Of course, the Irish are stereotyped as pugnacious ginger dwarfs (but they are generally fine with that).
You shouldn’t say Vegetable-Americans anymore; the preferred term is Phyto-Americans.
Hur Hur Hur, black people sure are silly to get upset about stuff…
Big Chlorophyll is behind it.
The Jolly Green Giant is on the side of a hill near Dayton, Washington. The Keebler Elves now want an image on the side of the hill too.
Except that Uncle Ben didn’t come from there.
As the story goes, it’s more of a matter of unauthorized use of someone’s name in marketing material.
Uncle Ben’s was the first producer of converted/parboiled rice. They decided to name the product after a local Houston area African American rice farmer with a reputation for a quality product, and used the likeness of the maitre d of the hotel restaurant that the execs met at to discuss it.
There’s no real reason to dispute the genesis of Uncle Ben- there was a LOT of rice farming in the greater Houston area in the 1940s when this happened (where I grew up was rice fields at that time, FWIW).
The real issue is that he’s a made up character in a lot of ways- I’m sure there was an actual Uncle Ben, but he wasn’t used in any way other than the name.
It doesn’t matter at all if there was a real Ben or not. The entire point is that the use of “Uncle” in this context comes from the way older black slaves were named. They understood that and their audience of Southern consumers understood that.
I skimmed through the Wikipedia list of advertising characters. The one black character I found who’s completely inoffensive was The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, used in Old Spice commercials (the guy who ended his first commercial with the line, “I’m on a horse.”) Another recent commercial features the guy’s son.
The Pine Sol Lady is also in the list. I remember when her ads first came out that people wondered why a black woman was used to pitch a household cleaning product. It brought up the old stereotype of the domestic servant. She wasn’t portrayed in the ads as a servant, but we live in a society that’s so tainted by racism that when a black woman is depicted as an expert on cleaning you have to wonder why, especially when black people are so rarely used as advertising symbols.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread is the offensiveness of the name Aunt Jemima itself. It’s an epithet. My understanding (please correct me if I’m wrong) is that the term “Aunt Jemima” is used in the black community as a sort of female equivalent of “Uncle Tom.” Changing the way she looks won’t get rid of this. They have to ditch the name.
Oops - sorry. Duplicate post.
I am endlessly amused at how eager white people are to make jokes about stuff like this.
Black People: Thank god, they have finally decided to retire another racist caricature. At least this time it only took 100 years. One more small step on what’s been a long journey…
White People: This seems like a great time to make jokes about fictional characters demanding equal rights!
I mean damn, if you think black folks are overreacting (again) about this stuff why not just state that explicitly instead of all the backhanded jokes that allude to that fact? Either way you do it, the message you send is still the same. Or is the goal to try and fly under the radar with these opinions?
Does anybody else remember Aunt Jemima restaurants? They were similar to IHOP. The last time I was there was in the early 1960’s.
PepsiCo has stated that they’ll be changing to a new brand name, as well, but that that will take longer.
I see a lot of black people on Antiques Roadshow who collect black caricature items.
His appearance is staying the same, but his catchphrase is being modernized to the more respectful “Sex worker sex worker sex worker.”
Why? Because it IS perverted. Rice is SUPPOSED to stick together.
The problematic thing about him is that his cookies suck.
Probably a cartoon lumberjack.
And that’s okay.
You mean the Keebler Little People.
More like a W. Somerset Maugham-esque literary caricature. His character originally showed up to demonstrate the contrast between cola nuts (kola nuts) and Uncola nuts (a lemon and a lime). His mise en scene suggested a planter of exotic products in a tropical clime. I hadn’t read any Maugham when I first encountered him, so I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary about him being black.