Rolling Thread on Race 2020

https://www.thedailybeast.com/shaun-king-keeps-raising-money-and-questions-about-where-it-goes-3

Kali serves up all the tea.

as usual, bossip said it best

Shaun King aka Scammie Lou Paymer aka Barter G. Woodson aka Rob Moses aka Mos Theft Got Exposed (Again) With Receipts (Again) For ALLEGEDLY Stealing Money (Again) And Got Dragged To The GoFundMe In The Sky (Again)

[Getty]https://t.co/RwBktQwm4Q pic.twitter.com/ixcUDZBH3h

— Bossip (@Bossip) May 26, 2020

re the aunt jemima thing - the character was invented by a black performer and esp in recent years since they updated the character it's hard [for me but i could be wrong] to see anything racist about its current manifestation. and i wonder maybe it isn't doing harm to black ppl having a nice normal materteral black woman as the spokescharacter for a prominent supermarket item. and maybe it's even counter productive to remove images of black faces from supermarket aisles. (nb i have never had aunt jemima pancakes anything afaik and have no personal affection for the character or brand.)

yeah, you're wrong.

like i don't know where you're getting your information, but it's ahistorical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima

Also, what is "nice normal maternal black woman"? What the fuck does that even mean?

Might just be easier to say, "It's easier to continue the mammy stereotype because those blacks need good role models on their fucking pancake mix."

seriously GTFOH

The "character" was invented by a white guy who had bought the Aunt Jemima trademark from two other white guys (who got the name Aunt Jemima from attending a white minstrel show and hearing "old Aunt Jemima").

They hired Nancy Green, and made loads of money off of her

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aunt-jemima-millionaire/

The "character" was invented by a white guy who had bought the Aunt Jemima trademark from two other white guys

Rutt's inspiration for Aunt Jemima was Billy Kersands' American-style minstrelsy/vaudeville song "Old Aunt Jemima", written in 1875.

Might just be easier to say, "It's easier to continue the mammy stereotype because those blacks need good role models on their fucking pancake mix."

I never said anything about creating good role models for black people and honestly that sounds like your own shit that you projected. There are positive reasons to have black faces in the supermarket that have nothing to do with creating good role models for black people.

Aunt Jemima outright mammy-type offensive. Mrs. Butterworth surprising to me. I didn't know she was supposed to be Black. To be honest, I thought she was supposed to be just "grandma." I didn't know the bottle-glass color was part of her identity, and I thought it was a cheap plastic approximation of amber glass.

Actually, you did, since you used the words "normal" and "maternal" to refer to a racist stereotype rather than dealing with the obvious racism of your stupid fucking opinion.

have you seen the logo in recent years? the history of the logo def used Mammy imagery but the current logo she looks like a normal black woman

also i didn't use the word maternal

There are positive reasons to have black faces in the supermarket

I can't even believe I just read this

Like sit back and think for a second why else you'd be wringing your hands about the removal of a racist stereotype from packaging.

Rutt's inspiration for Aunt Jemima was Billy Kersands' American-style minstrelsy/vaudeville song "Old Aunt Jemima", written in 1875.

― Mordy, Tuesday, June 23, 2020 10:19 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk i feel like this doesn't make it any better

and i wonder maybe it isn't doing harm to black ppl having a nice normal materteral black woman as the spokescharacter for a prominent supermarket item

I don't know what the fuck "materteral" means, but the closest words of any sense are "material" and "maternal."

So you might not have used it, but I was taking a stab at deconstructing the stupidity of that sentence.

do you know what google is

materteral, sorta like avuncular

Also, what is "nice normal maternal black woman"? What the fuck does that even mean?

Might just be easier to say, "It's easier to continue the mammy stereotype because those blacks need good role models on their fucking pancake mix."

seriously GTFOH

^^^
Mordy, posting through a wormhole from the green room of the McLaughlin Group in 1992.

Aunt Jemima was certainly better after she got a perm but very few Black people aware of the history would deny the link between the current "kindly old grandma" iconography and the previous "maximum mammy" iconography

I teach English composition and poetry. I read more than 100+ books last year. I have never, ever come across that word before. Don't pretend like it's some sort of common parlance, because it isn't.

you still know how to use google tho right? you could've googled the current logo and the history of the character too before answering my question not to mention ditching the bad faith reading of what i wrote but you'd obv rather shadowbox with fb relatives.

if a depiction of a POC is not offensive and you eliminate that depiction then you're reducing the presence of POC faces in national spaces. that you assumed the problem with reducing those faces was because of some paternalistic "the blacks need role models" is an indictment of you imo and the brainworms in yr head.

I'm not friends with any of my relatives on Facebook.

And actually, what you wrote is ridiculously racist, as many others here have pointed out, so I don't need to read what you wrote with good faith. What you wrote, your musings, are racist horseshit.

Ma Terteral

https://jolynpeng.com/wp-content/uploads/grandma-turtle.jpg

The current depiction is less offensive. It's not "not offensive", precisely because it's a softening of a horrible caricature and still tied directly to the history of the terrible caricature.

Also, who's going to go down swinging over a corporate logo? There are literally no victims caused by changing it.

