LETTER TO THE EDITOR | ‘Thanksgiving is a racist holiday’

The expanded claim:

Thanksgiving is a racist holiday because the turkey is white meat. By centering a pale, bland protein at the center of the table while relegating darker meats (the dark meat of the same bird, plus ham, sausage, etc.) to side status, the holiday structurally privileges whiteness. The stuffing, pale as a colonial manifesto, is then packed into the bird—an act of literal internal colonization. Cranberry sauce, the only red element, is quarantined in a side dish so it cannot “contaminate” the main course. Pumpkin pie is served last, after the white meat has already asserted dominance. Even the holiday’s color scheme—orange, brown, and cream—mirrors a 17th-century European landscape painting more than any Indigenous harvest palette.

The Pilgrims didn’t just take the land; they took the menu and made sure the white part went on top.

He further argues that the problem begins even earlier, with the turkeys.

He claims that part of the reason Thanksgiving is racist is that the food the turkeys are eating is not Black. The corn, soy, and grain mixture fed to them is almost entirely pale yellow and beige, he says, which means the birds are being raised on a diet that excludes Blackness at the cellular level. This, he insists, is why the meat itself ends up so white. His proposed remedy is to dye the turkey feed with an edible black dye so the birds can “consume Blackness daily” before they are slaughtered. He maintains that only once the feed is blackened will the resulting meat stop reinforcing the holiday’s racial hierarchy.

Letters to the editor reflect the views of their writers, not The Fostoria Free Press.