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‘Pic-A-Nika’ Pizza With Fried Chicken And Watermelon: Racism Cries Against Pizza By Certé As Facebook Apology Issued [Video]

By Paula Mooney
Published on: 00:52 PST, Aug 14, 2015

The new slice of pizza called “Pic-a-Nika” offered by Pizza by Certé in New York didn’t go over too well with all the patrons, especially once they read the Pic-a-Nika name aloud and viewed all the ingredients, reports Pix11.

The Pizza by Certe Facebook page is now offering an apology for those offended by the Pic-a-Nika pizza.

“We sincerely apologize if we offended anyone with the name of our August Pizza. Certainly not our intent!! The popular Summer pizza featuring Picnic ingredients with an Italian pronunciation has been changed to Picnic Pizza.”

The list of ingredients on the Pic-a-Nika pizza included first and foremost southern fried chicken. Next up came baby arugula and sea-salted watermelon, which makes one wonder how watermelon would work on a pizza. Nevertheless, pineapple survives on some pizza, so apparently watermelon could.

However, the Pic-a-Nika pizza slice is now off the shelves after backlash occurred on social media over the Pic-a-Nika name. Perhaps the Pic-a-Nika pizza shop had not heard of the supposed origins of the word “picnic” that went viral years ago. In the email that made the rounds before the days of social media, folks claimed that “picnic” stemmed from “pick a n*****,” a dispute that Snopes calls false.

The “little known black history fact” claimed that in days of old, whites would pick out a black person to lynch and turn the whole lynching into a picnic celebration.

“‘Nic’ being the white acronym for ‘n*****.'”

Although Snopes called the rumor false, the whole pic-a-nika concept remained in the collective consciousness, so hearing it attributed to a slice of pizza that contains fried chicken and watermelon was too much of a coincidence for some folks. However, the pizzeria denies racist leanings. The Pic-a-Nika pizza shop owner says that’s simply the phonetic way his Italian father pronounced the word picnic, and video of an interview with a pizza store employee echoed similar sentiments.

“We don’t racist here… [sic]”

Some folks on Twitter aren’t buying the no-racism claims, while others are defending the pizza shop.

Either way, the Pic-a-Nika pizza tweets are starting to flow into Twitter as this story grows legs. The Pix11 article has been shared more than 1,000 times on Facebook thus far.

As reported by the Inquisitr, cries of racism were also front and center in the movie Straight Outta Compton, which depicted all the trials and travels of the rap group N.W.A. on their rise to stardom.

In terms of the Pic-a-Nika pizza, the pizza owner claims it was a popular slice of pizza for the month.

Pic-a-Nika-pizza

Opponents claim that there were no racist intentions with the Pic-a-Nika pizza, not seeing any racist intentions in offering the slice for August.

[Image via Pizza by Certé’s Pic-a-Nika]

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