes in the state. Most of the people walking along the brick-paved Main Street of the city of St. Charles are Republicans and most of them are highly upset with Obama.

"People should be outraged," says dental hygienist Sylvia Stone. "People should be disturbed that Americans died in Benghazi and they blamed it on a video that had nothing to do with it."

While Democrats like Kelley and much of the media coverage has been concerned with the question of how much the president knew, Republicans say that ignorance is no excuse.

"The president saying I learned about it in the press — you're either incompetent or being dishonest," says Bob Sutton, a retiree visiting St. Charles from Pennsylvania. He says he believes it's the latter.

Watch The Independents

Obama was never going to gain much traction with either Sutton or Stone. Politically, he has to worry more about people like Robert Baker, a self-described independent.

He voted for Obama last fall but is "terribly disappointed" in the proliferation of scandals that have broken since.

"The president is our highest office and we hold it to a higher standard," Baker says. "Without knowing all the details yet, I would like to think he had his finger on what was going on around him, and it seems like he didn't."

Baker worries that most people aren't tuned in. "People tend to pay attention when it hits them in the pocketbook," he says.

Baker recently lost his job in the disaster restoration business, but he thinks most people are willing to cut the president some slack as the Dow Jones average rises and the economy picks up.

"With unemployment getting better and the housing market getting better, people are getting lazy and not paying attention," he says.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.