Pan-demic, Pan-cakes, Pan- (inclusion)
Many of us have taken on new hobbies and rituals as a result of being cooped up during the pandemic. Mindful of my lack of physical exercise these days, I established a new pastime by replacing my regular consumption of sugary soft drinks with production of my own homemade kombucha. And although I’ve still been avoiding carbs in an attempt to stay reasonably fit during my time as a home-office desk-chair potato, I cannot bring myself to deny my children their beloved pancakes on the weekends. My pancakes, like most other goodies in this home, are homemade from scratch (it’s surprisingly easy), and we only buy pure maple syrup from a farm we toured a few years back. But I grew up on Aunt Jemima, who is now being retired after more than 130 years and several makeovers.
Quaker Oats and its parent company, PepsiCo finally decided last year that it was time to discontinue the brand. News just broke that the famed pancake and waffle mixes and syrups will soon be known by the name Pearl Milling Company, honoring the name of the original producer before it was acquired by The Quaker Oats Company. There were years of complaints beforehand, including a lawsuit decided in favor of Quaker Oats and Pepsi in 2015 in which the alleged great-grandsons of Anna Short Harrington sought restitution on behalf of her estate based in part on the value of the Aunt Jemima trademark and persona that Harrington portrayed from 1935 until the 1950s. Nonetheless, the decision to rebrand admittedly took far less time to be made and announced than it did for the Washington Redskins to become the Washington Football Team or the Cleveland Indians to drop its Chief Wahoo logo (see https://www.offitkurman.com/blog/2020/12/28/inside-baseball-thoughts-on-the-recent-name-change-in-cleveland/). While the Aunt Jemima name and image have been panned, Pearl Milling Company has maintained much of the same trade dress of the brand on its packaging, so it will likely still be recognizable to consumers, though perhaps less memorable. So, how should we feel about losing Aunt Jemima?
I must admit that my first response to the news was that I would miss her. I am not suggesting that I am somehow against the rebranding effort or for the racism and implicit bias (and the concept of the “happy slave”) that the Aunt Jemima brand effectively promoted. Rather, my first inclination was to miss the romanticized character, as someone with whom I connected, at least moreso than one can connect with a brand like Pearl Milling Company.
Of course, I had no exposure in my privileged youth to what the life of a Southern Plantation mammy must have been like, but Aunt Jemima reminds me of someone that was dear to me. As I was growing up in the 1970’s, both of my parents worked and my older brother and I were looked after for at least the first 10 or so years of my life by Kezia Barrett. Zia, as we called her, was a black woman originally from Trinidad & Tobago. She lived in the room next to mine, cleaned our large house, applied her knowledge of her own country’s cuisine in preparing all of our family’s meals (I grew up loving Bouillabaisse, and I even once got to eat grilled flying fish), and took care of us. Zia was paid (underpaid?), as I understand, a few hundred dollars a week, but I was mostly oblivious to that. I was also oblivious to how closely Zia and her role as the happy domestic servant resembled the Southern Plantation mammy of the past, as reflected on the bottle from which my syrup was poured. I respected and loved Zia as a member of my extended family until she eventually moved away. Unlike the romanticized mammy that Aunt Jemima represented, Zia always had the freedom to leave. Though, I imagine that the circumstances of an impoverished immigrant did not allow for many more choices than a slave had. I regret that I never appreciated her hardships or really who she was apart from her role as our nanny, much in the same way that I didn’t know or care why Aunt Jemima had her name on my syrup so long as the sweetness kept pouring out.
While I support the decision not to continue using Aunt Jemima in a way that falsifies the experience of servitude, the underlying problems do not get resolved by sugar-coating or “whitewashing”. We cannot and should not want to magically forget our history of exploitation and we shouldn’t be trying to pretend that it never happened. The brandowner’s “killing off” of the character should have an opposite impact, much like the senseless murder of George Floyd and countless others should incite anger and finally unite us to recognize that black lives matter. Maybe we cannot expect PepsiCo to deliver more than a symbolic victory by erasing Aunt Jemima. Maybe it is for us to take it upon ourselves to commemorate the real black women that helped make Aunt Jemima the success that it has been and to educate ourselves and others.
Regardless of the pandemic or the pancakes, my new and ongoing focus will be on the term “pan” as a prefix meaning “all” and representing inclusiveness. Whether it be Aunt Jemima or George Floyd that keeps me engaged in this activity, I plan to do my part to learn about and participate in the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the practice of intellectual property law and in the support of businesses that are owned or represented by individuals of different or less privileged backgrounds than mine.
