The Aunt Jemima brand and logo will be retired

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Irishmom2 said:
I am not saying that some Irish do not drink. But to stereotype a whole group of people that way is wrong. There are also many other non-Irish families where alcoholism runs in the family because there is a genetic component. You are wise to never have begun.
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My Irish grandfather was a member of the “Knights of Father Malachy” an all-Irish Catholic organization, the sole purpose of which was to dissuade Irishmen from drinking. It wasn’t a small organization either, at least not here.

I recall reading a study by the Schick-Shadel institute in which they found that certain ethic groups have a thing they call the “wash down reflex”. Simply stated, it’s a physiological reaction some people who lived for millenia in damp climates to cool the internal temperature when sweating won’t do it. Celtic peoples wherever found have that. One urinates heat and drinks cold. It can be a problem because drinking causes a “wash down” and a severe body thirst in those who have it.
Anaesthetizing the body with more alcohol gives temporary relief, but only temporary.

I’m half Irish and I have always watched my drinking because of it. Lots and lots of alcoholics in the family. One of them was interesting. He was a railroad fireman in the steam locomotive days. He was also a severe alcoholic. The railroad wouldn’t put up with drinking, so before a run he would go “on the wagon”. He would take a big can of ice water into the cab with him. He would get really hot stoking the fire, and sweat profusely. He would replace the water loss with ice water. After a run, he would head for the nearest bar.
 
Victoria33 said:
Half of all African Americans who are conceived are aborted.

Does all that sound racist?
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You asked for an opinion, so please don’t be upset by my response:

As a matter of fact, this does…both in its unverified form, and in paternalism, which is a polite form of racism.
 
Thrstypirate said:
Has a brand name this big ever changed names like this before?
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Yup, “Sambo’s” to “Denny’s” if I remember it right.
Whoops! They sold to Denny’s, who kept them for a while, then changed them. Last one just did a name change because of the protests.
Dominus vobiscum
 
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Ridgerunner said:
Aunt Jemima is not a “racial stereotype” any more than Mrs. Tucker, Mrs. Butterworth, Chef Boyardee. You could rightly say she, like the others, is a “stereotyping” of a pleasant-appearing, and rather handsome, woman of an age and heft that indicates she probably knows how to cook. That’s the image, not some racial caricature.
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The image now is perfectly innocuous, but it didn’t start out that way, and many people remember, or are otherwise knowledgeable, of how it got started. It is very good that Miss Green got reasonably wealthy from the character, and was able to do fine things to uplift her people due to the freedom she had from being that wealthy, but the fact remains, it’s an unflattering stereotype. Very possibly she “took lemons and made lemonade” from the situation, and given the times she was living in, it’s hard to blame her.

I had to look up your Mrs Tucker — she’s white — and Mrs Butterworth is of ambiguous race. Chef Boy-ar-dee was an Italian American chef and the name comes from an Anglicized, phonetic spelling of the name “Boiardi”. I don’t think there are any degrading depictions of Italians in product marketing today.
 
But do you think any Italians cared about Chef Boyardee? Do you think white women of a certain age were offended by the depiction of “Mrs. Tucker”? I’m partly Italian and I never saw anything offensive about the depiction of Chef Boyardee; not even that “Mama mia, that’s a spicy meat ball-a” commercial. Should I have been? Should I be offended by “Godfather’s Pizza”?

I’m not black, and I’m sure I’m not likely ever to fully understand what it is to be black in America. But whatever Aunt Jemima’s image might have been in 1932 or whatever, it has been pleasant ever since I have known about it. Does anybody really think black women and especially black kids thought of her as anything other than a pleasant black woman?

Frankly, I think we’ve gone off the high side of the highway with all of this.
 
This is obviously designed for black consumers. If you ever go into a grocery store in a black neighborhood, you’ll see a whole different array of food from what you see in a store in a white neighborhood. For one thing, I think you would search a long time in a white neighborhood store for “Turnip greens” or anything else that claims to be “soul food”.

If Sylvia’s products are still on sale somewhere, surely the black consumers are not offended by Sylvia’s image.
 
I’m 100% full-blooded Italian. Like I’ve said earlier in the thread. The names people say or the jokes they make about Italians speak more to them than they do me. And besides. Who cares if they say mean nasty things about Italians, or about me for that matter. I’m not some melty snowflake who has to go home to his momma’s basement and ask for a lolly and my teddy bear in order to feel safe from the meanies.

