The "'Black Lives Matter' Is Gaining Momentum: Part IV" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading about the many food companies who have been criticized for using racial stereotypes to sell their products.  

One such food product is Mars Food Company's Uncle Ben's rice which features an older black man smiling on the box.  Another food product was ConAgra Brand bottle of pancake syrup which featured a bottle shaped like a mammy, a caricature of a black women as subservient to white people.  But wait, there is the B&G Foods Inc. Cream of Wheat, which features a beaming black man in a white chef's uniform.  That figure has been on the box since it's debut in the late 19th century.  The character's name is "Rastus," a pejorative term for black men, who was once depicted as a barely literate cook who didn't know what vitamins were.  

But perhaps the biggest figure, literally, was the large woman dressed in a white cooks outfit with a head covering who was known as Aunt Jemima.  All these products depicted racial stereotypes and were offensive to black people.  The protests have been going on for quite some time, but I guess it took the recent widespread anti-racism protests to make the companies finally do something about the figures on their packages.  According to Kevin D. Thomas, a professor of multicultural branding in the Race, Ethnic and Indigenous Studies Program at Marquette University, perhaps the current push for change will finally lead to a substantial overhaul in the marketing world.  The companies are now stating that they want to stand in solidarity with "our black and brown communities, an we can see that our packaging may be interpreted in a way that is wholly inconsistent with our values."  Seems rather unusual that it took them this long to see what their packaging was doing to the black and brown communities.  

There is also one other figure that graces the packaging of Chiquita Bananas.  Miss Chiquita allegedly is meant to portray something exotic, but that can have the same effect of marginalizing people.  The company says it was meant to project a vision of something that is exotic.  Professor Rebecca Hains, a media and communication instructor said that presenting people is really problematic.  

It marginalizes people and suggests that they're not important or equal to the majority.  At times, I disagree with some of the reasoning involved, but for the most part, I think that the figures on the products are demeaning to most black and brown citizens.  There has to be something else they can placed on the packaging to make it appeal to the public!  If they have to rely on racial characters to sell their products, perhaps buyers should be looking to buy another product.  One final note for my story today would be to tell you that some companies have made changes in the past to correct mistakes in packaging they had made in the past.  One such product was the gun-toting Mexican-American known as the "Frito Bandito."  That was changed in 1971.  In the 1950's the Sambo chain opened pancake restaurants by the hundreds across the United States.  The founders, Sam Baristone and Newell Bohnett said the restaurant's name was based on the first letters of their names.  Didn't keep it from being racist though.  They then changed the name to "The Jolly Tiger" and recently closed their final location.  Could be there are other products and references that are racially offensive, but not on a national stage.  Change seems to be happening...finally.  And it is due to the "Black Lives Matter" orgainzation.  Results are finally happening...at last.  It was another extraordinary dah in the life of an ordinary guy.