The Movement for Black Lives has come for your racist food brands.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, perhaps one of the most-overdue and yet least-expected changes in American culture finally began: the replacement of racist, stereotypical “spokescharacters” on packaged foods, including Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, and Mia the Native American “butter maiden” from Land O’Lakes.
While Land O’Lakes announced that it would remove Mia from its packaging the month before Floyd’s murder set off a global uprising, in the days and weeks afterward, other brands followed suit. In June, Quaker Oats, the PepsiCo subsidiary that owns the Aunt Jemima brand, announced its intention to rename and rebrand its products. It also acknowledged that the character was based on a racial stereotype. Scholars have said that it represents the Black mammy.
AP Photo/Donald King
The aftermath of 2020 has brought a lot of changes to America, from statues to the film industry and even pancakes.
The issue of the portrayal of pancake goddess Aunt Jemima as a “slave-era mammy”-ish type has been debated off and on for years. Some time ago, Aunt Jemima got a perm and a makeover, but that did not satisfy those who felt that a makeover could not erase the stigma of slavery associated with the product over the years.
In the wake of Black Lives Matter riots and protests, corporations began responding to criticisms of the portrayal of Black Americans in media. The Quaker Oats company, a subsidiary of Pepsi, finally took up the task of yet-again modifying Aunt Jemima. This time, they didn’t just give her a perm, they simply eliminated her completely.
Beginning in 1889, the stereotypical image of Aunt Jemimawas affixed to the packaging of pancake mix made by The Quaker Oats company. The image was a fat Black woman wearing a scarf around her head, which some folks called a âmammy rag.â It was the image that many white people held of Black  women, who during slavery cooked, cleaned, and tended to the children of slaveowners.
The first model for Aunt Jemima was from the likeness of Lillian Richard, followed by Anna Short Harrington. When The Quaker Oats company began getting pressured to change the stereotypical image of Aunt Jemima over the past few decades, the company finally announced last June that it would no longer used the photo image of Aunt Jemima on any of its packaging. Instead, Quaker Oats companyâs brand of pancake mixes and syrups will now be known as Pearl Milling Company.
AP Photo/Donald King
My colleague wrote a great piece earlier on Aunt Jemima changing its name to something that was just a horrible new name that sounded like a gravel mining company, Pearl Milling, but that also hearkens back to some of the racist history of the company.
But there’s another thing that some are afraid of. A lot of people don’t know that the brand was based upon the faces and/efforts of real women. Among those women were Nancy Green, Anna Harrington and Lillian Richard. Their family members were concerned that the removal of the picture and changing the name further erase the real contributions of their family members who helped to make the brand.