RIP Aunt Jemima

I was making pancakes recently and wondering about Aunt Jemima.

I have fond brand recognition for Aunt Jemima - it's a product that has been around since my childhood. My parents were more likely to buy the syrup and make pancakes from scratch, but I vividly recall her smiling face on the bottle from back when, kinda like the Quaker Oats fella (same company, by the by). I actually recall being troubled by it, confused by it as a child, though I'm not quite sure I could put my finger on why it was disturbing to me back then.

As a married adult, I generally prefer healthier pancake mixes - Coyote, say - but for Erika, Aunt Jemima pancakes have a comfort-food status, so we've been buying them occasionally. Like I say, I was making some for breakfast last week, while in America people were rioting about systematic racism, and wondering about the brand. How has it gotten a free pass?

I mean, Aunt Jemima looks like she might be a slave. A happy, servile one - a positive image, I guess,  if you are a member of the "owner" class, but one that serves as a reminder for most people not only that once in America people owned other people, and had a pretty definite idea what a "good slave" might look like: basically, as far as women are concerned, Aunt Jemima was it.

I figured that maybe there was some history I was unaware of that explained the continued existence of the brand. I mean, I had no idea who the actual person on the pancake box was. I sometimes have an all-purpose Caribbean spice mix on the shelf with the brand Auntie Bev's, and I'm pretty sure I've met the actual Auntie Bev at a Caribbean festival in Maple Ridge, selling her stuff; but I doubted very much that the woman on the box (or bottle) of Aunt Jemima's was, for instance, a businesswoman who came up with a good pancake mix and marketed it. Maybe there was some other excuse for the brand's persistence?

Turns out, no. The history of the character goes back to minstrel shows. The Wiki suggests that the original Aunt Jemima character - not associated with pancakes at the time - may even have been a white man in blackface (!). Even the first actress to play her and lend her face to the brand, Nancy Green, was born into slavery. So there's good reason to view Aunt Jemima exactly as she seems: a racist caricature of an acclimatized, happy slave.

Of course, I read this morning that after 130 years, the brand is finally being retired. Erika and I had a fast pancake breakfast in her honour. 

Since Quaker Oats likes to use faces on its products, apparently - I wonder who Aunt Jemima's replacement will be? Will Quaker Oats replace it with a less fraught image of happy servility, like housekeeper Alice from The Brady Bunch, perhaps? That image still speaks of a time - the one we live in, as a matter of fact - when some people have so much wealth they can hire others to do the cooking for them, while other people have so little wealth they might gladly take this job, and find a way to be happy in it. Maybe they would be wise to avoid any class implications, and find a face and name not in any way associated with actual kitchen help...?

Well past time for a re-brand, in any case. Reading about this this morning, I discover there is an actual book on the topic: Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima. Or you can just go read the Wikipedia page.
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RIP, Aunt Jemima.