Today is June 19, 2020, Juneteenth. For some strange reason, my taste buds nudged me toward pancakes for breakfast. This is a strange occurrence for a couple of reasons. First, it is a weekday, which means my breakfast usually consists of something simple like boiled eggs and cereal or a quick salad. Second, even if it was a weekend, I almost never eat pancakes at home. 

Anyway, as I finished my two-year old bottle of Mrs. Buttersworth pancake syrup, the hoopla around Pepsico’s recent announcement that Aunt Jemima products would be “rebranded” entered my thoughts. According to the Aunt Jemima website, “Aunt Jemima brand is removing its image from packaging and changing the brand name.” This move is purportedly a move by Aunt Jemima’s parent company, Pepsico, to align its branding with the company’s “journey to racial equality” brought about by the huge spotlight on racial injustices suffered by black people in the wake of the most recent police killings of two unarmed black men, George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks. My curiosity was officially peaked, so I did a quick google search on the rebranding issue. 

As I began to read various articles about the decision to rebrand, a whole range of emotions came crushing down. First, I was infuriated and boiling mad. Next, I wanted to seek understanding. Maybe, I was missing something. Next, I was sad. All of these emotions within a span of less than fifteen minutes as I took a deeper dive into various lines of thought on the issue of this rebranding.

I cannot help but to believe that a higher power pushed me toward pancakes this morning, so that I would release my thoughts and feelings on the bigger picture of race relations in the United States of America. I am a black woman, so Aunt Jemima is a depiction of ME!

I’m F-ing MAD! Why? Because Pepsico is basically firing Aunt Jemima and using the current day resurgence of a widespread multicultural, multi-race push for racial equality as what seems to be pretext for doing so. Whatever “genius” came up with the idea wants the world to believe that the firing will atone for the 100 years that the company exploited the precarious position of black women in U.S. society for financial gain.

As a black women, I say they are dead wrong! In getting rid of Aunt Jemima, the company seems to want to erase the fact that they built their brand off of glorifying the 400 years that black women and men toiled, WITHOUT COMPENSATION, building this country and white America’s lust for old times when blacks were forced to pretend to enjoy toiling for free and being treated worse than animals.  

As noted in a recent Vox article, Doris Witt, wrote in her book “Black Hunger: Soul Food and America” that Aunt Jemima was legitimized as a brand largely due to its promotion of the “mammy” like Aunt Jemima at a time when the country’s rapidly expanding commodity system was one that relied on exploitable labor to be profitable. In other words, the brand reached prominence, at least in part, because it conjured up relatability. A lot of white people had black women in their kitchens who they romanticized as being like “Aunt Jemima,” smiley, chubby, and just happy to serve for little to no pay (gagging). And, with post reconstruction ushering in Jim Crow, black women (and men) were prime for exploitation in all aspects of daily life. 

I’m Mad and Sad. So, if Pepsico was truly looking to atone for their depiction of black women as being just one foot off the plantation, there have been many times in history, long before now, where doing so would have been more appropriate. Let’s see. There was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed certain discrimination in employment, schools, and voter requirements (including discrimination based on race and sex). There was also the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and when Martin Luther King’s birthday became a holiday. Oh yeah, there was also that time when the National Center for Education Statistics reported that black women are now the most educated group in the United States. 

So, why am I sad? It’s because it took until 2020 for Pepsico to decide to make a change, and I believe it took so long because despite the overwhelming number of black women who have achieved prominence and success in all facets of business, academics, science, law, and engineering, much of white America still holds on to their made up predilections that black women are nothing more than mammys on a plantation. It plays out in the workplace and in business and beyond every single day. A prime example is megachurch pastor Louie Gilgio’s recent comment that white people “miss the blessing of slavery.”

Understanding and in the End. I understand that many black Americans believe that Pepsico’s move with respect to Aunt Jemima is long overdue, because of the negative connotations that bred the brand. Riché Richardson, an associate professor of African American literature at Cornell University, wrote in her 2015 New York Times Article “Can We Please, Finally, Get Rid of ‘Aunt Jemima”?, that Aunt Jemima is “an outgrowth of Old South plantation nostalgia,” which mythically portrayed her “as an asexual, plump black woman wearing a headscarf.” As you might have guessed, Richardson is not a fan of the branding.

In 2020, in the midst of what seems to be rising friction between cultures and races and continued diminishment of the contributions of black women to society, it is easy to conclude that the Aunt Jemima brand adds to the friction and devaluing. However, I see something different.   

Aunt Jemima grew out of the fantasized view of the black enslaved women, whose bodies nurtured both slave children and their owners. It grew out of black enslaved women who were so pivotal in the upbringing of white children who eventually owned them, that Kimberly Wallace-Sanders wrote in the introduction to her book “Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory” that it was not unusual for white southerners to describe her as the most influential figure in their childhood. When these black enslaved women were not caring for the children that would ultimately own them, they were busy with their hands, intelligence, and ingenuity in every aspect of existence of both enslaved and free men. Even the ignorant pastor Giglio admitted that enslavement of these women and their families and the labors extorted from them under the most dehumanizing of circumstances “built up the framework for the world that white people live in.” 

To make it simple, black women have carried the day in this county since we were first brought to the shores in bondage. Instead of serving under the feet of the cruel and inhuman, in 2020 we are breaking through barriers in all facet of achievement. So, if Pescico really wants to set things right, instead of firing Aunt Jemima, allow her to pass the torch to one of her heirs. Just pick one, any one and put her on that box in a power suit. And finally, launch a long overdue media campaign showing how black women went from the stereotype of Aunt Jemima to leading and making a difference in all facets of human existence from politics, science and research, and corporate America. If they want to atone, this is what they need to do. Firing Aunt Jemima is an insult!