Aunt Jemima brand to change name, remove image that Quaker says is 'based on a racial stereotype' - Syrup Lives Matter

Article: http://archive.is/pi6Os

The Aunt Jemima brand of syrup and pancake mix will get a new name and image, Quaker Oats announced Wednesday, saying the company recognizes that "Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype."

The 130-year-old brand features a Black woman named Aunt Jemima, who was originally dressed as a minstrel character.

The picture has changed over time, and in recent years Quaker removed the “mammy” kerchief from the character to blunt growing criticism that the brand perpetuated a racist stereotype that dated to the days of slavery. But Quaker, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, said removing the image and name is part of an effort by the company “to make progress toward racial equality.”

“We recognize Aunt Jemima’s origins are based on a racial stereotype," Kristin Kroepfl, vice president and chief marketing officer of Quaker Foods North America, said in a press release. “As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations."

Kroepfl said the company has worked to "update" the brand to be "appropriate and respectful" but it realized the changes were insufficient.

Aunt Jemima has faced renewed criticism recently amid protests across the nation and around the world sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

People on social media called out the brand for continuing to use the image and discussed its racist history, with the topic trending on Twitter.

“It’s time to let go of symbols like this because of how weighted they are and what they represent,” Riché Richardson, an associate professor at Cornell University, told the “TODAY” show on Wednesday.

Aunt Jemima is “a retrograde image of black womanhood on store shelves," Richardson said. “It’s an image that harkens back to the antebellum plantation ... Aunt Jemima is that kind of stereotype is premised on this idea of black inferiority and otherness.”

The company's own timeline of the product says Aunt Jemima was first "brought to life" by Nancy Green, a black woman who was formerly enslaved and became the face of the product in 1890.

In 2015, a judge dismissed a lawsuit against the company by two men who claimed to be descendants of Anna Harrington, a black woman who began portraying Jemima in the 1930s, saying the company didn't properly compensate her estate with royalties.

Quaker said the new packaging will begin to appear in the fall of 2020, and a new name for the foods will be announced at a later date.

The company also announced it will donate at least $5 million over the next five years "to create meaningful, ongoing support and engagement in the Black community."

 

[The Last Stand]

Mrs. Butterworth any day, shes thicc and rich.

You just like the old woman on the bottle.

Now Mrs. Butterworth may be getting tainted now.

After Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Mrs. Butterworth Feel the Heat

The protests over police brutality and racism have led several companies to reconsider how they use African-American stereotypes in marketing.

www.nytimes.com

After Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Mrs. Butterworth Feel the Heat
The protests over police brutality and racism have led several companies to reconsider how they use African-American stereotypes in marketing.

Uncle Ben, whose face has appeared on the box of rice since the 1940s, was promoted in 2007 from a servant to chairman of the board. Now, the brand will “evolve” further, a spokeswoman said.Credit...Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters
By Maria Cramer

• June 17, 2020, 6:10 p.m. ET

Within hours of the announcement that Aunt Jemima was being retired from store shelves, at least two more food companies rushed to respond to complaints about other brands that have been criticized for using racial stereotypes.
Mars Food, the owner of the brand Uncle Ben’s rice, which features an older black man smiling on the box, said on Wednesday afternoon that it would “evolve” the brand as protests over racism and police brutality across the country continue.

“We recognize that now is the right time to evolve the Uncle Ben’s brand, including its visual brand identity, which we will do,” Caroline Sherman, a spokeswoman for Mars, said. The company does not know the nature of the changes, or the timing, she said, “but we are evaluating all possibilities.”

Shortly after that announcement, ConAgra Brands, the maker of Mrs. Butterworth’s pancake syrup, released a statement saying the company had begun a “complete brand and package review.”

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.

The recent widespread protests have renewed the focus on food manufacturers who for decades have used racial images to sell rice, porridge mix, dairy products and snacks, among other products and services.
The companies have fielded complaints about these depictions before, and they have sometimes made adjustments. In 2007, Uncle Ben, whose face has appeared on the box of rice since the 1940s, was promoted from a servant to chairman of the board.
But Kevin D. Thomas, a professor of multicultural branding in the Race, Ethnic and Indigenous Studies Program at Marquette University, said he hoped the current push for change would finally lead to a substantial overhaul in the marketing world.
“I’m hoping this is a reckoning and we’re going to start seeing something that becomes pervasive,” Professor Thomas said.

