Have you heard about the controversy brewing over NBC’s Black History Month menu? The already embattled network came under fire again on Thursday after The Roots’ Questlove — now a drummer in the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon band — TwitPic’d this image of the dishes being served in NBC’s NYC Studios cafeteria in celebration of Black History Month.
Some Tweeters — including comedienne Wanda Sykes — are particularly disturbed because the menu, selected by NBC’s African-American executive chef, seems to feature cuisine stereotypically-affiliated with people of color.
NBC chef Leslie Calhoun, who made the Down Home Eats, can’t understand what all the fuss is about:
“All I wanted to do was make a meal that everyone would enjoy and that I eat myself. Questlove, who I serve every day and who enjoys my food, requested the neck bone [cooked in] the black-eyed peas and fried chicken, then got off the line, saying, ‘This is racist.’ The next thing you know, people were taking pictures of the sign and asking all the other black people in the cafeteria if this was racist. They said that it wasn’t.”