{"id":55,"date":"2009-03-19T10:41:59","date_gmt":"2009-03-19T10:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp\/?p=55"},"modified":"2009-03-19T10:41:59","modified_gmt":"2009-03-19T10:41:59","slug":"obama_fingers_-_surprise_food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/2009\/03\/obama_fingers_-_surprise_food.html","title":{"rendered":"‘Obama Fingers’ — Surprise, Food Has Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Obama<\/span><\/p>\n

I thought this was old news.<\/strong> The link to the report from Deutsche Welle<\/a> I’m adding here is dated March 10. But the story hasn’t been widely seen.<\/p>\n

In short, a frozen product called “Obama Fingers” has appeared in German freezer cases: just pieces of fried chicken (with curry sauce, yikes). When asked if anyone was aware that a racial, uh, problem arises when you link an African American “brand,” even a presidential one, to a fried-chicken product, the Fingers spokeswoman basically shrugged her shoulders and said, “Warum?” <\/p>\n

We Germans don’t pay attention to such things. <\/p>\n

Now, it could be that such non-culinary distractions are easy to overlook — if you believe that food doesn’t have meaning. But it does.There’s no such thing as value-neutral food. Food and race, for example, go together like … rice and beans, gefilte fish and horseradish?<\/p>\n

“They could have made a full Obama Finger dinner if they added Wassermelone<\/em>, lol.” <\/p>\n

It’s not exactly a secret that blacks have borne the brunt of Aunt Jemima Uncle Ben advertising as well as wildly racist food “humor” for decades and decades — you may know what “alligator bait” is. And that hasn’t been limited to the U.S.: guess what some folks call Cadbury bars (phrase starts with an N).<\/p>\n

Nasty fingers will poke everywhere, so it’s smart to poke back.<\/p>\n

For an automatic alert when there is a new Out There post, email jiweinste@aol.com<\/font><\/a><\/ST1:PERSONNAME>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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I thought this was old news. The link to the report from Deutsche Welle I’m adding here is dated March 10. But the story hasn’t been widely seen. In short, a frozen product called “Obama Fingers” has appeared in German freezer cases: just pieces of fried chicken (with curry sauce, yikes). When asked if anyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[68,67,69,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-55","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"tag-fried-chicken","8":"tag-obama","9":"tag-race","10":"tag-racism","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}