What other troubling brands remain?
Quite a few, according to marketing observers.
The image on a box of Cream of Wheat, a beaming black man in a white chef’s uniform, has not been altered much since its debut in the late 19th century.



Image

The chef on the Cream of Wheat box has not been altered much over the years.Credit...Associated Press Photo

The character was named “Rastus,” a pejorative term for black men, and he was depicted as a barely literate cook who did not know what vitamins were. The brand is owned by B&G Foodservice.

For decades, many have expressed concerns about the matronly shape of the Mrs. Butterworth’s container.
“I think the key issue with Mrs. Butterworth is her physical shape, which strongly resembles the mammy caricature,” Professor Thomas said. “So while she’s been personified as an elderly white woman, mainly through vocal affect, her physique and style of dress bear a striking resemblance to that of the mammy.”

In its statement, Congara Brands said Mrs. Butterworth was “intended to evoke the images of a loving grandmother.” But the company said it wanted to stand in solidarity with “our black and brown communities, and we can see that our packaging may be interpreted in a way that is wholly inconsistent with our values.”
The images of placid, smiling African-Americans on commercial products were often created during times of racial upheaval, Professor Thomas said.

Characters like Aunt Jemima, who was first depicted as a mammy, followed Reconstruction when white people were scared of what it meant to live alongside newly freed slaves, he said.
Race and Policing ›
Recent Changes Sparked by the Protests

Updated June 16, 2020

• President Trump signed an executive to encourage changes in policing, including new restrictions on chokeholds. But the order will have little immediate impact, and does not address calls for broader action and a new focus on racism.
• Aunt Jemima, the syrup and pancake mix brand, will change its name and image amid an ongoing backlash, with its parent company Quaker Oats acknowledging that the brand’s origins are “based on a racial stereotype.”
• Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta issued a series of executive orders to overhaul the Atlanta Police Department’s use of force policies following the fatal shooting days earlier of Rayshard Brooks, a black man, by a white police officer. Earlier, New York became one of the first states to take action to restrict police forces, banning chokeholds and repealing a law that has kept police disciplinary records secret in the state.
• The New York police commissioner announced that he was disbanding the anti-crime unit, a plainclothes team of hundreds of officers that targeted violent crime and was involved in some of the city’s most notorious police shootings. The officers will be reassigned to other duties.
• For the first time, the reality television show “The Bachelor” will have a black lead. The show, which kicked off in 2002, has long received criticism for its lack of diversity.

“There was a lot of angst around that. There was terror and a sense of what does this mean for white supremacy?” he said.
Professor Thomas suggested that the advertisers were trying to market products around those fears: “Can we assuage some of that to get back to those quote-un-quote calmer days when we had the slave in the kitchen taking care of our kids?”

Another intent of stereotypes in marketing is to make some goods seem more exotic, experts say.
Chiquita Banana’s ambassador is Miss Chiquita, who carries a basket of fruit on her head and wears a tight, stereotypical Latin dance costume made up of ruffles.

Image

Chiquita Banana’s ambassador, Miss Chiquita, is meant to portray something exotic, but that can have the effect of marginalizing people, one expert said.Credit...Marco Ugarte/Associated Press

“Chiquita Banana has that sort of alluring representation that is meant to give people this vision of something that is exotic and other,” said Rebecca Hains, a professor of media and communication at Salem State University in Massachusetts. “But othering people is really problematic. It marginalizes people and suggests that they’re not important or equal to the majority.”
This is not only a phenomenon in the United States. In 2009, a young Inuit woman publicly denounced Pascall, a candy manufacturer in Australia and New Zealand, for appropriating her culture to sell its “Eskimo” marshmallows and other sweets. The company refused to change the name.

Have companies dropped or modified brands in the past?
Indeed.
The Native American woman who once adorned packages of Land O’Lakes cheese and butter was removed this year.
Beth Ford, the Land O’Lakes chief executive, said in February that it was time the company recognize the need for “packaging that reflects the foundation and heart of our company culture.”

In 1967, Frito-Lay introduced the “Frito Bandito,” a gun-toting Mexican who spoke with a thick accent and threatened to steal chips from kids.

