Stop It Guys! You're Killing Me!

What is it with white people and watermelon? I went on a Girl Scout trip the summer before my sophomore year in high school. It was a three week trip to Texas and Mexico which included brief stays with host families at the beginning and end of the trek. When I arrived at the first host family's house, the mom greeted me, almost at the door, with: "We have dinner ready! We're having watermelon too!" I was still living in a segregated environment so aside from nuns and teachers, some of my exposure to whites came from TV (as did images of us to them) and between the two, I'd conculded that Edith Bunker was the best prototype for a white woman I'd seen. This woman's joy over serving watermelon just added to my childhood view that they really weren't all that bright and that nervous laughing was a part of their speech pattern. It wasn't until I got home and started sharing some of my "wierd" experiences, that I realized that something racial had gone on.

It's not like I didn't eat watermelon but it certainly was no big event nor something I got excited about. In the summer in Chicago, on any given corner, you could find a man with a truck load he'd just driven up from Mississippi where you could get one for a good price. I didn't jump up and down, run around the backyard and squeal.

All that said, that was 30+ years ago. This mess is recent! Again, I ask, what is with white folks and watermelon?

Oooh boy. First came this incident; and now, from Bellevue, Washington, we get this:

A controversial question given to students during a practice test for a math final at Bellevue Community College has students — and others — shaking their heads because of its lack of racial sensitivity….

The question read: “Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300-foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second.”

The Condoleezza question went on to ask when the watermelon will hit the ground, based on a formula provided.

We’d like to know: If it takes the president of Bellevue Community College 5 seconds to walk 10 feet, and the teacher’s classroom is located 300 feet from the president’s office, how long did it take for this math teacher to get fired?

(As it turns out, the professor didn’t get fired. Instead, he “apologized and requested cultural sensitivity training.” Which is pretty much the first time in human history that someone requested sensitivity training.)

I guess I have another watermelon story. Many years ago, I worked as an office manager at a computer company. I was sitting at the reception desk when a man from the electric company came in to read the meters. He was an older white gentleman and after he'd finished, he decided to stop by my desk to tell me a "fun" joke. I don't really remember it but it had to do with how to get a "colored boy" to make a touch down and ended with "give him a watermelon." He laughed. I gave a blank stare and had the "hee, hee ... riiiiiiight" look on my face. I'm quite sure he hadn't shared that "fun stuff" with any of the cute little blond receptionists in the other offices. I'm still baffled about the association. Heck, though I like fried chicken, white folks seem to be the ones packed into KFC on the regular so I am mystified by that correlation as well. Oh well! Maybe I'm not black enough to understand.

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