While characters like Aunt Jemima might seem like inoffensive remnants of another time, on wednesday night Dr. Emilie Townes told a 150 person audience at the Dolan School of Business that these images continue to oppress black women today.
Using primarily the example of Aunt Jemima, but also including characters and descriptions from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Townes tried to show the inherent racism and stereotypes maintained in this type of imagery to the mostly white audience.
She explained how corporate images like Aunt Jemima work to turn the black community into commodities. Aunt Jemima is the classic image of the mammy, a robust black woman taking care of all the rest of the slaves.
Showing this character over and over again simply reinforces the stereotype. Townes argued that just because this image of the mammy no longer exists and probably never did, that does not make the image inoffensive or acceptable.
“It’s not enough to think we can just leave our memories at the door” she said. Explaining that even if the character is no longer offensive, it started that way and the collective memory of the black community cannot simply forget that to maintain tranquility.
The image of Aunt Jemima was actually started by traveling minstrels who painted their faces black and told “inoffensive” stories of slavery. The point of Aunt Jemima, and other characters in that mold, was to diminish the horrors of slavery in the minds of the consumer.
The black community thought that they had destroyed these images in the sixties, but Townes argued that it was impossible for black people to destroy the image because they did not control it. This is why Aunt Jemima popped back up and is now gracing the packaging to dozens of breakfast foods across America.
Townes admits that despite the fact that she helped start a group at Yale to counteract such wrongs, she really didn’t know what to do about it. The thing that people must do to discover a way to end this oppression, she argued, is simply to talk to one another and share ideas.
Emily Braverman ’09 thought that Townes made very compelling arguments.
“She was probably one of the most inspiring lecturers I’ve heard at Fairfield,” she said. “She really brought the ideas home and made them relatable to me.”
Bill McDermott, who was one of the few visitors in an audience comprised mainly of student, agreed.
“Her passion for the Aunt Jemima image really helped me see the relevance it held, and showed me how immediate this problem really was,” he said.
Townes admitted that the lack of diversity at a school like Fairfield may make people less comfortable talking about something like race. “You have to just take a deep breath, and do it anyway,” she said.
Leave a Reply