Mexican-American advocacy groups denounced the character and demanded the company stop using it to sell chips. Frito responded by making Frito Bandito less unkempt. His beard was shaved and his gold tooth was removed, but the character did not fully disappear until around 1971.

In the 1950s, the Sambo’s chain began opening pancake restaurants by the hundreds across the United States. The founders, Sam Battistone Sr. and Newell Bohnett, said the restaurant’s name was based on the first letters of their names. But the name was long reviled as racist, and in many towns the restaurant rebranded itself as “The Jolly Tiger” under local pressure.

Last week, the last Sambo’s in the United States, located in Santa Barbara, Calif., where the chain started, decided to finally change the name. For now, workers have covered the sign outside with a peace symbol, an ampersand and the word “love.”

Customers had circulated a petition this month seeking the change, and the owners agreed it was time.



“Our family has looked into our hearts and realize that we must be sensitive when others whom we respect make a strong appeal,” the restaurant owners said on Facebook.
“We are starting over and will try again until we get it done,” the owners said. “Let’s continue to pull together as a community and be better for this moment in history.”

The syrup is racist now.

Edit for images and ease of reading.

 

[TowinKarz]

It's the modern day equivalent of angry church ladies writing to the FTC to protest whatever show offended them this week.

It's the modern day planetary indulgence..... you "make up" for your bad behavior by finding "worse" behavior and condemning it.....

 

[DocHoliday1977]

Is Pine Sol inappropriate because it depicts a Black person cleaning in its commercials? Or Mr. Clean because a MAN is doing woman's work?

*Covers Ears*

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh


I'm ok now.

 

[Fagnacious D]

Let me repeat my catchphrase
Everything is racist
Everything is sexist
Everything is oppressive
Everything is keeping (Black People/Women/LGBTQAA) People from succeeding.

 

[Mangina Smooch Sound]

This is like Chinese cultural revolution.

Actually this is Chinese cultural revolution.

In more ways than one ...

 

[Just_Somebody]

I can't wait for any and all corporate erasure of coloreds....uh, I mean, people of color (seriously both are fucking awful I don't even know how PoC became a thing) from any and all products, advertising, branding, and whatever else. Oh and while you're at it, make sure you get any book, movie, video game, art, or music erased too. And if you speak up against it, prepare to be crushed.

What's that music I hear in the distance?

https://archive.org/details/HorstWesselLiedWehrmachtMarchingToAnthemOfNSGermany

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE]

ONLY ACCEPTABLE CULTURAL ICONS IN SOCIETY ARE REVOLUTIONARY CIVIL RIGHTS FIGURES, SHITLORDS.

GET WITH THE TIME.

THROW DOWN THE ICONS OF BOURGEO..

wait that's communists. Sorry I made a mistake.

 

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

Complete and utter lunacy.

 

[Shield Breaker]

Now Mrs. Butterworth may be getting tainted now.

After Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Mrs. Butterworth Feel the Heat

The protests over police brutality and racism have led several companies to reconsider how they use African-American stereotypes in marketing.

www.nytimes.com

After Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Mrs. Butterworth Feel the Heat
The protests over police brutality and racism have led several companies to reconsider how they use African-American stereotypes in marketing.


View attachment 1384581

Uncle Ben, whose face has appeared on the box of rice since the 1940s, was promoted in 2007 from a servant to chairman of the board. Now, the brand will “evolve” further, a spokeswoman said.Credit...Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters
By Maria Cramer

• June 17, 2020, 6:10 p.m. ET

Within hours of the announcement that Aunt Jemima was being retired from store shelves, at least two more food companies rushed to respond to complaints about other brands that have been criticized for using racial stereotypes.
Mars Food, the owner of the brand Uncle Ben’s rice, which features an older black man smiling on the box, said on Wednesday afternoon that it would “evolve” the brand as protests over racism and police brutality across the country continue.

“We recognize that now is the right time to evolve the Uncle Ben’s brand, including its visual brand identity, which we will do,” Caroline Sherman, a spokeswoman for Mars, said. The company does not know the nature of the changes, or the timing, she said, “but we are evaluating all possibilities.”

Shortly after that announcement, ConAgra Brands, the maker of Mrs. Butterworth’s pancake syrup, released a statement saying the company had begun a “complete brand and package review.”

