The principal of a Catholic girls school has been forced to apologise for perpetuating racial stereotypes after the school planned to serve up a lunch of fried chicken, cornbread and watermelon - to celebrate Black History Month.

The public announcement of the menu triggered outrage from many students and parents at the private Carondelet High School in California, prompting officials to scrap the plans and send a letter of apology, NBC Bay Area reports.

“I'd like to apologise for the announcement and any hurt this caused students, parents or community members,” Principal Nancy Libby said in the letter. “Please know that at no time at Carondelet do we wish to perpetuate racial stereotypes.”

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The school also held a diversity assembly to discuss the issue, administrators said.

University of San Francisco professor James Taylor told NBC that it was understandable that parents and students were offended, however well intentioned the lunch may have been.

“Chicken, watermelon, collard greens - these stereotypes of black Southern culture that come from the same place where the N-word comes from,” he said.

“This is not like, ‘This food represents this heroic moment in African-American experience.’ What it represents is the degradation and the stereotyping of African-Americans.”