Major Transitions

Achieving Personal Change

This past Monday, 29 June 2020, I celebrated my retirement from UC Berkeley, after 33+ years working at the campus. Over those years, I raised through the ranks; from a temporary secretary at the Department of Facilities Management, to an Assistant Dean at the College of Environmental Design.

The picture above is the retirement gift I received from my staff. It is such a thoughtful, and amazingly delightful gift, that clearly shows they know me well. This beautiful knife is a piece of art; frankly, I am not sure if I want to use it or just pass it down to my son!

I am grateful to have worked at a place that believes in education, equity, inclusion, community, and basic fairness. But even more, I am humbled and honored to have worked with such great colleagues. Each of the names on the gift box represents people dedicated to creating a better world through service and compassion, and they are dedicated to supporting our next generation with sincere hopes they make better decisions than we did.

Implementing Food-Related Change

Here it is June 2020, and finally another series of overdue changes may be taking place in food and restaurants. Given the recent protests, the videos of daily harassment and violence toward people of color, and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter, companies are finally looking at their brands with a more enlightened capitalistic eye.

Despite my abhorrence for some of these foods — sugar added syrups, premixed pancake mixes, and highly processed rice and wheat — it is about time these companies change their logos and marketing. Large agricultural conglomerates need to realize that racism, and the unromantic harkening back to slavery, will no longer sell products on a large, and global scale.

This reevaluation of brands started with Quaker Food’s, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, that owns Aunt Jemima.

Aunt Jemima

Aunt Jemima began in 1879, and was originally represented in the media as a black women in minstrel clothing. The image has changed over time, eventually removing the “mammy” headscarf from their depiction. But, although her picture was modified over time, the history of the brand is deeply entrenched in white America’s imagining of the happy and motherly female black slave.

Now these companies have announced they are changing the brand of the syrup and pancake mix, and have acknowledged that its origins are based on racial stereotypes.

• Aunt Jemima advertising played on a certain type of nostalgia and a certain type of racial nostalgia, particularly in the first half of the 20th century about how great plantation life was and how great it was to literally have someone like Aunt Jemima who would make the pancakes or whatever for you,” Maurice Manring, author of Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima, told NPR in 2007.
• This is not to denigrate the actresses who played the part of Aunt Jemima from the 1920’s till ~1958. (The only names I could find were Lillian Richard and Ethel Ernestine Harper.) I have no doubt that having these jobs helped their families during hard times. The issue of branding and marketing is clearly a business issue, not an issue of workers choices.

Uncle Ben’s Rice

Then, Mar’s, who has the Uncle Ben’s rice brand, announced they too were considering changes. This brand started in 1946, well after emancipation, but showed an older black man named “uncle.” ”Uncle” and ”Aunt” were used in the South, according to The New York Times, because white southerners refused to use the titles of Mr. and Mrs. for black people. So although the image of Uncle Ben has changed over time, the roots of the brand still uses language linked to American slavery and the denigration of Black Americans.

Eskimo Pie

A Guardian article tells a story of Norma Dunning, who was asked ”where are you from?”. After a couple of questions, Ms. Dunning realized what the person was asking, and responded she was “Inuit,” which caused a blank stare from the asker. So Ms. Dunning said “eskimo”, and the asker understood.

The Guardian article explained, Ms. Dunning dislikes the term, but caricatures of her ethnic group in popular culture, including food branding, make it the term non-Indigenous people know best. As sensitivity is increasing on how we brand and name foods, Eskimo Pie is also reviewing their brand after 100 years. Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, which owns the dessert, said it would be changing the product’s brand name and marketing.

Mrs. Butterworth’s

Then Conagra Brands, producers of Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, announced they are reviewing their brand. The issue is that the syrup comes in a bottle shaped like an older, heavier set woman, brown in color, which gives off the appearance similar to Aunt Jemima.

NPR reporting on Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, states Conagra Foods denies that the bottle or logo has anything to do with racism. Instead, they argue, it is intended to represent a grandmotherly figure. Conagra also said that it has “begun a complete brand and packaging review” of Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, adding: “We stand in solidarity with our Black and Brown communities and we can see that our packaging may be interpreted in a way that is wholly inconsistent with our values.”

Cream of Wheat

B&G Foods, owner of Cream of Wheat, has had a logo of a black male since 1893. To paraphrase, the company is reviewing its logo, as they stated they do not want to “unintentionally” support systemic racism. The original graphic (see above) clearly is racist. But while the graphic has been modified over time, the back story of the individual has not. The name of the person represented by the graphic is Rastus.

