The FAT Fried and Tasty restaurant in Melbourne, Australia is being called out for decorating its walls with outdated depictions of African-Americans and The Notorious B.I.G. eating fried chicken.
Australian comedian Aamer Rahman brought the images to attention when he featured them on his Facebook page. In particular there is a poster of an advert featuring ‘Aunt Jemima’ — a stereotypical African-American woman based of old minstrel shows that’s been used to advertise pancake mix and syrup. Alongside Jemima is an image of Biggie Smalls, with the mic in his hands replace by fried chicken. And if that’s not enough, there are also an old white 50s family with guns. Yeah.
An unnamed employee for the restaurant told The Guardian that the images of Big Poppa came from a place of love: “We by no means were trying to be racist, we were merely showing Biggie Smalls as a figure and how much we love him.” He went on to say that he felt the reaction online was unfair. “In terms of the way some people have gone about it, they’ve just trolled our Facebook and social media with no regards for us as a small business, and without hearing our explanation or our side of the story,” he said.
Aamer Rahman became known internationally in 2013 when his ‘Reverse Racism’ routine went viral.
