Students and faculty at Drake University have raised concerns because the school-sponsored Black History Month dinner featured fried chicken and collard greens.

Drake contracts an independent food service provider, Sodexo, that hosted the meal.  The meal has been served at the university before, but this year, Sodexo did not consult the Coalition of Black Students when planning the meal, as they have previous years.

Tess Montgomery, president of the Coalition of Black Students at Drake, said no one from her organization formally complained but the complaints raised by other faculty and students centered on the name and presentation of the dinner.

“They labeled it the Black History Month dinner, when it should have been labeled something like ‘Southern Comfort,’” Montgomery said. “If they were going to name it Black History Month dinner, we would’ve wished that they had some sort of educational component or context to it.”

Sandra Patton-Imani, an associate professor of American studies at Drake who teaches classes about race, said this lack of educational information was more offensive than the foods that were used. She said the reason that collard greens are so often associated with Southern culture is because of their connection to poverty.  Historically, oppressed Southerners could very cheaply obtain greens and that’s why they used the food a lot, she said.

“Nobody’s saying there’s anything wrong with corn bread and collard greens and fried chicken,” Patton-Imani said. “Part of the reason that those are stereotypes about black culture is that they’re popular Southern foods and a lot of black folks come from the South, so there’s a way of presenting it that could have worked.”

Sodexo issued an apology for the dinner saying that they only had intentions of celebrating Black History Month, but realize that they went about it the wrong way.

“As in past years, we should have communicated and collaborated with the Coalition of Black Students on this event in order to make it a learning opportunity for Drake students,” Sodexo said in their statement.

Sodexo will collaborate with the Coalition of Black Students to host a second dinner on Feb. 27, which, according to a university press release, will “provide an opportunity for the student group to raise awareness of historical and cultural issues, including contextual information about food associated with black culture.”

Montgomery said that a few of the options offered at the first meal such as the quiche and the turkey potpie had nothing to do with African American history.

The Coalition of Black Students has already met with Sodexo and put together a menu for the second dinner with similar options to before, but have changed the name of the meal to Southern Comfort and will offer educational fact sheets on the tables and with the food.

The menu still includes items like catfish, fried okra and sweet potatoes, but the group decided not to keep collard greens.

“We decided not to do the greens because people didn’t really like them from the first time, but that still is a historically Southern and African American food,” Montgomery said.  “So the meal was fine, it’s just not all of it was pertaining to black history at all.”

Patton-Imani added that there were numerous other Black History Month events that people in the university community are hosting to celebrate African American culture.  She mentioned one of her students who created a haunted house that is supposed to model slavery in America.  Participants walk through and are sold, bought and yelled at, just as they would have been if they lived as a slave.

Said Patton-Imani: “There is a lot of positive work going on around race as well so it’s unfortunate that that came to be in the way that it did, but I think that they responded very well.”

Published on February 20, 2014 at 12:43 am

Contact: clmoran@syr.edu