• Wikipedia: Rastus is also the name of the African-American character who first appeared on packages of Cream of Wheat cereal in 1893 and whose image remained the Cream of Wheat trademark until the 1920s, when it was replaced by a photograph of Frank L. White, a Chicago chef in chef’s hat and jacket. However, the name has remained.
• Definitions writes, Rastus is a pejorative term traditionally associated with African Americans in the United States. It is considered offensive. “Rastus” has been used as a generic, often derogatory, name for black men at least since 1880.

Land O Lakes

AdWeek reports Land O’ Lakes is changing their brand too, after 92 years. The company reports Land O’Lakes was founded by a group of Minnesota dairy farmers in 1921, and as it approaches its 100th anniversary in 2021, the co-op has reflected on its treasured history and made the decision to showcase its greatest strength—its farmers. Their statement is that they are removing the Native American women from their ads because they want their packaging to feature the farmers who are part of the cooperative that actually make the diary products.

The Smithsonian writes, Arriving on the heels of universities, sports teams and other businesses making comparable moves to drop indigenous images, symbols and titles from their logos, the Land O’Lakes change has been noted by some as necessary and perhaps long overdue.

In fact, CBS news was even clearer in their coverage of this change: Land O’Lakes butter has been encased in packaging bearing the logo of a “butter maiden” since 1928. The American Indian woman depicted had a feather in her hair and was kneeling, holding up a container of butter in her hands.  The logo had long been criticized as racist and stereotypical, with North Dakota Rep. Ruth Buffalo telling the Grand Forks Tribune the image goes “hand-in-hand with human and sex trafficking of our women and girls.”

Sambo Restaurant

Turning to restaurants, the LATimes reports San Diego’s Sambo Restaurant, the lone remaining restaurant of a once national chain, is giving up its name, which has been used as a racial slur for centuries.

• The LA Times explained, Images from “The Story of Little Black Sambo,” an 1899 children’s book by Helen Bannerman in which an Indian boy outsmarts a pair of tigers and turns them into butter for pancakes, covered the inside of the eatery.
• Author Langston Hughes was among those who criticized the storybook, saying its illustrations displayed the dark-skinned main character in harmful stereotype.

Demanding Economic Change

There are many American businesses around today that were built on slavery; from banks to universities, from insurance to media conglomerates. With this history, it is not unexpected that loans from these companies (BofA, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, AIG, etc.) are harder to obtain for people of color.

Loans for Businesses

WaPo and others show that large numbers of loan applications get denied, but people of color (blacks, hispanics, asians) are rejected at higher rates than others. Forbes specifically notes the difficulties they have with small business loans.

• Underserved communities have not been able to build food-related businesses, run by their own members.
• These communities do not have good, fresh food stores and healthy-food restaurants; which are a necessity to improving the health of their neighbors.
• Having these community businesses would mean jobs in those areas.
• Trending now on Google are searches for “black owned businesses”.

Loans for Homes + Land

Chicago describes how banks play a part in preventing black home ownership. Urban.org is clear, just by improving access to credit would solve the biggest barrier to home ownership.

• The security of some land and a house is commonly recognized as a stabilizing anchor for families.
• Being able to grow your own food, on your own land, allows people a sense of independence.
• Reducing homelessness within underserved communities results in improved health, mental and physical, for families.

Livable Restaurant Wages

UC Berkeley Labor Center writes The restaurant industry can do better. Up to 20% of restaurant jobs provide livable-wages, and fine-dining servers and bartenders in cities like San Francisco and Oakland can earn between $50,000 and $150,000 per year.⁸ Unfortunately, people of color and in particular women of color face significant barriers in obtaining these livable-wage positions.⁹

Restaurants employ more minimum-wage workers than any other industry, according to BusinessInsider. With the movement to increase wages across the country, economists worried the policies would kill jobs and raise prices. So far, five cities that have raised wages had little change in employment after the policies went into effect.

Quote on Change

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

— Patty

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TIP: To revive wilted lettuce, add the leaves to some ice water and place in the fridge for ~15-60 min. Sometimes I have even just wet the leaves, put in a plastic bag and put in the fridge — it works miracles most of the time.

News: 6/22 The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to use hand sanitizer manufactured by the Mexican company Eskbiochem SA de CV because the products contain methanol, a toxic substance that can cause short- and long-term health problems.

News: China is testing food for the Corona Virus even though the FDA states there is currently no evidence of the transmission of COVID-19 through food and no known or suspected cases linked to food. Makes me wonder what they know that we are not being told.

Update: Federal officials say a three-year Listeria outbreak caused by mushrooms imported from the Republic of Korea appears to be over. The outbreak was over enoki mushrooms from H&C Food Inc., Guan’s Mushroom Co. and Sun Hong Foods Inc.