Quaker Foods To Change Branding Of “Aunt Jemima” To “Make Progress Towards Racial Equality”
Quaker Foods company, the company behind the “Aunt Jemima” brand of syrup and breakfast food, announced that it would rename and rebrand its line of products “to make progress toward racial equality.”
For a long stretch of over 130 years, Aunt Jemima’s logo featured a black woman named after a character from shows in the 1800s.
The brand received renewed criticism regarding their logo following the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
The picture has changed over time, and in recent years, Quaker has removed the “mammy” kerchief from the character in response to criticisms. But the company said that its efforts to change branding in the past to address these issues were “not enough.” So the company decided to remove the current image and the name of the brand “to make progress toward racial equality.”
“We recognize Aunt Jemima’s origins are based on a racial stereotype,” Kristin Kroepfl, vice president and chief marketing officer of Quaker Foods North America, said in a press release. “As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations.” Kroepfl also added that even though the company worked on updating the brand to be more “appropriate and respectful,” they knew it was insufficient.
Riché Richardson, an associate professor at Cornell University, said that Aunt Jemima is an image “that harkens back to the antebellum plantation…Aunt Jemima is that kind of stereotype is premised on this idea of Black inferiority and otherness.” Richardson added that it is urgent to remove these kinds of “symbols” in public spaces because, for some people, these are “triggering and represent terror and abuse.”
Quaker announced that the brand’s new packaging would appear in the fall of 2020, while the new name for the brand would be announced at a later date. “The company also announced it will donate at least $5 million over the next five years ‘to create meaningful, ongoing support and engagement in the Black community,” according to a report by NBC.
Aunt Jemima joins a number of other brands changing their logos and branding in light of the global protests for the death of George Floyd. Protesters and leftists have also moved to denounce and deface monuments, statues, and figures that they deem “racist” and “offensive,” including Civil War-era Confederate statues and flags.