Eating While Black: Watermelon, Fried Chicken and Frozen Yogurt

I always hope no one catches me.

I look over my shoulder as I reach for the spoon. I dish it onto my plate as quickly as possible. I make sure to follow it with big helpings of quinoa and quiche, hoping they’ll soften the impact of the offending fruit. This has been my mid-day routine every day at work since my office began serving watermelon at its company-sponsored lunch. My operation only intensifies when fried chicken hits the menu.

It’s not the selection itself that bothers me: Watermelon and friend chicken are decidedly delicious foods. But they’ve also been stereotypically associated with “my people” for quite some time, and that makes them a lot harder for me to swallow.

I place “my people” in quotes because although I am black, I have been told most of my life that I am “not really that black.” Over the years, my not-that-blackness has emerged as a dominant influence over my racial identity. There’s even a food-related term for people like me: They call us “Oreos.”

That means that when colleagues I’ve only spoken with over the phone finally meet me in person, they greet me with comments like “Huh, I didn’t know you were black.” Network executives have read my scripts and said, “I would have never guessed that a black person wrote this.” (Sometimes, this is followed by “So, can you write black?”). Casting directors have told me that if I could just “be more, you know, black,” I’d be easier to put on TV. The identity cuts the other way, too. An organization of black activists I used to work for said I could never truly be one of them because I grew up in a suburb called “Breckenridge,” play the flute, speak French, and don’t hate the police.

Being accepted as a member of white suburbia comes with a complex set of challenges that extends down to my daily diet. Because they have coded me as “not that black,” the white people in my life are comfortable airing their deepest insights into black people, and often, those little observations concern food. A boyfriend once told me: “I’m not trying to be racist. I’m just saying that on campus, there was a Subway and a KFC right next to each other. There were never black people at the Subway and there were always black people at the KFC. I’m not saying the stereotype is bad, I’m just saying maybe there’s something to it. I’m just saying.”

And because of what he was “just saying,” I’m hyperaware of what I’m ordering if it’s remotely black-people related. I love me a good crispy chicken wrap, but sometimes just can’t bring myself to order it, lest someone tacitly think, “of course.” If I get the urge to order breaded chicken while I’m out, I try to dress it up a bit—Cordon Bleu (pronounced with the appropriate accent, natch) usually does the trick. If it’s a catered affair and fried chicken is the only choice, I sometimes wonder if I should mention aloud that I’m really in the mood for halibut and am disappointed at the presentation of the poultry, or just lie and say I’m vegetarian.

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Ok, I admit I sometimes skip the watermelon in the grocery store even though I love it! What about you?