Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Fire: IKEA Celebrates Juneteenth With Fried Chicken And Watermelon

A Georgia IKEA is under fire from leftists for trying to honor Juneteenth with a specialized menu.

In an internal company email obtained by TMZ, the European furniture chain explains to staff why it decided to curate a special menu in its famous on-site kitchen (which typically sells Swedish meatballs and other snacks as an added bonus for shoppers).

“To honor the perseverance of Black Americans and acknowledge the progress yet to be made, we observe Juneteenth on Saturday, June 19, 2021. Look out for a special menu on Saturday which will include: fried chicken, watermelon, mac n cheese, potato salad, collard greens, candied yams.”

The announcement unsurprisingly set off a wave of backlash amongst employees at the Atlanta location, prompting over 30 workers to call out sick in protest of the stunt, which they called racist and stereotypical. Employees later demanded a new menu be created with their input.

(Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)

Situations like this leave average people who aren’t obsessed with identity politics scratching their heads. We all know that the façade of wokeness exists to create an un-winnable scenario for everyone it encounters: accept your latent racist tendencies in shame, or deny them and be labeled a supremacist.

Anti-racism initiatives and critical theories aim to destroy all good-hearted attempts at cultural reconciliation by labeling them micro-aggressions or by implying that certain groups are inferior to others. As a result, because all things are viewed through the prism of race and aggression, all things become potential weapons to aggressively alienate the races further and further.

And that’s exactly what happened here. A plate of food—good food that all sorts of ethnicities love—is being weaponized as evidence of racial bias that doesn’t necessarily exist, but now has a heartbeat because an angry group of self-appointed victims gave it one.

That being said, come on, IKEA. You had to know that the pitchforks were coming out for this one. I can just imagine a white conference room with white halogen lights and six white middle-management Swedes deciding gleefully that yes, some fried chicken and watermelon is a perfect idea for Juneteenth in the South. If this is what they settled on, I would love to know what ideas hit the cutting room floor.

(Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

The whole mess is just such a perfect metaphor for the overwrought, woke liberal pressure cooker that America finds herself embracing. A gaggle of corporate buffoons trying to carve out their slice of liberal marketing, check. An identity group mad that their identity is being celebrated after violently demanding more recognition, check. Said corporate buffoons tucking their tail and wetting themselves at the first hint of blowback, despite not really having done anything wrong, check.

And that’s the funniest part of the whole story. Naturally, IKEA immediately folded and begged for forgiveness, even inviting a few representatives of the mob to sit down and draft a new menu—one that would be racism-free and that would build bridges rather than tear them down.

So what did the employees choose for their newer, woker, more inclusive menu?

Fried chicken, mac n cheese, and collard greens. Almost exactly what had been chosen already.

Thanks, Atlanta, for healing this nation’s scars.