This feels like one of those right wing memes that could go either way, but let’s break it down like this Uncle Ben and Aunt Jamima are both domestic servants, do you think that’s an appropriate mascot for a company? Do you think black folks want them as some of their oldest icons?
Land of lakes also has a stereotypically dressed native woman who probably wouldn’t dress like that at all even back in the day.
I get that most people couldn’t give a shit either way but when you use your brain to think about how messed up presumably white owned companies are for using slaves and genocided people as their logos or mascots is pretty fucked.
But hey you’re not here for an insightful discussion, you’re here to get those hate clicks.
Well, the Sun-Maid girl is clearly working a job that’s mostly done by immigrants from the south these days, so using a white woman instead of a brown one denies them representation. But using a brown woman would also be racist because it would perpetuate harmful stereotypes… hm, what to do?
Little Debbie is clearly a child. Do you want children to be exploited for marketing purposes?
At least a Quakers are historically against war and slavery, so I guess he can stay.
As a European (we had slavery, made more wars than you can imagine and have probably the worst history you can’t even imagine) nice try locking people up in “black” vs “white”.
I hope you’re willing to learn because that is historically incorrect. The first nation to abolish slavery was Hati around a decade before the first European country (Denmark). That is if we are talking abolish and keep abolished in all territories controlled. Persia is possibly the first country recorded to have used slaves but they would have periods of “abolishment” which were probably good for causing slave revolts in new areas they were thinking of conquering. Arguably the first country to have and to abolish slavery.
I suppose that once again depends on definitions. There’s likely a reason people often use the term “wage slavery” these days even though on paper, salaried workers are by no means slaves, since they can quit whenever they want to, but that doesn’t mean that in practice, people don’t end up in situations that feel like slavery anyways.
Debt slavery is another one that gets thrown around, even though the possibility of declaring bankruptcy and thus getting off the hook for only a fraction of what you owe is technically available. It almost seems as if slavery is part of the human condition, and if not externally imposed, people will find a way to self-impose it in one way or another.
Either way, it seems silly to suggest that only the slavery imposed by one particular group of people on one particular group of other people is morally objectionable, and I’m also not entirely convinced that erasing any reminders of it does anything at all to right that wrong. At some point, it must be possible to look back at the past and say “well, that was awful, but at least we’re over it now”, but that isn’t possible if you erase any and all traces of it, is it?
No, I’m just pointing out that “they practiced slavery” isn’t an argument you can just throw at any race or nationality in particular without inflicting massive self-damage. Literally everyone is guilty of it.
haha no. such a huge claim requires substantial evidence - and you left yourself an easy out. Many cultures practiced slavery, true. Most cultures? Maybe an argument could be made. All?
ALL?
That requires substantial evidence there’s absolutely nothing supporting it.
Now I get it, the easiest way to debase your enemy’s righteousness is to drag them down to your level. But you don’t get this one shitbag. Slavery isn’t universal. You just want it to be so it makes you feel better about your premise.
Since you’re the one making the claim that not all cultures have a history of it, I’ll leave it to you to find me a single counterexample of a culture that never practiced it. But even if that should exist, I think there’s certainly overwhelming evidence that it was extremely widespread and common practice on every single continent at some point in history.
Why is it so important to you that “almost all cultures” practiced slavery? What does that do for you?
At the risk of repeating myself: “they practiced slavery” isn’t an argument you can just throw at any race or nationality in particular without inflicting massive self-damage.
It doesn’t absolve the inherent evil of the institution. No amount of “well billy and tommy did it too” makes it right, kiddo.
I never claimed that. But I’m still waiting for you to find me a single example of a culture that never practiced slavery.
So… Now that you have multiple examples, what then sport? Will you reevaluate your flawed premise and integrate new information that refutes your logic, or will you just piddle along with the flawed reasoning that got you here?
Yeah it’s hard to have a good faith debate about a post that wasn’t made in good faith. Anyone who’s being intellectually honest wouldn’t try to equate these company mascots.
Only the picture. There was an actual Uncle Ben who was a rice farmer. And an actual Aunt Jemima making pancake mix. Both were born into slavery, both had white corporations exploit them. Uncle and Aunt are also both titles used in the Antebellum South for older house slaves trusted by the family.
