The White Agenda Behind Famous Black Food Mascots

Racism in America is so widespread that the majority of us have been dropping tokens of it into our grocery store basket for many years with out batting a watch: manufacturers like Aunt Jemima’s, Uncle Ben’s, and Cream of Wheat, all of which boast racist mascots, a few of that are over 100 years outdated.

This habits isn’t a willful admission of racism by any means. Somewhat, it speaks to the indoctrination of White America, beginning with a few of our earliest experiences. It might appear virtually inconceivable that one thing as mundane as breakfast cereal may very well be perpetuating the suppression of tens of millions of People, however there’s maybe no higher medium for hiding these cues than in plain sight: the meals we grew up on, the meals many people now feed our personal youngsters.

As protests proceed across the nation demanding justice for the Black women and men killed by police, like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, longstanding grocery store manufacturers are lastly looking at their branding, and lots of are selecting to make a long-overdue change.

The Cream of Wheat packaging featuring Rastus — Rastus

Cream of Wheat packaging/public area

How Did Racist Mascots Final So Lengthy, Anyway?

Aunt Jemima’s story could shed some gentle. Within the late 1800s, Chris L. Rutt, a Missouri newspaper editor, named his new flour model “Aunt Jemima” after a minstrel tune. Jemima’s likeness was a “mammy”—the smiling, glad slave that served white households. Nancy Inexperienced, the girl who portrayed Aunt Jemima within the first ads and emblem, was herself a former slave.

Using the time period “Aunt” (and, for that matter, the “Uncle” on “Uncle Ben’s,”) wasn’t familial. Somewhat, it was a time period used for elder slaves that usually labored in houses as a substitute of the fields. Utilizing the phrase “aunt” and “uncle” instead of “Mrs.” or “Mr.” lowered their standing with their masters.

The Aunt Jemima model is now largely recognized for its syrup, but it surely began out as a quick-rising flour, primarily used for pancakes and biscuits. Its reputation exploded, and by 1915 it was probably the most well-recognized logos within the nation. It even modified trademark legal guidelines to assist defend its iconic mascot. Early variations of the Aunt Jemima flour packaging included paper doll cutouts for youngsters that confirmed Jemima and her household barefoot in outdated, tattered clothes with an choice to make them over in nicer outfits as a part of the rags to riches story, additional elevating the white savior narrative. Their success solely got here by the hands of the white founder and prospects.

“The character of Aunt Jemima is an invite to white folks to bask in a fantasy of enslaved folks — and by extension, all of Black America — as submissive, self-effacing, loyal, pacified and pacifying,” Michael Twitty, culinary historian and writer of “The Cooking Gene,” wrote for NBC News. “It positions Black people as boxed in, prepackaged and ready to satisfy; it’s the problem of all consumption, only laced with racial overtones.”

White privilege extended into then-parent company Quaker’s positioning of the brand in some of its first television commercials. It sponsored the famous 1950s family show “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.“ The Aunt Jemima spot breaks feature a white well-to-do husband and wife lazily cooking up a weekend breakfast, and scores of other commercials for the brand throughout the decades feature noticeably all-white casts.

Aunt Jemima isn’t the only racist mascot in the syrup aisle. While Jemima is known for her big smile and headscarf, Mrs. Butterworth is all about the bottle, the shape of which resembles a mammy dress.

“Critics have long associated the shape of the Mrs. Butterworth’s bottle with the mammy, a caricature of black women as subservient to white people,” Maria Cramer wrote for Business Insider. ConAgra, Mrs. Butterworth’s parent company, is now working to update the bottle.

If it seems like racist mascots bend heavily toward breakfast staples, there’s a reason. Slave-owning white families woke to warm breakfasts, prepared for them while they slept. It was more than convenient; it was indulgent. And after slavery ended, corporations stepped in to profit off of that expectation. The Black mascot-led product packaging wasn’t targeting Black consumers. Rather, they were being used to fit a white narrative about Black people, says Twitty.

“Rastus — pictured standing stiffly with his pot cleaned and his tray brimming with Cream of Wheat in the other hand, grinning as Thanksgiving turkeys strutted by — was meant to be proof to white shoppers that, much like faithful old Rastus, their product would not take from you but be ever at your service, ready to give without limit, and never give in to the temptations of the market to defraud the buyer.”

Because brands quickly become iconic, they become big moneymakers, too. The multinational corporations who eventually gobbled these brands up looked then as they do now to numbers over anything else. Bottom lines dictate the staying power of logos, mascots, and those stuck-in-your-head-forever jingles and taglines. Keeping shareholders happy is a bit like checking on a sleeping baby: if they’re still laying there peacefully asleep, back out of the room quietly.

But that’s the problem. Being beholden to investors instead of morality and common decency desensitized generations of Americans to the concept of Black inferiority because corporations didn’t want to risk dipping into the red.

Much like the football team formerly known as the Washington Redskins took decades to remedy its racist name (now a work-in-progress, as the club is temporarily rebranded as the “Washington Football Team”), these iconic food brands have also dragged their heels for decades, looking the other way instead of taking the lead in reshaping the narrative around race in America.

And some brands still aren’t as willing to take responsibility, yet.

Trader Jose’s Hot Cocoa

Trader Joe’s

Trader Joe’s Defends Ethnic Mascots

Supermarket chain Trader Joe’s was recently urged to do away with its in-house ethnic labeling. Currently, Latin offerings are marketed as Trader Jose’s, Italian food is labeled as Trader Giotto’s, and Asian items are sold under the monikers Trader Ming’s and Trader Joe San.

“The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures,” wrote high school student Briones Bedell, who started a petition urging the store to rebrand the items. “It presents ‘Joe’ as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters falling outside of it.”

“The common thread between all of these transgressions is the perpetuation of exoticism, the goal of which is not to appreciate other cultures, but to further other and distance them from the perceived ‘normal,’” she continued.

The discount supermarket chain’s initial response to the petition signaled it would be making a change to its labels, much like numerous other brands.

“While this approach to product naming may have been rooted in a lighthearted attempt at inclusiveness, we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect — one that is contrary to the welcoming, rewarding customer experience we strive to create every day,” company spokeswoman Kenya Friend-Daniel said at the time.