Goodbye Aunt Jemima
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Martin Luther King Jr.
Quaker Oats has decided to drop the Aunt Jemima brand. The original model/spokesperson, Nancy Green was given a lifetime time contract at the age of 56 to promote the pancake mix and later, a syrup that bore her likeness. Nancy was a former slave. She made a lot of money and used it to start a church and worked as an activist in the black community. She became a successful businesswoman and the truth of her background, her success, will now be lost with the disappearance of the brand.
Uncle Ben is dead man walking, soon to be joined by Mrs. Butterworth.
Will Betty Crocker will soon be in the politically correct gunsights of those who want to remake images. Does she represent “White Privilege”? Italian Christopher Columbus is in the line of fire, as his statues are being defaced and torn down because of alleged injustices to Native Americans. Someone tell these loons that Columbus never set foot on the North American continent…never had any contact with Native Americans. Another Italian, Chef Boyardee may be the target of some aggrieved group at the current rate of insanity.
There is a rush by revisionist history makers to amend this Nation’s past so it will fit the current narrative that the “United States is a evil country”. Nothing could be further from the truth. This country has steadily, over 240 years worked toward improving the rights, freedom and the lot of its citizens.
A Democrat US Senator, Tim Kaine, a Vice Presidential candidate in 2016, got on the Senate floor this week, and stated that slavery was created by the United States. Seriously. The worst part is that some people will believe this bilge. Maybe he forgot who the Egyptians used to build the pyramids. Perhaps he missed the movie “Ben Hur” and failed to see the character played by Charlton Heston, rowing away as a slave, “Number 41”, in the bowels of a Roman Galley. Liberal privilege, as exercised by Senator Kaine assumes that he has the right to control what we think and know about history.
Slavery has unfortunately been a worldwide institution for thousands of years. People of every race and color were enslaved – and enslaved others. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.
It’s not productive to remain silent about historical truths or to obfuscate them. The notion that society is well served by this unwavering adherence to leftist dogma is unsettling. Sure, the initial image of “Aunt Jemima” was stereotypical but look at the current image. That image is hardly that of “Mammy”. Maybe Quaker Oats ought to change the name to “Nancy Green’s Maple Syrup” and put her story on the back label.
Some would advocate that let’s just get rid of everything that upsets everybody and then maybe we can have some peace and quiet. Does anyone think that that’s reality? Remaining silent while a minority dictates the new boundaries of societal norms is madness. Folks need to speak up when truth is distorted to install a new paradigm of governance, that inhibits freedom and opportunity.
Who Nancy Green was, matters, black history matters, along with black lives, and in fact all lives and historical truth matter. Let’s not be silent.