From 1946 to 2020, Uncle Ben’s products carried the image of an elderly African-American man dressed in a bow tie, which is said to have been based on a Chicago maître d’hôtel named Frank Brown with the name “Ben” being a possible reference to a shrewd rice farmer from Houston. In 2020, Mars told Ad Age, “We don’t know if a real ‘Ben’ ever existed.” According to Mars, Uncle Ben was an African-American rice grower known for the quality of his rice. Gordon L. Harwell, an entrepreneur who had supplied rice to the armed forces in World War II, chose the name “Uncle Ben’s” as a means to expand his marketing efforts to the general public.
I’m not making a statement about the post, but “it’s just shit posting” is a reeeeaaal good way to turn this place into a nazi bar. Not calling OP a nazi, just saying that this argument right here is chum in the water for them
Mia, the Land o Lakes butter maiden, is actually rather interesting, at least the modern version they got rid of. The artist was a member of the Red Lake Chippewa and the design included traditional Ojibwe floral motifs. Yeah, it needed to go, but it wasn’t the worst by a long shot.
I just love the idea of a native american being iconfied for… butter.
like, wow, that’s so very, very native and authentic - butter.
I get it, it’s the land-o-lakes, minnesota, and they take butter fucking serious folks, they make it, they eat it, they sculpt it, so yeah, they’re REALLY into butter… but why the stolen iconography? why associate the native americans, who didn’t domesticate cows, with butter of all things?
like what the actual fuck was the line of thought?
Your thoughts are interesting, but I always presumed it was just a simple tribute of sorts. Like you said, Land-O-Lakes, beautiful, natural scenery of America…accompanied by a beautiful Native American woman.
Now take the product itself, like you said, make it make sense. Ehh. Maybe you just can’t. They wanted a mascot & instead of a smiling cow or potato, they chose a woman. Sex sells!
cultural appropriation sells. it’s not just any woman kneeling serving up the dairy products, nah… keep telling yourself it didn’t mean anything, maybe one day you’ll believe yourself, but make no mistake, they wouldn’t have put a white woman kneeling there.
The native cultural influence is pretty strongly interwoven in the fabric of Minnesota. It’s very possible the thought process was just that the locals associated that image with their state, just like the brand name.
The Anishinaabe and Dakota have had major influence on the state and that’s been recognized more in recent history with the renaming of certain places back to their native name, like Bde Maka Ska.
Most of the naming in the metro(and the state name) comes from the Dakota peoples. The Anishinaabe were located more in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin so you’ll see the influence there. For example the town of Biwabik in the iron range which is the Anishinaabe word for iron.
I’ll be honest, this comment section is confusing. I’m not sure which comment is agreeing with which. Personally I think it’s bad to put slaves on your products but why am I supposed to feel bad about the white people?
It’s bad faith concern. They’re accusing those brands of erasing minorities under the aegis of anti racism. When the original intent of those mascots was appropriation and playing on the black house slave theme.
“The character of Aunt Jemima is an invitation to white people to indulge in a fantasy of enslaved people — and by extension, all of Black America — as submissive, self-effacing, loyal, pacified and pacifying,” Twitty wrote in a recent NBC Think essay. “It positions Black people as boxed in, prepackaged and ready to satisfy; it’s the problem of all consumption, only laced with racial overtones.”
This piece is interesting but even the relatives understand the imagery to be racist.
Because it sounds like her actual relatives didn’t want her memory to be erased.
“Take the logo away, because it is offensive, but my aunt Lillian was a beautiful, intelligent lady that had to do domesticated type of work to make a living,” Harris said. “I just don’t want that erased from my family history because it’s almost like erasing a part of me.”
Only people that have no ability to think for themselves have a need to put others into categories of acceptability based on what the dominant culture around them thinks instead of judging them based on their individual merits.
You need to fuckin go back to school with your “think for yourself” crap if you think anything on the left is justified.
Interesting way to admit that the opinion you hold on this matter was beaten into you by the school system and isn’t the result of your own thinking process.
And no, nothing on the right is racist, they’re not caricatures of enslaved people.
The Sun-Maid girl is quite literally a caricature of a farm worker. No one who actually picks grapes looks like that except in a commercial.
What if someone’s judgement of your individual merits just happens to agree with the dominant culture around them? Or is that not possible? Does the ability to think for ones self necessarily lead to disagreement with whatever is commomly believed? I think that would just be dumbass contrarianism.
What if someone’s judgement of your individual merits just happens to agree with the dominant culture around them?
Oooh, now that would be very convenient, wouldn’t it?
