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Comment by jamescun | Hacker News Reader

I'm not an American, but I believe they are referring to the racist meme that associates fried chicken to Americans of non-white ethnicities.

This differs from the UK where fried chicken is more associated with the lower classes than a particular race.

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I've never really understood the nature of this stereotype - who doesn't at least like fried chicken? It's like saying, 'You know the Mexicans, they just love ice cream.' Of course they do, it's ice cream.

Symbols don't make sense without context.

If you paint a swastika on a synagogue people will be upset, but not because they dislike shapes with 90 degree angles. If you say that black people love fried chicken people will be upset, but not because liking fried is unique to black people or inherently bad. It's mostly because it's a stereotype associated with a period in US history when it was socially acceptable for a white mob to lynch a black man for being rude.

The fried chicken stereotype exists for blacks, not non-whites. It's a popular southern food, and the origin of the stereotype goes back to the time of slavery. Chickens were one of the few animals slaves were allowed to raise on their own and the dish was easy and cheap to make.

Exactly. I hadn't even thought of this as being racist until I started reading comments here- in London especially, KFC ripoffs aren't a race thing, they're a class thing. I'm reasonably sensitive to people being racist, but given that this article is about London, I'm finding it hard to see the racism.

And also coffee shops are associated to white people.

Wait. I must not have gotten the memo. I hate coffee and love fried chicken.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/80400530/pdf/DBri...

>white American adults drink about three times as much coffee as blacks.

White people with taste often have the same tastes as black people. 'Twas ever thus.

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. We are talking about stereotypes here, and this is clearly a stereotype that's around - see the "hipster in coffee bar" "memes" in which portrayed people are exclusively white.

As Shaq says, "black people don't drink coffee"

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/shaquille-o-...

Africans and Jamaicans do in Canada, all those hipster coffee shops where they hand make each cup and charge $6/cup are full of Caribbean and Somalian diaspora. All the weed cafes run by Jamaicans all serve Blue Mountain coffee too and the rasta behind the counter will go on endlessly about it's health benefits if you ask them.

This stereotype, ironically, is mostly upheld by lower income white people who stereotypically consume large quantities of ... fried chicken.

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