Getting rid of Uncle Ben will put an end to one of my favorite jokes.
Preacher Ben, despite adversity,
Saved a Southern University.
Said his nephew, “Ain’t that nice?
Uncle Ben’s converted Rice!”
Shame. They should have said “Not in Indiana”…
Need to correct my earlier post. Uncle Ben is NOT a chef, just a dignified elderly African American.
The guy I was thinking of is on the Cream of Wheat box, and was a tad more racist, being called “Rastus” and portrayed as semi-illiterate back in the 1920s. I hear that Cream of Wheat is also rethinking their marketing plan.
In a related matter, they have removed the Indian girl from the Land O’Lakes butter package because that’s racist. (They removed her knees a year or two ago, but that was for a completely different reason.)
Maybe they can go back to their other semi-illiterate mascot, Li’l Abner.
https://clickamericana.com/topics/food-drink/lil-abner-for-cream-of-wheat-1951
I hear that recently a Trump event speaker called Aunt Jemima “a picture of the American dream.” (source)
An earlier poster mentioned people collecting antiques with black caricatures.
And no sooner is there a market, than there are people who will make faked antiques for money: Fake Clocks Page 1
More products with black caricatures can be found at the end of the DVD “C.S.A. the Confederate States of America” by Kevin Willmott.
I’ve seen several of my Facebook contacts recently post memes about Nancy Green (the woman that the speaker in that article referenced), which “wondered” why liberals would want to “erase” such a success story.
As near as I can tell, their memes bent the truth a lot: they claimed that Green created the brand and the recipe (she didn’t; she was hired as a spokesperson well after the product and brand were created, by white guys), that she “sold the brand to General Mills” (she never owned the brand, and neither did General Mills, for that matter), and that she was “one of America’s first black millionaires” (apparently untrue – while she did use her fame to raise money for charities, it doesn’t appear that the Aunt Jemima company paid her particularly well).
Betty Crocker triggers me. Just sayin’
Aunt Jemima is now The Pearl Milling Company!
I have to admit that Pearl Milling Company sounds appropriately old-timey – which it is, because it’s the name of the 19th century company that sold the pancake mix originally – but it puts a mental picture in my head of someone feeding the stuff from oysters into a milling machine and creating iridescent dust.
Way back in 2014, some heirs of Anna Short Harrington filed suit claiming that both Harrington and Nancy Green (who both portrayed Jemima) were instrumental in developing the pancake recipe and their descendants were entitled to billions. At the time I had suspected the suit was never intended to be successful but was filed just to embarrass Quaker Oats.
Growing up, I had no idea that Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben were racist caricatures. I thought Aunt Jemima was just a sweet woman who wanted to serve me delicious pancakes. Even after learning the truth, part of me doesn’t want to accept that she’s a racist caricature. But it’s not healthy to be attached to a corporate mascot so I’m not going to get weepy because she’s on her way out.