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.
CHICAGO (WLS) The Quaker Oats Company have given Aunt Jemima a new name and new look, but the families of some of the women who portrayed her over the years feel they are being erased. It s a gross miscarriage of justice, said Dannez Hunter, great grandson of Anna Short Harrington. Let s put it in context of what it really actually is, a propaganda campaign.
The relatives are upset that the brand has been renamed Pearl Milling Company, discontinuing the Aunt Jemima brand. Hunter, who said both his great grandmother and his grandmother portrayed the fictional character for the company, said the move not only cheats his family out of earnings both women are due, but also erases them from history. He s pursuing litigation.