Rolling Thread on Race 2020

But the issue is that it is/was offensive! It might not be offensive to you, but you're assuming that yours is a universal opinion.

Going from there, your wondering about whether it might be harmful to Black people to not have a racist mammy stereotype staring back at them in the breakfast aisle...that's absurd! You realize that not all representation is good representation, right?

if you have no investment then why post

why not?

another example of a black entertainer whose comedic work has taken on racist dimensions that they're didn't intend

Congratulations.

the table is the table you really should google the current logo you sound like a moron

at least i don't sound like a racist

a black entertainer whose comedic work has taken on racist dimensions that they're didn't intend.

― Mordy, Tuesday, June 23, 2020 10:38 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

man... "aunt jemima" may have been invented by a black songwriter but that has shit to do with the brand, for which white ppl appropriated the character, stamped it on pancake mix, and illustrated her as a racist caricature. when i think about it this way, it's almost more racist!!!!

also the black entertainer was making minstrelsy and knew the work had racist dimensions

The monkey dressed in soldier clothes,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Went out in the woods for to drill some crows,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
The jay bird hung on the swinging limb,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
I up with a stone and hit him on the shin,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!

Kersands's comedy act centered on his enormous mouth, which he exuberantly contorted into countless shapes. He peppered his songs with these movements and their accompanying noises. One observer remarked, "The slightest curl of his lip or opening of that yawning chasm termed his mouth was of itself sufficient to convulse the audience."[5] He could even fit several billiard balls or a cup and saucer into his mouth and still perform a dance routine or fill the theater with boisterous laughter. Tom Fletcher wrote that while touring in England, Kersands told Queen Victoria that if his mouth was any bigger, his ears would have to be moved.[6]

This physical feature fit well into racist white-created stereotypes of blacks having large lips and mouths. Kersands further embraced such disparaging caricatures by affecting the stage persona of a slow and ignorant Sambo. He also sang songs that reinforced these racist views. In his "Mary's Gone with a Coon", he sang of a black man "lamenting" his daughter's impending marriage to a black man: "De chile dat I bore, should tink ob me no more / Den to run away wid a big black coon."[7] His "Old Aunt Jemima" lent its name to the stereotyped mammy Aunt Jemima that later was developed into an iconic trademark for a brand of pancakes.

Despite Kersands's reinforcement of negative black stereotypes, very few African Americans disdained his act. Part of his appeal for them lay in his mixing of elements of African American folklore into his show in a way that would appeal to his black audience but be ignored or derided by whites. "Old Aunt Jemima", one of his signature songs, serves as a good example. The song exists in three texts, two published 1875 and one in 1880, suggesting that Kersands made up verses as he sang. All three versions begin in a church, a locale that white minstrels tended to avoid. The 1875 texts describe charismatic black worship practices, but the 1880 edition begins with a black character fleeing a white church because they "prayed so long".[8] Verses from the song soon entered the African American tradition and appeared in later collections of folklore. Other songs Kersands performed featured African American elements like talking animals and weak-versus-strong match-ups. His popularity led many theatre owners to relax rules limiting black patrons to specific sections of the playhouse.

None of this strikes me as an account of someone whose work was devoid of racist dimensions.

Rutt's inspiration for Aunt Jemima was Billy Kersands' American-style minstrelsy/vaudeville song "Old Aunt Jemima", written in 1875.

― Mordy, Tuesday, June 23, 2020 1:19 PM bookmarkflaglink

I literally just said this

i'm taking seriously the counterfactual that a jewish actor doing jewface made a character that a gentile organization used to sell gefilte fish with like a huge nose and side locks and a yarmulke and then later out of sensitivity turned him into a pretty normal looking jewish guy without any of the jewface stereotypes i really do not think i would gaf about them continuing to use the image. if black ppl are offended by the current depiction i am not telling them they have no right to be - but i noticed that the corporation did this on their own initiative without any clamor for it to happen and it's pretty obviously corporate ass-covering.

xp Neanderthal you said it was invented by white guys??

None of this strikes me as an account of someone whose work was devoid of racist dimensions.

ok fair enough. to me these works have different resonances depending on who is performing them. i think the last paragraph you posted at least complicates the question a little.

From 2015: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/24/besides-the-confederate-flag-what-other-symbols-should-go/can-we-please-finally-get-rid-of-aunt-jemima

xp: mixing non-racist material in with your racist material does not make your racist material any less racist

Mordy, you edited out this parenthetical from my post deliberately:

(who got the name Aunt Jemima from attending a white minstrel show and hearing "old Aunt Jemima")

Come on.

You called it a white minstrel show what am I missing??

also the black entertainer was making minstrelsy and knew the work had racist dimensions

Yeah, it's not like black entertainers had lots of options on their approaches at that time. The entire thing is racism all the way down and continuing to insist that you can sanitize that history by removing the most obviously racist elements is some bullshit.

From 2007: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247739524_Aunt_Jemima_is_Alive_and_Cookin'_An_Advertiser's_Dilemma_of_Competing_Collective_Memories

The two white guys were at a white minstrel show where a white person in Blackface sang the song in question. It was written by a Black man, but the white dudes were inspired by hearing it that night.

i thought aunt jemima was racist before but mordy's argument has made me realize it's more like a vortex of racism, wheels within wheels

I guess we won't be polling the new brand name

I vote for Uncle Mordy's High Fructose Corn Syrup (Now with 50% Less Racism).

who the fuck buys pancake syrup

I don't understand pancakes

I only buy tia nopales' agave

https://i.imgur.com/HYprj5U.png

At least Mordy taught us a new word today.

but what are they like? what are their favorite movies and tv shows?

