#9 Chicken

(A JAM C) Now I know what you're thinking... Chicken? CHICKEN?! There's no way this guy is going to claim chicken as an exclusively mulatto thing!

If you're thinking that, you're right. I just want to tell you about the power of chicken. If you're white, you must realize that black people love chicken. To just say that they love chicken isn't saying enough though. Black people are passionately, aggressively, wholeheartedly, and madly in love with chicken. Don't ever touch a piece of chicken that you even think belongs to a black person. Trust me on this one. All chicken is off limits. Chicken wings, chicken nuggets, chicken salad, KFC, grilled chicken, chicken dumplings, chicken pot pie, even chicken a la mode. If you see a black person eating chicken a la mode, don't stare, just keep on doing what you're doing. It is impossible for black people to surprise me when it comes to the myriad of ways that they eat their chicken.

A poem I wrote 6 years ago best explains why biracial people can also claim chicken as something they like.

I was in the motherland (South Africa in particular) on a mission trip, and we were reading the Psalms from the Bible. We were asked to write our own Psalm, and I wrote what came to my heart. I won't share the whole thing, but I will definitely share the relevant part of the revised version:

With my Lord, and my Sword

I take Satan to school

From West Beverly to East Cranwich

And I looked at the fool

And said 'make me a sandwhich.'

'What do I want in it?

You've got to be kiddin'

Cause even though I'm half black

I WANT ME SOME CHICKEN!'

It wasn't necessarily the most Biblical of poems, but it got to the point. I wish I could read it out loud, because I say it with a lot more gusto. Anyway though, the thing I'm trying to say that this poem illustrates is that the power of a black person's infatuation with chicken is so strong that it grabs a hold of anybody with any African blood in them, and it sweeps them away. Whenever I go visit my brother Jason in Connecticut, we seem to have this unspoken rule. There WILL be extra chicken. Case closed. If he ever comes to visit me, the same rule is in place. Chicken will always be aplenty.

Friends, I can't even begin to tell you how much I love chicken. My favorite food went from Chinese food, to lobster, to chicken wings as I grew up. I could eat chicken wings every day for the rest of my life. After that, I would go with chicken salad. Some of you may be thinking "chicken salad? really?" Well let me tell you something... if you make chicken salad right, you have just made a masterpiece. Chicken salad made the right way is heavenly. I'm drooling just thinking about it. After that, I have to go with anything from Chick-Fil-A... oh Lord, don't even get me started.

I know I'm not alone in this. Chicken is just so versatile. You can make it any way you want to, and it can taste like anything in the world. Now, I don't want to discredit the fact that white people like chicken too. I mean, come on... the most famous chicken person in the world is white, Colonel Sanders. There's just something powerful about a black man and his chicken though. Black people made Colonel Sanders rich, but Colonel Sanders also made black people rich too. The people who founded Church's Chicken, Popeye's, and Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles owe a lot to Colonel Sanders. He was the pioneer.

Words can't even begin to describe how thankful I am to the many black men and women who came before me and cultivated my love for chicken. It is so easy to become passionate about what other people are passionate about, because you can just see the natural outflow of their heart towards the object of their heart's desire. In this case, black people have opened up my chest, and implanted a piece of their heart in mine. For that I will be eternally grateful.

I'd also like to give a shout out to the first person who ever looked at a living chicken, ignored the look of a chicken from the outside, and thought to themselves "hmm, I think that would taste good." How right you were my friend... how right you were.