African-Americans traditionally have had a reputation of enjoying watermelon and fried chicken. Is it "reasonable" to label casual and/or backhanded references to that reputation as racist?

Hint: Yes. Yes it is.

It would have been perfectly easy to write a story like this, decrying the modern marketplace full of cheaply made, disposable, plastic, ghost-shift junk products, counterfeits, and fly-by-night non-brand brands, without naming the most common country of origin. We all know the stuff largely comes from China; pointing it out explicitly doesn't add information, only sentiment.

Yet so many stories bring up China specifically. There's an impulse there the author(s) aren't examining in themselves. The author(s) may not have explicitly racist intent, but the result is absolutely a racist pattern.