If this was a yarmulke wearing jewish stereotype on a Manischewitz box created by two goyim and then at some point they remove the yarmulke I think this conversation might be different.

Or Mordy's takes might be less hot.

i know you guys like to reduce any question with ambiguity to "well why do you care so much" (as now two of you have) but as i wrote in my op i actually don't care at all i have no attachment to the brand or character and afaik have never eaten the product. djp i take yr point that it still has a problematic history - what made me think to mention it actually was the conversation on the 30 rock thread and i was reminded of another example of a black entertainer whose comedic work has taken on racist dimensions that they're didn't intend.

uh

if you have no investment then why post

But the issue is that it is/was offensive! It might not be offensive to you, but you're assuming that yours is a universal opinion.

Going from there, your wondering about whether it might be harmful to Black people to not have a racist mammy stereotype staring back at them in the breakfast aisle...that's absurd! You realize that not all representation is good representation, right?

if you have no investment then why post

why not?

another example of a black entertainer whose comedic work has taken on racist dimensions that they're didn't intend

Congratulations.

the table is the table you really should google the current logo you sound like a moron

at least i don't sound like a racist

a black entertainer whose comedic work has taken on racist dimensions that they're didn't intend.

― Mordy, Tuesday, June 23, 2020 10:38 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

man... "aunt jemima" may have been invented by a black songwriter but that has shit to do with the brand, for which white ppl appropriated the character, stamped it on pancake mix, and illustrated her as a racist caricature. when i think about it this way, it's almost more racist!!!!

also the black entertainer was making minstrelsy and knew the work had racist dimensions

The monkey dressed in soldier clothes,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Went out in the woods for to drill some crows,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
The jay bird hung on the swinging limb,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
I up with a stone and hit him on the shin,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!

Kersands's comedy act centered on his enormous mouth, which he exuberantly contorted into countless shapes. He peppered his songs with these movements and their accompanying noises. One observer remarked, "The slightest curl of his lip or opening of that yawning chasm termed his mouth was of itself sufficient to convulse the audience."[5] He could even fit several billiard balls or a cup and saucer into his mouth and still perform a dance routine or fill the theater with boisterous laughter. Tom Fletcher wrote that while touring in England, Kersands told Queen Victoria that if his mouth was any bigger, his ears would have to be moved.[6]

This physical feature fit well into racist white-created stereotypes of blacks having large lips and mouths. Kersands further embraced such disparaging caricatures by affecting the stage persona of a slow and ignorant Sambo. He also sang songs that reinforced these racist views. In his "Mary's Gone with a Coon", he sang of a black man "lamenting" his daughter's impending marriage to a black man: "De chile dat I bore, should tink ob me no more / Den to run away wid a big black coon."[7] His "Old Aunt Jemima" lent its name to the stereotyped mammy Aunt Jemima that later was developed into an iconic trademark for a brand of pancakes.

Despite Kersands's reinforcement of negative black stereotypes, very few African Americans disdained his act. Part of his appeal for them lay in his mixing of elements of African American folklore into his show in a way that would appeal to his black audience but be ignored or derided by whites. "Old Aunt Jemima", one of his signature songs, serves as a good example. The song exists in three texts, two published 1875 and one in 1880, suggesting that Kersands made up verses as he sang. All three versions begin in a church, a locale that white minstrels tended to avoid. The 1875 texts describe charismatic black worship practices, but the 1880 edition begins with a black character fleeing a white church because they "prayed so long".[8] Verses from the song soon entered the African American tradition and appeared in later collections of folklore. Other songs Kersands performed featured African American elements like talking animals and weak-versus-strong match-ups. His popularity led many theatre owners to relax rules limiting black patrons to specific sections of the playhouse.

None of this strikes me as an account of someone whose work was devoid of racist dimensions.

Rutt's inspiration for Aunt Jemima was Billy Kersands' American-style minstrelsy/vaudeville song "Old Aunt Jemima", written in 1875.

― Mordy, Tuesday, June 23, 2020 1:19 PM bookmarkflaglink

I literally just said this

i'm taking seriously the counterfactual that a jewish actor doing jewface made a character that a gentile organization used to sell gefilte fish with like a huge nose and side locks and a yarmulke and then later out of sensitivity turned him into a pretty normal looking jewish guy without any of the jewface stereotypes i really do not think i would gaf about them continuing to use the image. if black ppl are offended by the current depiction i am not telling them they have no right to be - but i noticed that the corporation did this on their own initiative without any clamor for it to happen and it's pretty obviously corporate ass-covering.

xp Neanderthal you said it was invented by white guys??

None of this strikes me as an account of someone whose work was devoid of racist dimensions.

ok fair enough. to me these works have different resonances depending on who is performing them. i think the last paragraph you posted at least complicates the question a little.

From 2015: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/24/besides-the-confederate-flag-what-other-symbols-should-go/can-we-please-finally-get-rid-of-aunt-jemima

xp: mixing non-racist material in with your racist material does not make your racist material any less racist

Mordy, you edited out this parenthetical from my post deliberately:

(who got the name Aunt Jemima from attending a white minstrel show and hearing "old Aunt Jemima")

Come on.

You called it a white minstrel show what am I missing??