Ah yes, showing us graphs of who is buying the syrup to say what?

Go into any (corner store/deli/whatever you call it) in any poor, predominantly Black and POC neighborhood in the US, and you'll find one type of pancake syrup: Aunt Jemima. It's not like there's a whole lot of choice. So that poll doesn't mean much.

The thing boggling my mind is that in my world, I have been making snarky jokes about Aunt Jemima getting a perm for 30 years with Black friends while apparently the White people around me were going "finally we have a Black person on our pancakes and syrup that we can feel proud of; yay representation!" without even the slightest bit of irony

Ah yes, showing us graphs of who is buying the syrup to say what?

alfred literally asked?

seemed rhetorical, idk

we're all gonna have a good healthy laugh about this in fifty years when we reminisce about the days when we allowed companies to market their products to us using smiley cartoon characters on their food labels like we were toddlers

my limited understanding of american history leads me to the conclusion that when what consumers consider broadly racist changes, the repercussions tend to happen quickly and loudly and are almost always long overdue.

the bottom line with aunt jemima is that the brand had no meaningful resonance with the majority of its buyers and lots of attached disreputability; it's an outdated corporate logo with no value and was long overdue to be chucked. I hope whatever VP of marketing in charge of the property gets fired for their sheer ineptness at not dealing with this issue the instant they were hired.

(and just to make the point myself before someone else does: sure, it's the bestselling brand of syrup but I would put that up to Quaker's reach and distribution and not the logo... more to the point, if it was a logo of any value, Quaker would have fought harder to keep it, qed they've already determined internally that the risk/reward isn't worth it.)

i'm pretty sure the first question during a job interview for the VP of marketing at Aunt Jemima's is "you're not going to change Aunt Jemima, right? because we made a blood pact with the owner of the washington redskins to never, ever change or learn"

xp

i'm not sure i'm following your logic on this one, ulysses.

people have been asking them to change their racist logo for many years. so clearly they DO think it has value

i'm saying it did have value for a considerable period, then it ceased to have meaningful value for quite some time but its negative symbolism was considered manageable enough to make it not worth rebranding and now they think the value is less than the risk.
NB: i am not an expert on corn syrup

i mean, hey, maybe someone at pepsico had an ethical epiphany that a logo founded on a racist caricature with a name that has become historically synonymous with racially charged servitude is inexcusable and decided that taking a business loss is the right thing to do but maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, I doubt it.

Lost in all this is that fake syrup sucks.

and is pointedly marketed people with disproportionate risk of diabetes!

Cue my post about corner stores and delis in primarily Black and POC neighborhoods above

i feel like anyone who has ever heard burn, hollywood, burn kind of knows what has needed to happen to this “brand”

i was trying to think of where we’d had this conversation before and i was like OH YEAH

OMG I WANT THIS AMAZING RONALDINHO BOTTLE OPENER

whole wheat mix is pretty good

and James "We're Not Defunding the Police" Clyburn is a bigger problem

In September 2012, The Guardian posted a story on its facebook page regarding models wearing Aunt Jemima earrings on a catwalk at Dolce and Gabbana during Milan fashion week. As the article points out, ‘some might argue that they’re harmless, even cute, but there’s nothing cute about two white men selling minstrel earrings to a majority non-black audience. There wasn’t a single black model in Dolce and Gabbana’s show, and it’s hard not to be appalled by the transparent exoticism in sending the only black faces down the runway in the form of earrings.’Aunt Jemima is still our feminist issue because she stands for the continued silencing of black women’s exploitation around the world. As one of the most recognizable images of black women globally, why aren’t more people enraged by the fact that she remains frozen in time? As The Guardian aptly concludes, ‘when you’re explicitly pandering to such a shameful era of western racism and colonialism, it’s time to move on to the future.’I could not agree more. As Patricia Hill Collins argues, we need to place the ‘diverse patterns of Black women’s activism within the border zone of Black feminist nationalism/ Black nationalist feminism … as well as within a broader, global framework of feminist nationalism...in order to create space for much needed dialogue among Black women activists … as well as alliances with other groups of racial ethnic women.’58 Aunt Jemima is not a Black feminist issue; she must be the issue of this generation of feminists, artists, and activists, and then perhaps we will finally be able to wipe that smile off her stereotyped and fictional face.

https://www.drcherylthompson.com/aunt-jemima/2020/6/23/contesting-the-aunt-jemima-trademark-through-feminist-art-why-is-she-still-smiling

are POC who aren’t black or indigenous included in BIPOC?

never heard 'BIPOC' until a month ago, now the term is everywhere and I guess it has replaced POC??? what was wrong with saying POC? is this referring to a different group of ppl? is it B and I POC or is it B or I POC or what? does anyone see BIPOC and not think 'bisexual POC'?... for real who is in charge of changing these terms every few months?? its getting a liiiiittle silly no?

https://www.rd.com/article/what-does-bipoc-stand-for/