People gotta suck it up man. Everyone at some point has had someone not like them or say mean things to them, and for some, it’s worse than others. You want to put a stereotypical Italian on a jar of pasta sauce, well, that’s your right. I have my right to react. I can say, hey, that’s mean, and let it go, or I can go set a store on fire.

That doesn’t mean I think putting people’s faces on jars of sauce is in anyway stereotypical, ethnocentric or racist. My point is simply to say that people have a choice in how they react.

Edit: This is not intended to reply directly to your post @Ridgerunner but simply to piggy-back off what you wrote.
 
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JoeFreedom said:
I’m 100% full-blooded Italian. Like I’ve said earlier in the thread. The names people say or the jokes they make about Italians speak more to them than they do me. And besides. Who cares if they say mean nasty things about Italians, or about me for that matter. I’m not some melty snowflake who has to go home to his momma’s basement and ask for a lolly and my teddy bear in order to feel safe from the meanies.

People gotta suck it up man. Everyone at some point has had someone not like them or say mean things to them, and for some, it’s worse than others. You want to put a stereotypical Italian on a jar of pasta sauce, well, that’s your right. I have my right to react. I can say, hey, that’s mean, and let it go, or I can go set a store on fire.

That doesn’t mean I think putting people’s faces on jars of sauce is in anyway stereotypical, ethnocentric or racist. My point is simply to say that people have a choice in how they react.

Edit: This is not intended to reply directly to your post @Ridgerunner but simply to piggy-back off what you wrote.
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If thoae mean nasty things included threats of, or actual, lynchings (well.within living memory), denial of or deliberate frustration of the rights or ability of Italian-Americans to vote, laws against Italian-Americans marrying people.of other nationalities… then it probably would.amd should bother you way more.

Not being Americn, I only recently became aware of the practice of so-called “Mississippi appendectomy” - large numbers of African-American women being sterilized without medical.need and without their consent under the guise of having other surgeries If that were a practice among Italian-Americams, then yeah I’d be worried about insults and steteotypes.
 
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Depends on where you live. I prefer my greens fresh from the field, but they are readily available in local markets. All of them.

I remember when the term became widespread, back in the 60s. Wonder what that means, says I. Checked up on it. To my amazement I’d been eating soul food all my life. The parts I liked, of course. I rarely eat stuff I don’t like.

These days turnip greens/collards (of dubious provenance), even show up on the west coast, from time to time. My sister and her equally Southern husband, exiled for many years to the west coast, found some in a chain market in a large coastal California city. Took a bundle to the cash register. Puzzled the cashier greatly. Who asked what they were and how you cooked them. My BIL said, oh we don’t cook them. We roll them and smoke them. Seemed reasonable to the questioner.
 
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I don’t recall the demise of “the mountain dew” hillbilly being celebrated by “those of mountain heritage”.
No parade when “the beverly-hillbillies” came to an end either.
Dominus vobiscum
 
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Whether the nastiness is race-related or simply hate-related (any type of crime is related to hate in one form or another), it is a crime. So it’s a crime to lynch someone, and it’s a crime to discriminate based on race, and it’s a crime to threaten, regardless of whether a white person threatens it to another white person or a white person threatens it to a black person.
 
Agnus-Dei said:
I don’t recall the demise of “the mountain dew” hillbilly being celebrated by “those of mountain heritage”.
No parade when “the beverly-hillbillies” came to an end either.
Dominus vobiscum
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Actually, I believe Mountain Dew came back with the throwback or retro bottles and cans and they indeed had the Hillbillies on it.


But I don’t say that to take the problem lightly, slavery was a great horror but we need to understand the proper contexts of everything.

Many Americans died and fought to end slavery as well. That’s a civil war debate not to get into… but so it goes.

Now, up above, Sylvia’s collard greens were discussed and it was said to be different but I’m not sure if a consumer is in a store, they know the ins and outs and history of all these brands. I did happen to find right after I posted that yes, that was from Sylvia’s Woods’ restaurant.
 
