Thread: Special on Sambo, Aisle Dos! (Pictures)

http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/05/45/news-arellano2.php

July 15 - 21, 2005

Special on Sambo, Aisle Dos!

Picking apart racist caricatures at Orange County Latino grocery stores

by GUSTAVO ARELLANO

Last month, the Mexican government provoked outrage when it issued postage stamps commemorating MemÃÂ*n PinguÃÂ*n, a popular Afro-Mexican comic-book character who makes Amos ’n’ Andy look like Jackie Robinson. This follows a May 13 speech in which Mexican President Vicente Fox told a group of businessmen, “There’s no doubt that the Mexican men and womenâ€â€

Aunt Jemima is sold in Mexico too. Add that to the list. What about Uncle Ben? Does anyone know if Uncle Ben's is sold in Mexico?

If anything the uproar caused in the US by the memin stamps in Mexico shows that the PC days are still not behind us. you can't formulate an opinion with slanted or inflammatory news stories. You have to know more about the characters, stories, and racial identity in latin america before you can say something is objectionable.

I lived in Japan and sometimes my students would say "i'm a little japanese monkey" in English class. (That's a stereotype straight out of the '40's in american anti-jap propaganda.) I felt uncomfortable laughing about it at the time. But I heard it so often I came to realize that i was being sensitve to something that isn't an issue there.

Going back to this story about racial caricatures in marketing/packaging- it's something that seems objectionable here in the US but in many parts of the world, those sensbilities aren't there. People are not offended.

Even here people are saying that those images are racist' yet the undertones of this very forum easily straddle a nationalist/xenophobe line.

Aunt Jemima is sold in Mexico too. Add that to the list. What about Uncle Ben? Does anyone know if Uncle Ben's is sold in Mexico?

Indeed, Aunt Jemima pancake mix and Uncle Bens Rice ARE names Americans associate with superior products (Uncle Bens Converted rice is the best rice on the planet!). What is your point? That black faces should not represent some of the best American products on the market?

Methinks you fail to grasp the difference between respectful character representation and derogatory caricatures.

http://www.famous-amos.com/fa_about.shtm

Jose and SFbeaner....Come in please.

Uncle Ben doesn't look like a porch monkey the way Memin does.

Aunt Jemima had her look updated a while back.



Jose, go have yourself a BIMBO pie!

Originally Posted by TheWatchdog

Uncle Ben doesn't look like a porch monkey the way Memin does.

Aunt Jemima had her look updated a while back.



Jose, go have yourself a BIMBO pie!

Yeah.. Aunt Jemima (great syrup btw) was originally much more of a caricature of blacks.. more of a stereotype. However, the very name, "Aunt Jemima", has come to be considered derogatory as much as calling someone an Uncle Tom. In earlier commercials she also had a distinctly more pronounced "plantation black" accent.

ME THEEEENKS EVERYONE MISSED THE POINT!!

See.....the racist statement made by President Fox was made by the President of the Mexico....not to sell "products" but to sell his People as Superior to ours. The postage stamp was not to sell "products" but was a nostalgia of the Mexican Postal Service, part of the Mexican Government, of days when they made fun of Black Mexicans....even their children.

The difference between a company using Aunt Jemina to sell syrup and pancakes and Uncle Ben to sell rice is that these are private corporations and are not representative of the Official Position of the United States on race issues; whereas the statement made by President Fox and the stamp created by the Postal Service of Mexico are the Official Position of the nation of Mexico.

Mexico therefore is a self-confessed self-exposed racist nation from top to bottom. Mexicans are comfortable with that. Therefore, Mexicans are racist.

The United States is not. Americans are comfortable with that. Therefore, Americans are not racist.

See the difference?

That's why the USA is what it is, and why Mexico is what it is.

WE do not want to become what Mexico is which is why we want to keep Mexico out of the United States.

Mexico is a nice country for Mexicans. It is exactly the way they want it to be. Otherwise, they would change it; demand an apology from their President out of respect for our hard working Black Americans; and demand the stamp not be issued out of respect for Mexico's Black Mexicans.

So....tell us again....why Mexicans are flooding over the border into the United States?