Aunt Jemima Is Gone, Time to End Other Racist Branding – The New York Times

Three years ago, the Supreme Court handed an Asian rock band named the Slants an unimaginable win when it proclaimed, in Matal v. Tam, that it was unconstitutional for the law to ban trademarks that were disparaging. In celebrating the bands victory, the lead singer Simon Tam declared the case a win for all marginalized groups, asserting: It cant be a win for free speech if some people benefit and others dont.

Despite his optimism for free speech, Mr. Tam could not have been more wrong about the meaning of his victory. Although the court had ruled in Mr. Tams favor, Matal v. Tams outcome obliterated the decades-long legal challenge to the Washington Redskins trademark, which was first filed by a group led by the Cheyenne and Muscogee Creek activist and scholar Suzan Shown Harjo and later a team of Native American plaintiffs led by Amanda Blackhorse. Perhaps most telling was the reaction of Dan Snyder, the owner of a certain Washington football team, who the same day issued a statement in response to the courts ruling on the Tam case: I am THRILLED! Hail to the Redskins. In response to Matal v. Tam, Ms. Blackhorse defiantly insisted, It may have killed our case, but it hasnt killed our movement.

We now know that Ms. Blackhorse was right. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the nation and the world, brands are swiftly taking account of the harmful stereotypes they once inflicted. In the last few days, Quaker Oats, the owner of the 131-year-old brand of Aunt Jemima, announced it would change the product name in an effort to make progress toward racial equality. The brand had long capitalized on a romantic view of antebellum American slavery, even going so far as to hire an actual former slave to impersonate the character of Aunt Jemima at the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair (marking the first time a living person was hired to impersonate a trademark).

Just days after Quakers announcement, the Mars corporation followed suit, announcing that its Uncle Bens rice products would similarly evolve in light of recent events. Even Mrs. Butterworths pancake syrup, its bottle embodying a racist caricature of the shape of a black woman, is undertaking a complete brand and package review.

Companies are clearly trying to correct Americas painful history of advertising, which for generations has trafficked in racial stereotypes to sell products. Momentum away from racial branding has been growing for decades. In 2005, the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced that it would prohibit its members from displaying hostile and abusive racial-ethnic-national origin mascots, nicknames or imagery at its championships, producing a wave of logo retirements at schools across the country. In 2018, Major League Baseball announced that the Cleveland Indians would finally stop using its Native American Chief Wahoo caricature on items for display on the field. (Although it continues to retain its logo for use on items for sale in its souvenir shop.) And in April, the Land OLakes company finally phased out the use of an illustration of a Native American woman, adorned in a feather headband, from their products.

What do these changes suggest about America, and more specifically, American marketing? To both of us, one an expert in Native American law and the other a trademark law professor, they suggest the onslaught of a dramatically shifting landscape for racialized brands in the future. Brands can no longer stand apart from social movements and activism. In order to succeed, they have to personify change to be the change through rebranding themselves, or risk serious criticism.

Its no wonder, then, why Mr. Snyder and the Washington team received scathing responses to their tone-deaf participation in Blackout Tuesday in support of racial equality while continuing to amplify the Redskins name. Even the mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, has joined in a chorus of politicians, athletes and activists to demand a name change, pointing out that, among other things, it presents an obstacle to building a new stadium in the teams home city.

Like most owners of racial brands, Mr. Snyder has continued to insist that the name is not intended to offend and that it actually honors Native people. But this assertion cannot be disentangled from the larger history of Native American land dispossession, in which European newcomers idealized a myth of a fearless, primitive warrior, using it to justify war, removal and even genocide. With Natives pushed out of the way, non-Indians were free not only to take Indian lands but also to appropriate Native culture and identity. In Playing Indian, the historian Phil Deloria of Harvard traces the way in which settlers appropriated Native culture and identity for centuries as part of their own identity formation. Generations of Americans have grown up playing cowboys and Indians, usurping Native culture as their own, through sports mascots and countless other romantic narratives of Manifest Destiny.

But while Black Lives Matter has had success in retiring African-American stereotypes and brands, Native American brands face an uncertain outcome. Appropriations of racialized stereotypes of Native people are still big business, inextricably linked to the cultural and territorial history of dispossession. Last year, Dior introduced an ad campaign featuring its new Sauvage perfume, which it described as an authentic journey deep into the Native American soul in a sacred, founding and secular territory. (The company pulled the ad in response to outrage.) Other brands have gone even further into this fraught racial terrain, such as, for example, Urban Outfitters in the early 2010s with its Navajo products including panties and flasks. (In another case, a company produced Crazy Horse Malt Liquor, even though the revered leader denounced alcohol consumption; the company eventually settled a lawsuit filed by his descendants.) All too familiar commercial products produced by non-Native companies such as the Apache Helicopter, Jeep Cherokee and Yakima Bike Racks abound in the commercial marketplace.

We may dismiss these examples as thoughtless advertising mishaps. But, in aggregate, they are more than that. As Simon Tam pointed out three years ago, a victory is incomplete if some marginalized groups win and others lose. But perhaps Black Lives Matter can accomplish what the Tam opinion failed to do. The country and, indeed, the world is demanding a rejection of overt symbols of racism and expecting something better from our leaders, our educators and yes, even our sports teams.

There is no ambiguity here, Mr. Snyder. It is time to change the name.

Angela R. Riley is a professor of law and director of the Native Nations Law and Policy Center at UCLA. Sonia K. Katyal is a Haas distinguished chair at the University of California Berkeley School of Law and a co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

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Aunt Jemima Is Gone, Time to End Other Racist Branding - The New York Times