#17 Why Do Blacks Love Fried Chicken?

I see this question a lot. It is best answered with the form of another question, why do people from the southern US love fried foods? The Europeans that settled the south, prior to slavery, were largely Scottish, and they brought the well-established practice of frying food in animal fat, from Scotland. This penchant was unlike the English, who preferred boiling and baking their fowl.

This question gets black-focused airplay in the north and western US, while rarely heard of south of the Mason-Dixon, where asking it would signal unrestrained ignorance. Beyond the south, non-southern whites use the question to disparage geographically transplanted blacks, as though fried-chicken has some magical hold on black people. It does not. It is easily and economically prepared, and it taste good.

If the higher calorie and fat content of fried foods is well known, the better question is why higher educated and higher income Blacks continue behaviors, like eating fried-chicken (see study here), when the inevitable result is poorer health? In general, education, economics and social customs conspire to keep blacks tethered to the mind set where any tasty food is good for you, as long as there is plenty of it.

The study does not say, but it may be that better off blacks, who have assimilated certain key behaviors in order to advance (for example speech and dress) seek to experience nostalgia, or to ‘keep it real’ in one of the few places, the dinner event, that holds no immediate threat of disqualification.

Other ideas?

James C. Collier

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