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| Aunt Jemima then |
Let me open by saying Happy Martin Luther King Day! Nearly 100 years after the Civil War, Dr. King put our nation on the road to racial reconciliation. It’s a long road and we’re still on it, but
things certainly have improved.
Prior to racial barriers being broken, blacks were relegated
to positions of servitude. Even high
achieving blacks in white schools were encouraged by teachers and counselors to seek trades.
If you’ve read Kathryn Stockett’s book The Help, or seen the movie, you get a good feel for what life was like in the South during the early days of the Civil rights era.
If you’ve read Kathryn Stockett’s book The Help, or seen the movie, you get a good feel for what life was like in the South during the early days of the Civil rights era.
With all the talk about The Help, I decided to blog about Aunt Jemima today. My kids love Aunt Jemima frozen waffles and Aunt Jemima
pancake mix. I grew up eating waffles
and pancakes that my mom made from scratch—which is exactly what I did for my
kids. But they prefer the premade frozen
and mix (eaten at sleepovers) to my homemade.
Store brand waffles and pancake
mix aren’t as good, according to my boys.
“We want Aunt Jemima!” (Sorry,
Mom)
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| Aunt Jemima now |
Prior to my kids demanding Aunt Jemima, I never bought the
products—and seeing the Aunt Jemima label in a black person’s home used to shock me. I realize no ill feelings exist behind the label (Quaker Oats owns Aunt Jemima now), but the origins of the Aunt Jemima character are insensitive, or what's today considered politically incorrect.
When I was a growing up, my mother never allowed Aunt
Jemima’s broad, smiling face to darken our pantry shelf (yes, pun intended). Why did Mom despise this seemingly innocuous,
jolly woman? Well it all goes
back to southern slave history.
Back in slavery days, very young white children called much older slaves aunt and uncle. Apparently the practice of calling any black person aunt or uncle, carried over into post slavery times.
My mother grew up in 1930’s South Carolina, and when white
salesmen would come to the door and address my feisty grandmother as Auntie
(pronounced “Ainie” in the southern vernacular), she’d say, “My mother never
gave birth to anything that looked like you!” before slamming the door.
So, Mom never purchased Aunt Jemima because addressing a black woman as aunt or auntie (instead of Miss, Mrs. or ma'am) was a disrespectful practice. However, she never had a problem with Uncle Ben, perhaps because he didn’t appear as a buffoonish caricature. For years Aunt Jemima was portrayed as the stereotypical black mammy of the plantation south. Old Aunt Jemima was a minstrel song written in 1875 and the Aunt Jemima character was a fixture in minstrel shows during the late 19th century.
The idea of this pre-mixed product being represented by a slave woman was inspired by the marketing aspect of bringing back “the good old days” when slaves did all the work. In the book Slave in a Box, Maurice Manning shows how “advertising entrepreneur James Webb Young, aided by celebrated illustrator N.C. Wyeth, skillfully tapped into nostalgic 1920s perceptions of the South as a culture of white leisure and black labor. Aunt Jemima's ready-mixed products offered middle-class housewives the next best thing to a black servant: a ‘slave in a box’ that conjured up romantic images of not only the food but also the social hierarchy of the plantation South.” (From the Slave in a Box Amazon page).
When I was a kid, my
mom said, “if they’d just take that kerchief off her head and call the product Jemima,
I wouldn’t have a problem with it.” Aunt
Jemima’s appearance has changed throughout the years. She’s no longer buffoonish looking and
doesn’t resemble a mammy. She’s been
slimmed down, her kerchief evolved into a hair band before finally
disappearing, and she now sports a 1980s hairdo. The only thing that hasn’t changed, and will
forever prevent my mom from buying any Aunt Jemima product is the “Aunt” in front
of her name.
Most African Americans of later generations don’t know about
the derogatory past of Aunt Jemima. But
there are probably plenty in my mom’s
age group that don’t buy Aunt Jemima because of its hurtful past.
I’ll end things on a lighter note. I won’t put you on the spot and ask whether or not you buy Aunt Jemima! But I will ask this instead, do you prefer pancakes from mix or from scratch?
Now let me take a moment to shamelessly plug my book! If you
have read The Help, readers have found The Governor’s Sons a good follow-up. It provides a different glimpse of “the help”
by showing what happens when a wealthy young man falls in love with his family’s
African American maid.
Thanks for visiting!