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.

The recent widespread protests have renewed the focus on food manufacturers who for decades have used racial images to sell rice, porridge mix, dairy products and snacks, among other products and services.
The companies have fielded complaints about these depictions before, and they have sometimes made adjustments. In 2007, Uncle Ben, whose face has appeared on the box of rice since the 1940s, was promoted from a servant to chairman of the board.
But Kevin D. Thomas, a professor of multicultural branding in the Race, Ethnic and Indigenous Studies Program at Marquette University, said he hoped the current push for change would finally lead to a substantial overhaul in the marketing world.
“I’m hoping this is a reckoning and we’re going to start seeing something that becomes pervasive,” Professor Thomas said.

What other troubling brands remain?
Quite a few, according to marketing observers.
The image on a box of Cream of Wheat, a beaming black man in a white chef’s uniform, has not been altered much since its debut in the late 19th century.



Image

The chef on the Cream of Wheat box has not been altered much over the years.Credit...Associated Press Photo

The character was named “Rastus,” a pejorative term for black men, and he was depicted as a barely literate cook who did not know what vitamins were. The brand is owned by B&G Foodservice.

For decades, many have expressed concerns about the matronly shape of the Mrs. Butterworth’s container.
“I think the key issue with Mrs. Butterworth is her physical shape, which strongly resembles the mammy caricature,” Professor Thomas said. “So while she’s been personified as an elderly white woman, mainly through vocal affect, her physique and style of dress bear a striking resemblance to that of the mammy.”

In its statement, Congara Brands said Mrs. Butterworth was “intended to evoke the images of a loving grandmother.” But the company said it wanted to stand in solidarity with “our black and brown communities, and we can see that our packaging may be interpreted in a way that is wholly inconsistent with our values.”
The images of placid, smiling African-Americans on commercial products were often created during times of racial upheaval, Professor Thomas said.

Characters like Aunt Jemima, who was first depicted as a mammy, followed Reconstruction when white people were scared of what it meant to live alongside newly freed slaves, he said.
Race and Policing ›
Recent Changes Sparked by the Protests

Updated June 16, 2020

• President Trump signed an executive to encourage changes in policing, including new restrictions on chokeholds. But the order will have little immediate impact, and does not address calls for broader action and a new focus on racism.
• Aunt Jemima, the syrup and pancake mix brand, will change its name and image amid an ongoing backlash, with its parent company Quaker Oats acknowledging that the brand’s origins are “based on a racial stereotype.”
• Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta issued a series of executive orders to overhaul the Atlanta Police Department’s use of force policies following the fatal shooting days earlier of Rayshard Brooks, a black man, by a white police officer. Earlier, New York became one of the first states to take action to restrict police forces, banning chokeholds and repealing a law that has kept police disciplinary records secret in the state.
• The New York police commissioner announced that he was disbanding the anti-crime unit, a plainclothes team of hundreds of officers that targeted violent crime and was involved in some of the city’s most notorious police shootings. The officers will be reassigned to other duties.
• For the first time, the reality television show “The Bachelor” will have a black lead. The show, which kicked off in 2002, has long received criticism for its lack of diversity.

“There was a lot of angst around that. There was terror and a sense of what does this mean for white supremacy?” he said.
Professor Thomas suggested that the advertisers were trying to market products around those fears: “Can we assuage some of that to get back to those quote-un-quote calmer days when we had the slave in the kitchen taking care of our kids?”

Another intent of stereotypes in marketing is to make some goods seem more exotic, experts say.
Chiquita Banana’s ambassador is Miss Chiquita, who carries a basket of fruit on her head and wears a tight, stereotypical Latin dance costume made up of ruffles.


View attachment 1384587
Image

Chiquita Banana’s ambassador, Miss Chiquita, is meant to portray something exotic, but that can have the effect of marginalizing people, one expert said.Credit...Marco Ugarte/Associated Press

“Chiquita Banana has that sort of alluring representation that is meant to give people this vision of something that is exotic and other,” said Rebecca Hains, a professor of media and communication at Salem State University in Massachusetts. “But othering people is really problematic. It marginalizes people and suggests that they’re not important or equal to the majority.”
This is not only a phenomenon in the United States. In 2009, a young Inuit woman publicly denounced Pascall, a candy manufacturer in Australia and New Zealand, for appropriating her culture to sell its “Eskimo” marshmallows and other sweets. The company refused to change the name.

