My history lobe is a bit rusty but after emancipation, black folks grew a lot of watermelon because it was easy and cheap to grow and it sold well. It was a symbol of the time as well as former slaves reaching financial independence. As usual, shitheads will turn any symbol against it’s people as a tool of oppression (see DEI as a recent example) so watermelon was associated with black people in the worst way. Now the racism has died down a lot but to this day some people will say (and think) that black people love watermelon and think of it as a poverty food.
It goes way deeper but that should be the semi-accurate gist.
Looking it up it looks like it originally spread from a racist context. Not sure how reliable Know Your Meme is but here’s one of the pages I was looking at. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/finally-synthetic-watermelon
Seen plenty of other bad ones on the Facebook and the Twitter before I quit though.
Wait, there’s a WATERMELON racist stereotype? What’s wrong with liking watermelon? Everyone likes watermelon, right?
There’s also a fried chicken stereotype for African Americans. I think it had some historic context too.
Racists are weird, never mind.
Do racists not like watermelon?
My history lobe is a bit rusty but after emancipation, black folks grew a lot of watermelon because it was easy and cheap to grow and it sold well. It was a symbol of the time as well as former slaves reaching financial independence. As usual, shitheads will turn any symbol against it’s people as a tool of oppression (see DEI as a recent example) so watermelon was associated with black people in the worst way. Now the racism has died down a lot but to this day some people will say (and think) that black people love watermelon and think of it as a poverty food.
It goes way deeper but that should be the semi-accurate gist.
Aww damn, didn’t know about the origins… :(
Welp, I’m gonna choose to remember the funny non-racist ones.
The “Finally, Obama’s last name” one got a chuckle out of me.