Aunt Jemima and the Portrayal of African-Americans in the Food Industry

 

     The origin of the Aunt Jemima logo goes back to 1899 when the inventors of the then called "Self-rising Pancake Flour," went to a Minstrel show where they saw the then popular song, "Old Aunt Jemima" performed by a group of performers in blackface. 

      Aunt Jemima's back story is one of a slave mammy, and despite the evolution of the logo's appearance to hide this truth, the fact is that Aunt Jemima is still the same slave that she was in the 1800s, just with a new look. 

        In order to convey that message, we took two Aunt Jemima advertisements, one from the modern day, and one from the mid 20th century and put them side by side. Then we decided to

add the words, "New Look," and ," Same Slave" in bold letters to the ads. We also added a quote bubble that says, "175 years after the 14th Amendment, and I'm still slaving away in the kitchen!" In this way, the viewer of the culture jam can see  the racist origins of the logo--what with the bad grammar and spelling--and how the company has used this logo in the past to enforce negative stereotypes about African-Americans with the intent of creating nostaligia for the antebellum south. The quote is meant to express the irony that occurs when one realizes that techinically, we still have a slave at work in American kitchens, and her name is Aunt Jemima.

       The advertisement on the left --the one that we now see as consumers everyday in the market place-- seems innocent, until we take into account the history of the franchise and what it means that after more than a century since the 13th and 14th amendment and The Emancipation Proclamation, we still have a slave woman in our advertisements. 

       This culture jam is meant to draw attention to that fact, as well as the ones which state that racism has not been abolished from the food industry, rather the racism has been covered up and disguised to the point that it seems natural.