About

Raisin Potato Salad is an internet slang term to describe unnecessary actions taken by white people, usually adding their spin on examples of black popular culture. The joke was first used in a Saturday Night Live sketch starring Chadwick Boseman playing T'challa from the Marvel film Black Panther.

Origin

On April 7th, 2018, Chadwick Boseman appeared on Saturday Night Live.^[1] During a "Black Jeopardy" sketch, Boseman played T'challa from Black Panther. After struggling to understand the game, Boseman answers a question about a white person named Karen bringing her potato salad to a black person's cookout. Boseman says it is likely Karen did not season her food and likely added raisins to the potato salad, before answering "Aw hell naw, Karen. Keep your bland-ass potato salad to yourself!"

Spread

The line was quickly celebrated on social media. Boseman tweeted a drawing of the line by user @artofjamarlogan on April 10th, 2018, gaining over 13,000 retweets (shown below). Twitter user @Bklyn_Rock called Taylor Swift's "September" Cover the musical equivalent of raisins in potato salad, gaining over 10,000 retweets (shown below, right).

Additionally, the line began seeing use in media regarding stories of white people stepping into black culture. BET^[2] used the phrase in their headline about Nicole Arbour's version of Childish Gambino's 'This Is America', which reads "White Woman Dragged For Making Unseasoned Potato Salad With Raisins Version Of 'This Is America'." Afropunk^[3] did the same.

Multiple jokes have applied the term to the White Woman Calling the Cops meme. For example, YouTuber Taurean Reign Reloaded uploaded a parody of the video which called the woman "Karen With the Unseasoned Raisin Potato Salad" (shown below). A question about the spread of the term was posted to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[4] on April 24th, 2018.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References