Does the ability to think for ones self necessarily lead to disagreement with whatever is commomly believed?
At the very least, it requires entertaining ideas and possibilities widely believed to be unthinkable, even if you do end up discarding them for lack of evidence.
I don’t remember the call to get rid of uncle Ben though. It feels like at best the company was trying to get out ahead of it, at worst they wanted to stop paying his family residuals and had an excuse.
Apparently the character was based on a black , so it wasn’t even particularly racist, since many white people also do this job, and it certainly isn’t slave labor (they tend to get very good tips, especially at fine dining restaurants, which the suit and bowtie he was wearing kinda implies he was working at). Therefore I’m inclined to believe the second reason might have been their actual motive, and the supposed racism was just a convenient excuse.
No. That was simply the man who originally posed for the picture. The brand was officially named after a sharecropper. However Uncle was also a common title for an older male house slave. Same with Aunt. Both the original rice farmer and pancake mix inventor were born into slavery and had their products lifted from them by white corporations.
They weren’t stolen in the legal sense. There was a contract but it wasn’t an equal contract. The US actually has a history of this from the Reconstruction period right through the Civil Rights period (about 1865-1965). Especially with black musicians who supported white bands via record companies buying the songs off of them for a pittance compared to what they were worth.
I notice that a lot of people make sense of life using a series of rules. “if X then that means Y!” I think they’re bad at sussing out what’s right by reading the room, and they also can’t make sense of a complex world. They just default to thinking of the world as if we’re in a video game. It’s like they lack empathy or the ability to read humans or something.
That would be true if they were still using those depictions at the time they dropped them. But they weren’t, as you can very much see in the meme that used the most current logos before they were dropped.
Do you work hard at being a dumbass or does it just come naturally?
Are you upset that they didn’t remove the white folk or are you upset that depictions of people that other people decided were problematic were removed?
It’s upsetting that depictions of normal POC without any racist stereotyping or characteristics were found to be “problematic.” Tell me, in what way, are the depictions shown in the meme’s example racist?
PS: Apart from this argument not going anywhere, it’s not even entirely true. Aunt Jemima (now Pearl Milling Company) is directly owned by Quaker Oats (which in turn is owned by PepsiCo). Meanwhile, Uncle Ben’s / Ben’s Original is owned by Mars, Inc., so you’re defending some of the biggest (and worst) food conglomerates on the planet.
I too enjoy the white privilege of being able to look at something and judge it without thinking about context. It’s fantastic to be able to simplify things to just face value and not think about the racial history behind it. It’s one of my favorite privileges.
Unfortunately, I somehow never got that middle-aged white man’s confidence of instantly knowing what other people should be feeling, better than they do. I must be defective. But it means I tend to defer to the people that are hurt by something to judge if they’ve been hurt or not.
Stfu. It’s not I ain’t heard this, it’s that I don’t accept it, in this limited case. And for someone don’t even know my race to instantly go with the white privilege line is fucking telling.
Wasn’t the butter one just… A human shaped bottle? Looking at the logo from the beginning until the end it doesn’t look like it’s ever been a thing other than simply a depiction of a black woman. Not even a caricature of such, just like a painting of a person who could totally be real. But maybe what I’m referencing doesn’t have the off-shoot flavors. 🤷🏻♂️
Ironically, the butter one was actually designed by Patrick DesJarlait, an Ojibwe man, specifically meant to accurately reflect his culture. Here’s an article written by his son about the whole thing:
The Sun-Maid girl is depicted performing a job that’s traditionally associated with slavery. Is depicting white people performing slave labor also problematic or is slavery only bad when it involves people of color?
Also, the job she’s doing is predominantly done by immigrants nowadays. Is depicting her as white not disenfranchising these people by denying them representation?
Since Land O’Lakes is a Minnesota company it should be a Minnesota crypted. Minnesota shares mini cryptids with many other locations mothman, Bigfoot, etc.
But if you want to really place it, brand and cryptid… Then Duluth Dogman is perhaps your best option that I am aware of.
This prompt was blocked by the filter because apparently it’s racist or otherwise problematic to combine a giraffe with pancake syrup. Sorry about that. 0/7
Little Debbie
This is by far my favorite. Would absolutely buy. Perfect score, 5/7.
Every time you hear a buzzing in your ear, or see an eerie glow emanating from the woods, it would help you remember that you need to pick up butter at the store! That’s marketing.
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