Have companies dropped or modified brands in the past?
Indeed.
The Native American woman who once adorned packages of Land O’Lakes cheese and butter was removed this year.
Beth Ford, the Land O’Lakes chief executive, said in February that it was time the company recognize the need for “packaging that reflects the foundation and heart of our company culture.”

In 1967, Frito-Lay introduced the “Frito Bandito,” a gun-toting Mexican who spoke with a thick accent and threatened to steal chips from kids.

Mexican-American advocacy groups denounced the character and demanded the company stop using it to sell chips. Frito responded by making Frito Bandito less unkempt. His beard was shaved and his gold tooth was removed, but the character did not fully disappear until around 1971.

In the 1950s, the Sambo’s chain began opening pancake restaurants by the hundreds across the United States. The founders, Sam Battistone Sr. and Newell Bohnett, said the restaurant’s name was based on the first letters of their names. But the name was long reviled as racist, and in many towns the restaurant rebranded itself as “The Jolly Tiger” under local pressure.

Last week, the last Sambo’s in the United States, located in Santa Barbara, Calif., where the chain started, decided to finally change the name. For now, workers have covered the sign outside with a peace symbol, an ampersand and the word “love.”

Customers had circulated a petition this month seeking the change, and the owners agreed it was time.



“Our family has looked into our hearts and realize that we must be sensitive when others whom we respect make a strong appeal,” the restaurant owners said on Facebook.
“We are starting over and will try again until we get it done,” the owners said. “Let’s continue to pull together as a community and be better for this moment in history.”

View attachment 1384557

The syrup is racist now.

Edit for images and ease of reading.

I wish these people would get a life.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Dey sho is goin' crazy with the political correctness these days, shieeeeeeeeeeeet...

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Uncle Ben is about to lose his job!

 

[Deer Warts]

Caress me. Caress me, Aunt Jemima.

 

[muh_moobs]

FUCKING NIGGERS!!!! HOW DARE THEY TAKE AWAY MY TAR-BABY COON SYRUP!!!!

 

[ufukiniggas]

Y'all is late - this been done.

Really tho' - I don't care. I don't buy most of these products anyway because I'm a redneck with hipster tendencies.

I will, however, be paying close attention to how well this pays off financially for these fuckwits.

 

[Duke Nukem]

So they're fighting racism by getting rid of a brand featuring a black woman? Man, this shits confusing...

Don't worry, they'll be getting rid of the Chinese stereotype mascot at my local Chinese restaurant to...combat racism against the Chinese.

Which is, ironically, owned by someone who actually is Chinese and it's part of his offbeat sense of humor.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Don't worry, they'll be getting rid of the Chinese stereotype mascot at my local Chinese restaurant to...combat racism against the Chinese.

Which is, ironically, owned by someone who actually is Chinese and it's part of his offbeat sense of humor.

He should base the new mascot on this. Have a stereotypical white guy in place of the robot.

 

[Duke Nukem]

View attachment 1384819
He should base the new mascot on this. Have a stereotypical white guy in place of the robot.

Not enough soy in that picture. Please try again

 

[Atatata]

Chiquita Banana’s ambassador, Miss Chiquita, is meant to portray something exotic, but that can have the effect of marginalizing people, one expert said.Credit...Marco Ugarte/Associated Press

“Chiquita Banana has that sort of alluring representation that is meant to give people this vision of something that is exotic and other,” said Rebecca Hains, a professor of media and communication at Salem State University in Massachusetts. “But othering people is really problematic. It marginalizes people and suggests that they’re not important or equal to the majority.”

Isn't Miss Chiquita very specifically inspired by Carman Miranda?



It makes this song feel suitable to the occasion though

 

[Bagronkleton]

Sad thing is the lady, Anna Short Harrington, that played the role of Aunt Jemima used the wealth from her cushy life long career for stuff like helping to deal with poverty and other social causes.

Her work basically allowed the latter generations today to reap the benefits of her sweetness to...shit on her legacy, I guess?

 

[Y2K Baby]

We did it, boys. We defeated racism.