What is Allison Bailey's spaghetti briefcase?

[Drastic]

Like the title says really, I'm seeing it all over twitter today and I haven't got a clue what it's about.

If it’s a recognisable trope to Americans, I think a more obvious explanation is that whoever wrote that is an American and knew what they were doing.

Maybe. I'm surprised though. The woke usually prefer their racism in woke form.

Given that it's a racist trope (albeit one a Brit might miss)then there's no way it was written unintentionally.

JH may have liked it without recognising the racism, but she recognised the nastiness as we all did.

She's outing herself as a really snide bully. How embarrassing for her.

OMG the way Joanne Harris has been tweeting lately, I thought she'd been hacked.

it's quite scary how people can turn out to be when they show their real selves.

I googled it like you said.

It brought me here.

Thanks for much for your valuable input.

as a woman of colour, my experience is that many racist tropes aren't well documented, perhaps for obvious reasons. I try not to think about them but Allison has not behaved the way they wanted her to, so they'll be directing all sorts of things at her.

I have absolutely no fucking idea.

I knew exactly what that tweet was getting at and I’m White British with only a passing interest in old films and representations of Black people on screen and in comics. It’s just disgusting, how on earth are they getting away with that?

I can't find anything like that either. The only thing I found which came close was this article. But the food in question there is watermelons, not spaghetti.

Can one of the people who says this is 'well known' please post a link?

People are focusing on the type of food, as if the insult is in it being spaghetti. The insult is in the idea that - haha, a normal lawyer would have paper, but lazy Blacks carry around FOOD. They’re so stupid, they think food is documents. Chicken would be more blatant, but it’s not the type of food that matters, but the stereotype of buffoonery.

www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/coon/homepage.htm

This, for example. This matches with the “joke” that AB is dressed up like a lawyer, mimicking white people, but when you really look she’s a clumsy, bumbling faker who only has food inside her briefcase, and goes around tripping and prat falling which reveals her fundamental impostership:

”The coon caricature was one of the stock characters among minstrel performers. Minstrel show audiences laughed at the slow-talking fool who avoided work and all adult responsibilities. This transformed the coon into a comic figure, a source of bitter and vulgar comic relief. He was sometimes renamed "Zip Coon" or "Urban Coon." If the minstrel skit had an ante-bellum setting, the coon was portrayed as a free black; if the skit's setting postdated slavery, he was portrayed as an urban black. He remained lazy and good-for-little, but the minstrel shows depicted him as a gaudy dressed "Dandy" who "put on airs." Unlike Mammy and Sambo, Coon did not know his place. He thought he was as smart as white people; however, his frequent malapropisms and distorted logic suggested that his attempt to compete intellectually with whites was pathetic. His use of bastardized English delighted white audiences and reaffirmed the then commonly held beliefs that blacks were inherently less intelligent. The minstrel coon's goal was leisure, and his leisure was spent strutting, styling, fighting, avoiding real work, eating watermelons, and making a fool of himself.”

Jesus Christ.

These people are just vile.

People are focusing on the type of food, as if the insult is in it being spaghetti. The insult is in the idea that - haha, a normal lawyer would have paper, but lazy Blacks carry around FOOD. They’re so stupid, they think food is documents. Chicken would be more blatant, but it’s not the type of food that matters, but the stereotype of buffoonery.

I'd imagine this dull fucker and their supporters think that it being spaghetti rather than a more obviously racist trope gives them plausible deniability.

JKR as Voldemort <yawn>
KS with a fake degree <meh>
AB as the trope described by Misstache - on a whole new level.

This is fucking horrendous. I must admit, I'd not heard of the racist trope but totally see it now that it's been pointed out and it has to be deliberately racist from the author as it's such a specific thing to write. How are they getting away with this shit?!!

Allison Bailey is amazing - absolute queen.

I think it must be a deliberate use of the racist trope. Nothing else in those tweets is original; JKR talking in parseltongue, Kathleen Stock's "comically" large certificate. It doesn't seem likely that the racist part would be the one original thought he had and only accidentally recalled racist tropes.

We always knew these people were misogynistic, homophobic and racist. It still comes as a surprise, sometimes, to see how blatant they are about it.

You can literally picture the racist sketch: the pompous black lawyer who tries to have authority and use big important words, but then trips and FOOD COMES OUT OF THE BRIEFCASE. Then there would be a whole bit about confusing dinner for books because “I gets so tired with all that reading I must have got confused”, because hahaha we all know black people can’t really get through law school and belong in the kitchen cooking (like Mammy) or eating and look how the stupid black clown exposed themselves pretending they could be in an office.

If you know what the stereotype is, it’s really easy to see how it translates. And it’s also very close to Mammy stereotyping as well.

If you know what the stereotype is, it’s really easy to see how it translates

It’s fucking jaw dropping. It’ll be interesting to see how Joanne Harris tries to explain this one away.

Joanne Harris needs to resign

Disgusting. I'm really sorry you needed to explain that to those of us that weren't familiar with it.

What vile people, and imagine associating yourself with them.

I'm sorry what?

What buffoonery?

What is this meant to mean, a chocolate bar because Allison is black right?
An aerated one at that - because she is an airhead??

I knew tra's were low, but not that low

Any other group that repeatedly uses racist tropes and makes a habit out of targeting women of colour would be normally be mincemeat. Unbelievable how membership of a sacred caste seems to give some people a pass for completely unacceptable racist behaviour.