Ridgerunner said:
I’m not black, and I’m sure I’m not likely ever to fully understand what it is to be black in America. But whatever Aunt Jemima’s image might have been in 1932 or whatever, it has been pleasant ever since I have known about it. Does anybody really think black women and especially black kids thought of her as anything other than a pleasant black woman?
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I’m not black either, but if I were, I would be sure to tell my son how the Aunt Jemima character came to be, and how she used to be portrayed.
Thrstypirate said:
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Ridgerunner:
If Sylvia’s products are still on sale somewhere, surely the black consumers are not offended by Sylvia’s image.
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Yeah, Sylvia is the owner of Sylvia’s in Harlem, so not the same thing at all.
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Sylvia was never portrayed by white advertising men as a “black mammy” character speaking Ebonics.

We prefer Glory Foods in our home, ourselves. The perfect fusion of bacon seasoning and MSG.
Victoria33 said:
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Agnus-Dei:
I don’t recall the demise of “the mountain dew” hillbilly being celebrated by “those of mountain heritage”.
No parade when “the beverly-hillbillies” came to an end either.
Dominus vobiscum
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Actually, I believe Mountain Dew came back with the throwback or retro bottles and cans and they indeed had the Hillbillies on it.
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CAF’s resident mountain heritage spokesman here, after a fashion. AFAIK, the Beverly Hillbillies never appeared on the Mountain Dew packages. It is really a reach to call this offensive. Growing up, we had our own ideas about those from other parts of the country, so it kind of cut both ways. In the interests of Christian good will, I am not going to share those here. Let’s just say that if you travel through this country’s eastern mountains, you will do well to show some humility and reciprocal kindness. Anything less is not well-received.
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Just the portrayal of the hillbillies in the program was amusing enough. Most people liked Ellie Mae though. 😉
My parents were from West Virginia, and well, a bit hillbilly. Both born in the early 1930’s. So, Irish heritage, parents West Virginia, and grandma on dad’s side was a black woman. (Marrying a black woman in the mid 20’s did not win you any respect in that part of the country.) I was born on the west coast and suppose by heritage I am 1/4 “black” not like you could ever tell now. Looking back, mom did cook a little in the “soul” category, but we just called it “food”.
Glory greens are good. There is another brand called “Margaret Holmes” that are nice too.
Dominus vobiscum
 
Agnus-Dei said:
Just the portrayal of the hillbillies in the program was amusing enough. Most people liked Ellie Mae though.
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There was something for everyone, Elly May for the men, Jethro for the women. I always liked the sisters on Petticoat Junction, myself. Great old vintage TV, clean and wholesome. You could sit down and watch it with Mother Teresa.
Agnus-Dei said:
My parents were from West Virginia, and well, a bit hillbilly. Both born in the early 1930’s. So, Irish heritage, parents West Virginia, and grandma on dad’s side was a black woman. (Marrying a black woman in the mid 20’s did not win you any respect in that part of the country.) I was born on the west coast and suppose by heritage I am 1/4 “black” not like you could ever tell now. Looking back, mom did cook a little in the “soul” category, but we just called it “food”.
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West Virginia, God bless you! I have relatives there. You weren’t related to Bricktop, were you? Amazing lady with a fascinating life story. Catholic too, by the way.

https://riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu/program/night-bricktops-jazz-1930s-montmartre
Agnus-Dei said:
Glory greens are good. There is another brand called “Margaret Holmes” that are nice too.
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Margaret Holmes brand is good. She makes a nice chili base, you have to add more kidney beans, though, the base doesn’t have nearly enough.
 
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Victoria33 said:
The Quaker on Quaker oats… let’s just say, there’s a lot of all of this on the market, frozen burritos from Don Jose or whatever that company is called…where’s the line?
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Wherever the Marxists say it is.

There has been a phenomenal amount of virtue signalling from national companies. Absolutely none of that is going to deal with police who should not be on the force, or with gang shootings, or poverty, or the person-to-person discrimination that goes on between people and others, no matter their race or color.
McDale721 said:
Why get so bent out of shape if a brand decides do change their image to something more sensitive?
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I am not bent out of shape over the matter of corporate responses. Disgusted is closer to it; there is this vast amount of virtue signalling going on, which does not address the issue we started with - the death of a black man by a white officer. Nothing the companies are doing, racing around to revise logos, has even a scintilla of relevance to that issue.

We are in a time period of political correctness gone completely and totally amok. Truth no longer matters, and if one even dares to hedge toward a discussion based on facts, one is subject at the minimum to shaming; and if one is in a job, job loss is likely to occur. Lest anyone doubt, do a bit of a search about college professors being fired, and for what they were fired over. And don’t stop there, check out journalists; and on it goes.
 
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