It's About Time. Free Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom and all the rest.

The fact that Quaker Oats (PepsiCo) and Mars are being applauded for overhauling brands that have been decried as racist for years (if not decades) is cra-zy. It shouldn’t take a national outcry -- and a friggin’ TikTok video -- to motivate commercial changes that are long overdue. This inaction raises bigger questions about brands’ priorities, the power of inertia and a pervasive “why fix it when it ain’t broke” mentality.

You can just envision board rooms full of suits asking, “Why overhaul the brand identity when it’s still selling?” And, in fact, according to an article on the subject in The New York Times, one former PepsiCo employee is quoted as saying “Aunt Jemima was a category leader and nobody wanted to mess with that stream of revenue.” Ok, for any brand to be around for 131 years and still be commercially successful is remarkable in one way. But in another more significant way, it’s notable for what it says about the routine subjugation of black and brown people in America and the centuries-long, still ongoing impact of America's original sin. And, of course, it’s not the only brand like it. 

It’s high time for companies - some of the nation’s biggest and most ubiquitous, mind you - to do the right thing and replace imagery with even the slightest whiff of a racist undertone. Research has shown that these representations, much like depictions of racial stereotypes on television, deeply affect people’s perceptions of themselves and the world, and I'm sure the effect of slave imagery in the pantry can have similar insidious reverberations. Replacing Aunt Jemima’s kerchief with pearls isn’t enough to cut the mustard (or the pancake), I’m afraid. 

But, just as we as a society are coming to grips with the toxicity of confederate imagery like statues and flags, the “right thing to do” may not be erasing these shameful icons from the present to pretend they didn’t exist in the past. Like the treatment HBO is planning for Gone with the Wind, we should contextualize them so everyone knows why they were wrong and that we should never see things like this again.

Pretending our national past was anything different than it was is not the answer. This horrible history is, tragically, as much a part of who we are as more uplifting legacies, and the effects persist in the police brutality we've been witnessing and societal injustice. This moment does however highlight the role brands can play in changing perception and moving people forward, just like art and theatre have done historically. Today, the ubiquity of brands and the commercial power of companies like PepsiCo/Quaker Oats, Mars and others can be supremely influential in our society so instead of following on the heels of national protest to overhaul the marketing of slave culture, we need brands to take the lead.