The Aunt Jemima brand and logo will be retired

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the old images are considered racist today. I didn’t grow up with those old racist images so there is no connection for me. Aunt Jemima was just a nice lady who made pancake syrup as far as I knew.
 
And McMansions resemble gentrification and wasted resources, (not to mention tacky tastes in architecture), so we’re back to square one. 😉

In all seriousness, I applaud the decision to jettison the Aunt Jemima and the crass, Black Mammy stereotype that she embodies.
 
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blackforest said:
Ah, the old slippery slope thinking! Before you know it, someone will be offended by Log Cabin syrup because they prefer McMansions.
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Actually the problem will be: who is most associated with a “log cabin?” Clearly, Lincoln. And Lincoln statues are also coming down - see Boston - and since we’re now told Lincoln was a racist too, well, so much for Log Cabin maple syrup. Truly, there will be no end to the historical revisioning. You might want to check out what’s happening to the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” in Liverpool.
 
I applaud companies looking at their brands and becoming more sensitive to racial stereotypes. Even the computer industry is renaming conventional terms for hardware. In the early computer days if you added a hard drive, you had to designate Master and Slave drives. They are changing these terms to not only remove the racism implicit in them but that actually make more sense…primary and secondary drives.

These are little things…they aren’t earth shattering, but they are steps in the right direction.
 
“Aunt Jemima” apparently has a background similar to another company mentioned here, these were not big multi-national corporations, they indeed had very humble beginnings:
St. Joseph Gazette editor Chris L. Rutt, of St. Joseph, Missouri, and his friend Charles G. Underwood bought a flour mill in 1888. Rutt and Underwood’s Pearl Milling Company faced a glutted flour market, so they sold their excess flour as a ready-made pancake mix in white paper sacks with a trade name (which Arthur F. Marquette dubbed the “first ready-mix”[8]).[9][10]
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These people were trying to stake out a business for themselves back in the day. The only way I can describe it indeed, they were different times.

This has happened in business before and it will happen again.

Quaker Oats didn’t have ownership of it until, about 40 or 50 years after it started.
 
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My wife and myself have changed to buying pure maple syrup for the past 20 plus years

The others are mostly corn syrup with maple flavoring added
 
Cruciferi said:
nobody knows where that goalpost is!
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The goalpost hasn’t moved. People have been marching for the same things for decades. The only thing that has changed is that people are slowly coming to realize how pervasive the issues of racial insensitivity and injustice are.
 
That’s us as well. Not cheap but so much better. I am guilty of using Aunt Jemima on the kids eggos. When they can taste the difference, I’ll give them the good stuff!
 
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What we found is that although real maple syrup is more expensive, you’ll use less because it has more flavor and doesn’t get lost in the pancakes or French Toast we like to have it on
 
That’s true for us, too. I love syrup and will tend to go overboard putting it on. Had to cut way back on the amount when we switched! My real syrup lasts much longer than the cheap stuff!
 
I’m pretty sure there really was an Uncle Ben, who was the African American man who founded the company.

Edit: I got that wrong. Uncle Ben was a prominent rice farmer, and not the founder of the company.
 
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The R. T. Davis Milling Company hired Nancy Green as a spokesperson for the Aunt Jemima pancake mix in 1890, until her death on August 30, 1923.[9] Nancy Green was born a slave in Montgomery County, Kentucky. As Jemima, Green appeared beside the “world’s largest flour barrel” operating a pancake-cooking display at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Marketing materials for the line of products centered around the stereotypical mammy archetype, including the slogan first used at that Exposition: “I’s in Town, Honey”.[10] Anna Julia Cooper used the World’s Columbian Exposition as an opportunity to address how young African American women were being exploited by white men.
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Nancy Green to be erased by history or made a footnote???
 
vsedriver said:
how is this a racial stereotype?
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Are you at all familiar with the practice of addressing black people as “Aunt” or “Uncle”? It is a half step up fro “boy”. (Just take my word for this.)

"Blacks were expected to refer to white males in positions of authority as “Boss” or “Cap’n”–a title of respect that replaced "Master"or “Marster” used in slave times… All black men, on the other hand, were called by their first names or were referred to as “Boy,” “Uncle,” and “Old Man”–regardless of their age. "


Its time that racial inconography was removed from advertising. Overtime.
 
3 years ago my daughter wouldn’t eat her syrup until I answered: Is Aunt Jemima nice?

Initially I thought well this picture looks friendly but I’m not sure if she is a real person. Let me look it up. I was sort of horrified to learn that the character originated from a minstrel show and wondered how such a brand was still a thing in 2017.

I think a fun direction they could go now that they are taking her off the bottle is to rotate through putting real people on the bottle with a little bio or qr code to a bio. They could do 3 or 4 different versions and change it out for a new set every so often.
 
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The name and logo were inspired by two different Black men, according to the Mars spokesperson.

“The name comes from a Black Texan farmer, known as Uncle Ben, who was known for growing high-quality rice,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The gentleman on our boxes, who has come to personify the brand, was a beloved Chicago chef and waiter named Frank Brown.”
 
DisorientingSneeze said:
I think a fun direction they could go now that they are taking her off the bottle is to rotate through putting real people on the bottle with a little bio or qr code to a bio. They could do 3 or 4 different versions and change it out for a new set every so often.
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Yes, I don’t see why this couldn’t become a positive thing. Have real normal people and not caricatures.

Unfortunately, I suspect they’ll take the easiest route and toss the whole thing and we’ll have even less representation of minorities.
 
Nepperhan said:
Are you at all familiar with the practice of addressing black people as “Aunt” or “Uncle”? It is a half step up fro “boy”. (Just take my word for this.)
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I knew about the ‘boy’ term from books and movies, but not the others except in reference to someone being an ‘Uncle Tom’. But I was not raised around this kind of talk. I know everyone thinks that race is the main topic of life in the USA but it’s not true. Our town was always integrated. There were never any separations. Everyone went to the same park, pool, played on the little league together. We are a rural town of blue collar workers so maybe that was unusual.
 
Cruciferi said:
Yes, I don’t see why this couldn’t become a positive thing. Have real normal people and not caricatures.
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Sorry but I don’t see the need to make syrup political, and these days any real person on the label will be politically charged. I don’t see the need to get rid of the Aunt Jemima label; it may have started off as a stereotypical caricature, but the label has been updated over the years to where I don’t think it’s demeaning to anyone but it has been an effective way to make the brand stand out.
 
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