Quaker Oats announced Wednesday that it will retire the Aunt Jemima brand, saying the company recognizes the character’s origins are “based on a racial stereotype.”
Aunt Jemima’s downfall is the latest signal of the powerful cultural moment unleashed by the Black Lives Matter protests, which have spread around the world and prompted companies to rethink their policies, from hiring practices to giving employees off for Juneteenth, the anniversary of the end of the slavery in the U.S.
Riché Richardson, an associate professor of African American literature at Cornell University, called for Aunt Jemima’s retirement five years ago in a New York Times opinion piece — part of a wider discussion about Confederate statues and other imagery after the massacre of nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Richardson said Aunt Jemima epitomizes the dark comfort that some Americans take from imagery of black servitude, so normalized that it’s on their box of pancake mix.
Aunt Jemima’s years of success as a marketing image made it risky for the company to part with it completely, said Brenda Lee, founding director of the marketing research firm Vision Strategy and Insights.
