Denver Public Schools Menu: "Southern Style" Chicken and Collard Green in Honor of MLK

This didn’t go as planned:

Friday’s DPS lunch menu, headlined “In Honor Of M.L. King,” offered students “Southern Style” chicken and collard greens – a meal that some say is an offensive caricature of black culture.

In a statement issued Tuesday night and posted on the school district’s website, DPS spokesman Michael Vaughn said the meal was “highly insensitive in light of certain hurtful cultural stereotypes still harbored in parts of our society.”

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the greatest leaders and civil rights heroes in our country’s history,” Vaughn said. “We are working with all of our schools to ensure that our students appreciate the enduring legacy of Dr. King’s work and life and the extraordinary importance of his message in our community today.”

It was a white liberal that threw a fit over the menu:

In December, Jennifer Holladay, mother of a Denver kindergartner and former director of Teaching Tolerance – a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center – saw the lunch menu for the next month and noticed the menu listing for Jan. 15. Holladay said she was instantly upset.

“Denver Public Schools are great because they are so diverse, but this sort of thing undermines the positive things that kids can get in school,” said Holladay, who is white but whose husband is black.

Just so much talk about race. It’s a touchy subject, one that can easily get a person pinched by the opposition. I’m interested in discussing this though.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was from the south. I’m sure that all people in the south have at one time or another had Southern Style chicken and collard greens. It’s the stereotype applied to blacks as eaters of fried chicken that made this offensive.

So, does that make this post from the blog the kitchn offensive:

Today is a holiday for us (and for many of you) in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Here’s a quote from a great article about Dr. King. We linked to it last year and find that it is worth rereading:

“The first challenge in honoring the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is to keep it real. I’m fortunate because some of my colleagues actually knew him as a young man and worked closely with him until his death. They tell me that King as a young man loved to have a good time. He loved soul food: red beans and rice, greens and ham hocks and pigs’ feet.”

We made soul food over the weekend because we were craving spicy, bacon-rich collard greens in their rich “pot likker.” We’ll take any excuse to eat soul food, but Dr. King’s holiday is a better excuse than most.

It says right in the quote that Dr. King loved greens. Why is serving greens offensive then? Perhaps there is a bit of white guilt involved in this controversy.

I agree with the school board president on this one:

Nate Easley Jr., the school board president, who represents northeast Denver, said he thinks there are bigger problems facing DPS than what is on the lunch menu.

“I don’t think people woke up in the morning and said how can we offend people,” Easley said.

“As a black man, the things that offend me more is how we are doing with kids in the district,” he said.

“It’s not having kids graduating and doing well. The outcomes of the district are more offensive to me than someone trying to do the right thing and being offensive.”

“If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive today, I think he would be more concerned about our outcomes of our students than what they are eating to honor him,” Easley said.

Way to bring the focus back to what’s important. I don’t think this was intended to be offensive either. Why create racism where none exists?

What do you think?