White supremacist haters took the most exception to black pleasure and enjoyment. American media of the late 19th and early 20th centuries also thrived on the idea that black Americans had a pathological weakness for watermelon. Post-Civil War newspapers were filled with predictable anecdotes about black fruit thieves often met by armed plantation owners who argued that their melons were an irresistible draw.
Medical journals wrote in scientific earnestness of the black patients — always black patients — whose intestines were clogged by watermelon seeds. An report by Dr. Holliday of Harlem, Georgia, described how he broke down a bowel obstruction using rectal manipulation, a tobacco enema, and castor oil. Such intemperate men could not be trusted. Neither could such patently ridiculous stories, repeated until they masqueraded as truth.
But the thing is, stereotypes tell on the stereotypers more than the vilified. White people tried to implicate black appetites and black character through watermelon. But they revealed the lengths to which they would go to define propriety and argue that black people were simpletons who needed to be controlled.
And here was this stereotype controlling me. And for what: something as mundane and harmless as whether I ate a piece of fruit. I polled black friends if they felt even the faintest watermelon unease. One had actually observed a white woman asking a black coworker if they had taken all the watermelon from a catering tray, clearly a funny quip in her mind.
A former boarding school student assiduously dodged watermelon slices in the cafeteria. There was another friend who refused a free watermelon on the beach, afraid that the white man offering it was not being generous, but trolling her in a nasty joke. Much like agonizing over watermelon, another friend mused that she had packed leftover fried chicken for lunch that day but had hoped to sidestep the stigma by eating it real proper-like, with a fork and not with her teeth tearing the flesh off the bone.
Many of my online friends reveled in giving the finger to the white gaze, though. They ate watermelon with gusto whenever and wherever, laughing on the inside all the while — or on the outside, head thrown back Zora Neale Hurston-style. Some grew up in Caribbean or other countries where white colonialism had ruled, but they were free from the everyday indignities of Jim Crow.
Their confidence stung me a bit, even if their responses were not intended as rebukes. Apparently, I had not passed lessons in racial fortitude and carefree living in an unblushingly prejudiced society. More than a few pointed out that white people in the South are also great admirers of watermelon and fried chicken.
All this I understood intellectually. But that telling pause and pivot, when I turned self-consciously from the melon and browsed the berries, lingered in my mind. After the fruit tray epiphany, I decided that the only way to go was self-induced exposure therapy. I would eat watermelon in public, in white company, in work settings, from roadside stands. Newspapers amplified this association between the watermelon and the free black person.
The juvenile freedman is especially intense in his partiality for that refreshing fruit. Two years later, a Georgia newspaper reported that a black man had been arrested for poisoning a watermelon with the intent of killing a neighbor. The primary message of the watermelon stereotype was that black people were not ready for freedom. In these racist fictions, blacks were no more deserving of freedom than were children.
By the early 20th century, the watermelon stereotype was everywhere—potholders, paperweights, sheet music, salt-and-pepper shakers. A popular postcard portrayed an elderly black man carrying a watermelon in each arm, only to happen upon a stray chicken.
Edwin S. The long history of white violence to maintain the racial order was played for laughs. It may seem silly to attribute so much meaning to a fruit. And the truth is that there is nothing inherently racist about watermelons. Whites used the stereotype to denigrate black people—to take something they were using to further their own freedom and make it an object of ridicule. It ultimately does not matter if someone means to offend when they tap into the racist watermelon stereotype, because the stereotype has a life of its own.
Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. The cartoon showed a man sitting in the bathtub referring to "watermelon flavoured toothpaste". In another separate incident in an American football coach in South Carolina was first fired and then reinstated for allowing players to smash a watermelon while making ape-like noises in a post game celebration. The Museum of Fine Arts has apologised for the "challenging and unacceptable experiences".
Should black Americans get slavery reparations? Should the term 'racist' be redefined? One thing Americans find hard to talk about. What happened during the trip? How did the museum respond?
Why is 'watermelon' a racist term in the US? Related Topics.
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