Aunt Jemima…What Took You so Long?
On June 17, 2020, Quaker/Pepsico decided to change the name of a long beloved advertising icon. That’s right, Aunt Jemima will no longer grace the syrup bottles, corn meal (yellow, white, and self-rising) or pancake mix in your pantries. America, Aunt Jemima has been emancipated. So the fuck what? When I was a kid, we saw Aunt Jemima products in the store, right next to Uncle Ben, and the Cream of Wheat guy. After January 1st, 1863, America kept on making money from the flesh of Black folks by keeping them commercially, economically, and literally in subservient roles. The rice people tried to tell us for years that Uncle Ben was a real rice grower leading people to believe that a Black guy was getting a piece of every dollar we spent on rice. To clarify, we mostly used Riceland that had the stereotypical Asian in a sampan hat that couldn’t pronounce L’s. Anybody that grew up in the South and grew anything in dirt, knew that Uncle Ben was the same as Uncle Remus and Uncle Tom. Black people didn’t get shit from any of these ‘relatives’ except a proclivity for diabetes and hypertension from all the carbohydrates, pork, and salt.
I grew up watching a commercial where a table full of cherry cheeked White kids and their square jawed White dad waited for breakfast. When White Mom glided into the dining room impeccably dressed with Carol Bishop makeup spackled on her face with a tray heaped with fluffy pancakes, they all chimed, “Aunt Jemima, What took you so long?” Okay, a couple things. The terms uncle and aunt were applied to older Black people who were past the sexualized phase but still useful. We grew rice and became your uncle in a white porter jacket. Wait. You do know that no one wears a white porter jacket to pick rice- right? It made people comfortable to know that a safe Uncle whatsit is cooking and not pillaging White womanhood. Uncle Remus was a happy Negro singin’ and telling stories about Brother Rabbit aka Brer’ Rabbit. He was no threat in his overalls and straw hat. Again, the White folks is safe, and it’s okay for little boys with cowlicks, bare feet, and a piece of grass in their teeth to hang out with a jovial ‘good’ Negro. Someone said something about Mrs. Butterworth. Did anybody think that the syrup was modeled on a Black woman? I certainly didn’t. She was a Mrs., like Miss Evelyn and Miss Lottie next door to my grandparents. Only Mrs. Butterworth was a spinster White woman living in New Hampshire with her special friend . We couldn’t afford syrup anyway. My mom used to make syrup from boiling sugar to pour over our non-Jemima pancakes, because we couldn’t afford that stuff either.
Okay, kudos to retiring Aunt Jemima. It is a step forward from using people of color as minstrel shills, and we can all add the permed and pearled Jemima to our Negrobilia collection. You know what took Aunt Jemima so long? She was profitable because of her desexualized and subjugated Blackness. She made a lot of money for you just like slave labor. Now go spread some of that money reinvesting in educational systems that will free the minds of those in her image. Free Uncle Ben!!
