Out of all the places where ABC 15 could have looked for people to interview about their opinions on Trayvon Martin case, it just happened to pick Lo-Lo's Chicken & Waffles.

Perhaps the lighting at the local basketball court wasn't conducive to filming television interviews that night.

If this is flying right over your head, allow us to explain -- the belief that African-Americans like fried chicken and waffles (or are good at playing basketball) is what's called a stereotype.

The explanation from Dave Chappelle can be seen below:



Let's say a major university decides to serve chicken and waffles in a dining hall on Martin Luther King Jr. Day -- which actually happened -- there's going to be a bit of a public-relations disaster.

Naturally, some people would opine that a TV station might not want to pick a chicken and waffles joint to interview people about a crime that many black activists see as racially charged.

Ilana Lowery, the editor of the Phoenix Business Journal, posted to Twitter, "As a journalist, I'm appalled @abc15phx went to Lolo's in Phoenix to get reaction to #ZimmermanVerdict. Why a chicken and waffle restaurant?"

Multiple people on social-networking websites compared it with a California TV station getting pranked into reading racist, fake, supposedly Asian-sounding names of the pilots involved in a plane crash, like "Wi Tu Lo," "Ho Lee Fuk."

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Follow Matthew Hendley on Twitter at @MatthewHendley.