The Use of The Idea of Aunt Jemima in Promotional Content to Influence The Mother Figure in Society

Aunt Jemima, one of the most recognizable mascots in modern advertisement, has been selling pancakes for more than a century. The familiar image on the company’s packaging today of an elderly, smiling black woman still bears resemblance to its predecessor: a stereotypical mammy. Micki McElya’s book, Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America, provides an in-depth analysis to the importance of the mammy figure, and why characters that fit the mammy mold were so popular. Aunt Jemima serves as one of the most recognizable forms of propaganda used in post-slavery America. The mammy, a loyal, elderly, asexual, overweight, and bandana-wearing black slave, appeared to remind people that slavery was a happy institution. Mammies loved serving their families, as exemplified by the big grin on Jemima’s face, and big businesses wanted to capitalize on the feelings of familiarity, comfort and nostalgia that she evoked.

The marketing that made Aunt Jemima such a powerful company is a perfect representation of the kind of exploitation that took place during the Jim Crow era. Big business created a mascot based off of this false romanticization of slave days. Aunt Jemima, and the similar black caricatures that were created during the post-antebellum period, legitimized the master/slave relationship that was the basis of most white/black interactions until the mid-twentieth century. This company was able to make a profit while reminding people that the main role that blacks had was their loyal servitude whenever they reached for that box of pancakes. This warped relationship is a perfect metaphor for how black people were treated throughout the century following the end of slavery.

Jim Crow America relied on keeping power out of the reach of black people: as long as they couldn’t achieve sufficient political and economic power, then white people would remain in control. Many institutions were put in place so that the majority black people couldn’t attain this kind of power, and to make sure that those who did couldn’t make a significant enough of an impact to cause any real change.

Power comes from money. A person’s estate serves as the best representation of wealth, therefore, economic power came from owning a home. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was a government facility put in place to protect homeowners. They were the source for most of the difficulties that black people faced when trying to buy a house: “In practice, local FHA directors have become the medium for enforcing racial zoning and segregation by refusing to insure loans to members of minorities in areas where they are not wanted.” (Abrams, 124) Black people could rarely get a loan (and if they did it came at unfair interest rates), so being able to buy a house meant that you had a good enough financial and social standing to be respected by most.

Cities and towns were divided into districts that were based on racial separation. These areas were classified using letters A, B, C and D, with A being the best and D, the worst. Typically an A area was populated only by non-Jewish white people and had the highest property value. Any neighborhood with a black person residing in it, no matter their economic status, was considered a D neighborhood.

This system further enforced segregation because if a black person moved into a white neighborhood, the residents’ property values went down. As a preventative measure, buyers of a home were made to sign an agreement promising not to sell their homes to people of color. “Almost since its creation this agency[the FHA] has been a moving spirit behind the racial restrictive covenant-the instrument whereby houseowners in an area pledge themselves not to sell or rent to "non-Caucasians" or some other excluded group ”(Abrams, 123). These restrictive covenants prevented white people that didn’t really have a problem with selling to black people from doing so. This means that even if a black person was able to afford a home in a decent neighborhood, they weren’t able to move in. A lot of times the more wealthy black citizens would just live in the larger homes within the black slums.

Black people were restricted to living in a limited amount of space. These black neighborhoods had dirt roads and a great amount of houses condensed into a small area. Oftentimes, white people would buy land in these neighborhoods and rent them out to black people. The homes that they were renting were poorly kept. Many weren’t properly insulated; most didn’t have heat or electricity; and some didn’t have real toilets. The prices for these places were greatly inflated in order to keep black people from being able to move up financially. These small spaces available to black renters were sometimes two or three times as expensive as their better kept counterparts available to white renters. These high prices forced renters to take in others to help pay the rent. This meant that sometimes multiple families lived in an apartment or house that barely had room for one. Additionally, landlords used this as an excuse to keep raising the rent of these spaces, making it impossible for these families to reach economic stability.

“Perhaps the worst aspect of the entire situation is that the factor of racial segregation makes it exceedingly difficult for any Negro family, no matter what its character or aspirations, to escape these conditions. It is difficult for them to get into more desirable residential sections; there are few new developments in accessible areas for Negroes; the cost of home-financing for them is frequently excessive,” (Lamont, vii). White people took advantage of black people’s limited power to take as much money as they could from then, which further contributed to the vicious cycle that kept black people from moving up in society.

The idea that black money was tainted applied not only to real estate but to businesses. “The Negro population in 1930 was 11,891,143, or about 10 per cent of the total population,” (Johnson, 2). This meant that, even with taking into consideration their general lack of wealth, black people accounted for a decently large portion of the capital in the country. Segregation was a fairly expensive institution. When considering how much prospective money was lost when black people weren’t allowed to take their business to such a large amount of institutions. This is highlighted when interracial parties wanted to congregate in places that were segregated: “[b]oth in and out of the segregated territory, the refusal of hotels catering to white to admit nonwhites costs the proprietors considerable sums in their inability to play host to interracial conventions,” (Kennedy, 314-5).

Segregation and racism ran deep enough into society that people were willing to lose customers over it. The exclusion of black people from so many places led to a great loss of money. It is ironic that in a society where money equals power, these business owners were willing to lose the money that would give them greater economic power. This is due to the fact that their racial and social power was so much stronger and more important that it didn’t even matter that they lost money because, they remained in control of society.

The poorest white man had more power than the richest black man. The Jim Crow era was the time when black people were consistently exploited in order for the white man to make the biggest profit—they had little options and white people took advantage of that. They could charge whatever they wanted and black people had to accept that because of the limited choices they had. Black people weren’t important until white people could make a profit off of them. There was little that black people could do in retaliation, so they had to accept their poor circumstances.

The shadows of many of the situations that took place during this time remain today. The ghettos of today that reflect how these poor black neighborhoods were. Even though were are a pretty progressive society today, it is still common for black and other nonwhite families to be stuck in a seemingly never-ending cycle of poverty. Many businesses today still rely on using the black image as a means of advertising. Aunt Jemima continues to be a prominent company in the food industry, alongside similar images like Uncle Ben’s Rice and Rastus, the Cream of Wheat mascot. Big businesses continue to profit off of these types of racist caricatures that have oppressed black people for over a century. There is still a lot of progress that needs to be made so that black people, and other nonwhite groups, can be seen as the economic, social and political equals of white people in America.