I want to talk a little bit about Aunt Jemima. The lovable woman on the pancake box that we have grown to love. Many people do not know that Aunt Jemima was not a real person- the famous instant pancake recipe was created by two white men- Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood- in a scientific lab. Nancy Green, a black woman born into slavery, as hired in 1890 to play the role of Aunt Jemima. The name came from a famous minstrel song at the time. Ms Green traveled to different world fairs, playing the role of the lovable mammy character, reminding her all-white crowds of the "good-ole days" when Mammy so-and-so would make them pancakes and biscuits and scrambled eggs and fried chicken and collards and ooh-whee, gotta love that Southern livin! But surely black female slaves did not all fit this mammy stereotype- Mammy, and Aunt Jemima, is a work of fiction. She is a false creation in white America's memory, one that allows white America to justify slavery on the basis that not only did blacks like being enslaved, but that they were treated like family! Like a mother or an aunt, even!
America has a strange love affair with the black female body. It only makes sense that America soon began to "consume" the Mammy caricature. If I was at home, I would quote bell hooks' article "eating the other: desire or resistance", but unfortunately, I left my copy of Black Looks at home. But what I will say is that I came across a disturbing video on youtube that I would like to share with you. It was entitled, "Hey Aunt Jemima" and is a spoof of "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White Tees. It seems harmless at first, if not plain stupid- a white man sings his love to a bottle of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup. But the way that he sexualizes the syrup, coupled with America's history of Mammy-lovin leaves a nasty taste in mouth. For example, one of the lyrics goes:
hey aunt jemima why dont i go make some pancakes or would you prefer i turn you over just give you a spanking let me know i know my wife thinks you're a ho, dont let me go
He also goes to say:
Jemima you are family, like an aunt you've been to me
I don't even know where I'm going with this post anymore, so I will let you watch the video for yourselves. Imagine that he is actually singing to a black woman named Aunt Jemima. It changes the video's context a bit, doesn't it?
*EDIT: Also, I got a lot of my Aunt Jemima facts from this website:
And also the book Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America by Micki McElya
