A suburban New York City middle school and its lunch provider are under fire after community stakeholders claim the school was culturally insensitive to its Black student population when it served chicken and watermelon on the first day of Black History Month.
A student said she was both offended and baffled because the fruit dessert, often used as a derogatory stereotype, is “out of season” in the winter.
On Wednesday, Feb. 1, students at Nyack Middle School in Rockland County, New York, were served chicken and waffles with watermelon for dessert for lunch. A menu switch, according to the principal was made at the last minute by the outside vendor hired to design meals for the youth, ABC 7 reports.
The food vendor, Aramark, apologized, recognizing the menu change demonstrated “unintentional insensitivity” that no one expected to be an issue.
Honore Santiago, one of the school’s Black students, said she automatically felt the overcast that the African-American stereotype invokes. She said, “Didn’t think the company was capable of making us feel bad … especially the kids my color.”
According to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, “Before it became a racist stereotype in the Jim Crow era, watermelon once symbolized self-sufficiency among African Americans.”
“Following Emancipation, many Southern African Americans grew and sold watermelons, and it became a symbol of their freedom. Many Southern whites reacted to this self-sufficiency by turning the fruit into a symbol of poverty,” it further explained. “Watermelon came to symbolize a feast for the ‘unclean, lazy and child-like.’ To shame Black watermelon merchants, popular ads, and ephemera, including postcards pictured African Americans stealing, fighting over, or sitting in streets eating watermelon.”
This stereotype injected into pop culture psychology colors why Santiago, her mother, classmates and so many others…
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