Watermelon stereotype

The watermelon stereotype is an anti-Black racist trope originating in the Southern United States. It first arose as a backlash against African-American emancipation and economic self-sufficiency in the late 1860s.

After the American Civil War, in several areas of the south, former slaves grew watermelon on their own land as a cash-crop to sell. Thus, for African-Americans, watermelons were a symbol of liberation and self-reliance, while for many in the majority white culture they embodied a loss, and threatened loss, of dominance. Southern-white resentment against African Americans led to a politically potent cultural caricature, using the watermelon to disparage African Americans as sloppy, childish, unclean, lazy, and publicly embarrassing.