Racist? French cafe pulls "African," "Chinese" ice creams

The “African" ice cream dessert was topped by a chocolate-covered meringue ball decorated with thick red lips.

The "African" ice cream dessert was topped by a chocolate-covered meringue ball decorated with thick red lips. The "Chinese" lemon sorbet had a yellow meringue head, with thinly drawn eyes. A café on France's Cote d'Azur is now pulling both desserts from its menu, responding to accusations of racism.

A July 20 tweet calling for a boycott of Le Poussin Bleu (The Blue Chick) in Saint-Raphaël for its "racist" ice creams had by Tuesday got tens of thousands of likes and RTs. In a response on Facebook titled "the African and the Chinese struck down by social networks," the café owners said they were expunging the ice creams from their menu "after this storm of violence and insults." The ice creams were already on the menu when the current owners in 1986 took over the café opened in 1947.

"We are not 'racist.' We respect everyone!" they wrote in their Facebook post. "Naively, we kept these ice creams as they were, without any bad thoughts. They surely date from the colonial era but past history has made the France of today." "These ice creams have given pleasure to many generations of families of different origins," the owners added. "If they have bothered a few people recently we are sorry."