Skuzzy,
I'm not going to draw you a picture, but I'll be blunt and I figure you may need to lock the thread afterwards. I am very suprised you do not know or understand this, but it's a historic issue.
For many many years, a typical stereotype of black people was spread by whites who deliberately intended to portray black people as not quite human, and they caricatured blacks by drawing cartoons. These cartoons deliberately gave the black people monkey-like features, grossly oversized lips, and commonly portrayed them as eating "typical" southern food such as watermelon and fried chicken.
It was so widespread that even non-racist people accepted these caricatures as normal simply because they were all over the place. But the intent of these cartoons was NOT to portray black people as friendly, cute, or as "friends". They are in many cases simply degrading. Sure there are versions that aren't quite as blatantly disgusting, but they are merely watered down versions of originals that portray black people as stupid animals.
Why do you think Disney's "song of the south", and certain scenes from Disney's "fantasia" have been, and always will be, voluntarily censored in the US? Because the portrayal of black minorities in those movies are direct reflections of a broad societal assumption back when those films were made, that black people were not as human as white people were.
Again, I am a bit shocked that you are not aware of this part of our nation's long and racially charged history, but I guess I made an assumption that "everyone knew" about this sort of thing. I grew up going to a magnet school in San Diego, riding a bus to a poor, predominantly black school for over an hour each day as part of a deliberate school integration program, so I suppose I was closer to this part of US history than many people. But believe me, it is a real part of our history and it's taken active efforts in the last couple of generations to squash this sort of pervasive and subtle racist portrayal of minorities.
If you don't believe me, you may want to head over to a local university and audit a course that covers US history over the last 80 years or so. Remember as recent as WWII, the Korean war, and to some extent even the Vietnam war, black military members were relegated to menial jobs simply because "everyone" thought they were genetically inferior to whites. They didn't think it was a racist assessment, rather they were basing their opinions on underlying cultural attitudes, attitudes spread throughout the US by things as simple as a cartoon caricature of a dark skinned monkey eating watermelon.
Fast-forward to a university professor, who is old enough that he ought to know about the desegregation riots and all that came with that era, coming up with a test question linking our nation's most powerful black woman and a watermelon. Can you now see how this could possibly bring up flashbacks to those caricatures that were intended to demean and degrade black people?
Delete, edit, or close as necessary... This is a very emotionally charged issue and unfortunately a lot of people are not aware of WHY certain items are so touchy to minorities. In this case, the reason goes back 200 or more years.
