Cowards on race, or why am I afraid to broach the topic of fried chicken?

On my way to dinner with friends last night, I realized how infrequently I have dinner with friends. I have lunch with coworkers from time to time. I even had lunch with a friend a few weekends ago. I’m not saying it never happens; just very infrequently, and that's partly of my doing—I don’t like to go to restaurants often because it gets expensive and I’d rather spend that money on theater, and because it’s hard to find vegan food in restaurants (or annoying to ask about what any given dish is cooked in). By the time I’d refinanced and become vegan, I let one group of friends—the one that at one point regularly met for dinner—that I preferred we eat in more often, but it didn’t matter, because we’d kind of quit eating anywhere. One of us had another baby, cementing the shift that started when two of us (them?) moved to the outer suburbs and started having kids. And that’s where my situation comes in—I could initiate something, but I don’t want to, because of the reasons established above.

But I digress. Last night, I met Marcela, who’s in town for a short time between work stints in Kenya, as well as a Tasha, a mutual friend of ours, and H, a another friend of M’s. M picked a place with lots of vegan options (how sweet!) a few blocks from my office—I had no idea Busboys and Poets served vegan food! The vegan quesadilla was pretty good—definitely tasted like vegan cheese, but it was still good. But it's not vegan food I’m not writing to tell you about.

Remember I wrote last weekend of my disappointment with Clybourne Park? I nonetheless appreciate what it was trying to accomplish. One of the themes was our national cowardice, as noted by Attorney General Holder, in talking about race. I realized last night how true, and personal, that was.

It wasn’t when H, who is black, said that it wasn’t good for the country to have a black president right now, because the President’s blackness was bringing out that much more BS to interfere with his ability to govern. I don’t agree with that sentiment, but it’s an interesting point. It was when we’d moved onto something much more mundane in theory--as I wrote that, I realize I know better than to refer to food as something mundane--that the cowardice realization hit:

H.: Have you been to Russia House?

A.: No. Why am I gonna go pay for Russian food when I know how to make it and it’s not gonna be as good as my mom’s, anyway?

H: I don’t go for the food; I go for the vodka.

A.: I’m not really into vodka.

H: What? A Russian who doesn’t like vodka? That’s like a black person saying they don’t like fried chicken!

I was about to say, ‘you’re also sitting here with a Colombian who doesn’t like coffee,” but I was stuck on black people and fried chicken. First I thought, is that really true? Then I thought of two black friends in particular who I was pretty sure didn’t care for fried chicken. And thirdly, and most to the point, I quickly realized that I would never actually call them up and say, ‘hey, do you like fried chicken, being black and all? Just wondering.’

Considering how interested I am in food-—food itself, the culture of food, the socioeconomics of food, food identity, etc.—-calling people up and asking them about food is a very natural thing for me. And it’s not like I’d hesitate to ask my Asian friends whether they liked tofu (or something), or to ask my Latino friends about arepas. So what is it about black people and fried chicken that made it off limits? Is it because there is so much BS going around with regard to the Obamas, that racial stereotypes strike me as that much more distasteful?

Something to think about.

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On a lighter note, we were talking about something else—I don’t remember what, or what I said—it was something silly—when H said to me, “I love you. Never change.” I said, “that’s what my gay husband’s boyfriend said to me!”