He referred to this girl as "dark meat" and then placed a KFC crown on her head. There are some things wrong here. Terribly wrong.
Like this kid, who asked this young "dark" girl (I am not sure of her ethnicity) to prom by adorning her with a KFC crown and giving her a sign that read, "I prefer dark meat. Prom?"
Gone are the days of simply finding the object of your affection after class and asking, "Hey, Stacy, will you go to the prom with me?" These days, if you're not thinking of a clever play on words, like, "Lego to prom," complete with a Lego prom king and queen diorama, you don't care about prom. Or maybe you want to go the edible route and get a pizza delivered to your boo's house and the pepperoni spells out "Prom?" Still not good enough? What if you filled her room with 350 pink balloons?
No matter how you do it, just know that simply asking someone to the prom is lame and you have to try harder.
Let's keep unpacking things here. As I mentioned earlier, I don't know this girl's ethnicity; nor do I know the boy's. But I do know that her skin is darker than his, and his sign made it very clear that because of her melanin, he prefers her. OK, no problem. To each his own. But why does her skin tone have to be a factor in whether or not he asked her to prom and how he asked her to prom?
It's never acceptable to liken a woman to a piece of meat. And then to add the other layer of colorism onto it? Sheesh, it makes it so much more deplorable.
And you'd think that since he wrote the sign, he could be more eloquent, maybe create a real sentence. Maybe he could have complimented her skin tone (assuming she's black): "Your black is beautiful" or "You are black girl magic," or something—anything but "I prefer dark meat."
Still unpacking. The crowns. The KFC crowns. Dark meat is a chicken reference, but it's also objectification. Anything that refers to girls or women as something other than girls or women, yeah, that's objectification. Let's also not pretend that we don't know that combining chicken and black people for the sake of humor is a slippery racist slope.
Sure, the young fella thought he was being funny and creative with his "dark meat" joke, but the misogynoir that's in this promposal is frustrating. Did his mom see him making this? Did she laugh or urge him not to ask the girl out that way? Did his father take him to the store to buy the crowns? What I am wondering is, what has this boy's parents taught him about how to treat women? He is our future, and it's looking pretty Trump-like.
I don't know the relationship between this KFC king and queen, but she seems like a good sport who took the promposal as a hilarious and charming joke. She looks happy, and I'm pretty sure she said yes—otherwise those flowers would have been nothing but petals at his feet after she beat him with the bouquet.
There's no denying the colorism and sexism issues here, but is this racist?
The worst type of racism is when you think you're on the right side of it. There is no right side of racism. Some likely wonder, "How is it racist when he's taking her to prom?" That's like asking, "How was massa racist when he was attracted to and laid with black women?"
What do you guys think: racist or just a cute promposal?
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