Disclaimer: I am not trolling, I am an autistic person who doesn’t understand so many social nuances. Also I am from New Hampshire (97% white), so I just don’t have any close African-American friends that I am willing to risk asking such a loaded question.
Dated a lovely black woman back in my late 20s, she took me to meet her family like a month in, they were all super sweet. Dinner was fried chicken, hominy, mustard and collard greens, slaw and Mac n cheese, her grandmas fried chicken made me forget I ever cared about my grandmas fried chicken. Who the fuck doesn’t love fried chicken? Okay sure, vegans, but other than that?
And seriously I get the whole stereotype being a deep seated bunch of white people fuckery, but like, fuck that, let’s eat.
My guess is that if they had got a local Soul Food place to cater a whole spread, and the fried chicken and watermelon was part of the rest of the stuff you just mentioned, it would have gone over better. (I bet Charlotte has a bunch of places that would have done that for them). Maybe they could even have done some research and provided the context I am just learning now, in this thread.
But I think this was planned by committee, and that committee planned it all in a half hour so they could break for lunch earlier. So they got a bunch of buckets of chicken (I hope they weren’t from KFC), and someone went to Publix and bought a bunch of watermelon to cut up, and they called it all good. And that committee had nobody on it that pointed out how bad this would look without better planning. (In other words, no black folks…)