Customer Reviews

Slave in A Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima (American South (University or Virginia Press Paperback))

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Slave in a Box is a great study of the racism and sexism embodied in the birth of advertising. It is not only provocative but also chock full of great facts about the era--from the importance of paper bags in marketing to the story of an African American who actually wrote for minstrel shows. I am writing because I am a historian and used the book in my Industrialization of America class. The class generally hated it, because it is so detailed, but despite their response I recommend using it in a course. Our discussion was painful--black students said the book was "depressing" and white students denied that race had anything to do with the power of this trade name (they harped on the convenience, as if the stereotype was irrelevant!). I learned so much about them and so much about what we all need to do as teachers that I think it was a very valuable experience.

Very often, histories/studies of Aunt Jemima and the mammy stereotype are simply descriptive; this book does a great job of showing how Aunt Jemima's image and products were designed to complement/support ideal white femininity. My only criticism is that Aunt Jemima's presence on television and radio wasn't discussed enough. A great read for anyone interested in issues of race, gender and domesticity. I have recommended this book to many people, and continue to do so.

This book and its contextualization of Aunt Jemima or the mammy stereotype, as I refer to it, is well-written and thought-provoking. The material has been very helpful to me in exploring how this particular stereotype of black women functions in American culture and I will be using it as a key reference in my dissertation. Thanks.

Prof. Manring has accomplished something rare: an academic book free of jargon, a cultural history free of polemic, and a thorough analysis that never drags. She writes clear, lively prose -- this is a book for the general reader as well as the student of American history. Brava!

Balanced treatment of highly sensitive issues centering around how and why America invented, promoted and continues to promulgate the demoralizing image of Aunt Jemima as the black female archetype.

Manring explores the process by which the mammy was popularized having been transplanted from the pantheon of the minstrel show circuit and strategically positioned into the larger society as an iconic figure in the minds of American whites; albeit, an egregious symbol in the minds of blacks. It's crucial to note that Aunt Jemima had her genesis as a white male in blackface and drag. In 1889, her likeness was crafted for marketing purposes, and the process of building a brand on servility and slavery had begun. Her handlers hired Nancy Green, a black woman who was actually born a slave in 1834, to play the part of Aunt Jemima. They paraded her about at state fairs aping and cooning, flipping pancakes, and speaking in mangled, plantation dialect much to the rip-roarious amusement of the white crowds. She was featured in such magazines as the Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping as a mammy cooking pancakes for her white master, Colonel Higbee. Then came the mammy paraphernalia, i.e. the hideous mammy rag doll. Thus, the nation's most overtly racist trademark was constructed and delivered into the consciousness of America, complete with enormous girth, exaggerated and grotesque facial features; broad, cartoonish smile; obsequious expression; and that ignominious kerchief tied about her head.

In 1923, the United Daughters of the Confederacy campaigned to build a national mammy memorial in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, angry protests from blacks prevented this tragedy from ever being realized. Being portrayed by a white man in black face and drag was a bad enough insult to black women's femininity and basic humanity, but the very thought of mammy being immortalized as a symbol of black womanhood is simply too much to bear. A mammy statue erected in our nation's capital would have become an eternal glorification of the black woman as nothing more than an object of ridicule and easily dismissible as a big fat joke, whose life's purpose was to flip pancakes and keep white folks happy. This demonstrates the degree to which black women more than any other group of women in this country (and perhaps, abroad) have been systematically humiliated, marginalized and devalued. In actual fact, the advertising industry has yet to target the female members of any racial group, other than black women, with the variety of calculated and degrading campaigns described in this book. No other group of women has ever had to fight against the assembling of a national monument that demeans them as human beings, except black women. Certainly, the image of Aunt Jemima was designed to venerate white femininity and elegance. Moreover, mammy served specifically to create a sense of racial nostalgia among whites who romanticized the antebellum/postbellum eras in which white leisure and black servitude afforded whites an idyllic existence in the paradisiacal culture of the south.

The evolution of Aunt Jemima unfurled amid several decades of vehement protests in the black community. In 1989, one hundred years after the initial appropriation of this character, these protests eventually prompted Aunt Jemima's current owners (The Quaker Oats Company), to modify her image. They removed such stereotypical accouterments as the bandanna headdress and apron and trimmed her portly figure a bit, yet she remained a slave, though sanitized. Naturally, blacks wanted mammy abolished altogether, but Quaker Oats would have none of that since she'd become so deeply entrenched in the American consumer consciousness and remains one of the most recognizable brands in consumer history. Nevertheless, she propagates an image of black servitude, inferiority and dehumanization in the memories and minds of black people. On top of which, she's a fallacious representation of the standard of black femininity and gentility. Hence, the ubiquitous dissemination of unflattering, unrefined, sexless, corpulent black women in film, television, magazines, advertisements, etc.

While "Slave In A Box" is an absorbing read, and Manring delivers an unbiased approach to the subject, I must take issue with the explanation in Chapter 6 for why black boys play the dozens, i.e. mama jokes. Manring cites Roger Abrahams' work in which he concludes that playing the dozens is somehow a young man's rite of passage from "mother-oriented to gang-oriented values, and that playing the dozens is rooted in a black boy's resentment against his own mother." This analysis is completely ridiculous if not laughable. To suggest that this form of child's play is anything more than just that is preposterous! It is simplistic, and it is absurd to conclude that making mama jokes indicates a transition from boyhood to gang life? Absolutely nothing can be further from the truth. Had the author adequately researched this aspect of child's play in black culture, it would have been discovered that "playing the dozens" is nothing more than a game of matching wits to see who can deliver the cleverest and funniest insult to his opponent. To wit, the insult is directed at the player's opponent and not at his mother by proxy. Surely, if you want to mortally wound a black boy (or black girl, for that matter), you hit him where he's most vulnerable, you talk about his mother. In fact, if you got into an altercation with a classmate on the playground and wanted to raise your opponent's fury, you only had to utter 2 words: "Yo' mama!" And those 2 little words would start an epic fist fight for the "code" of the culture was to defend your mama's honor before your own. Thus, there is a huge difference between "playing the dozens" and actually talking about somebody's mama although the nuances seem paradoxical to those not part of the culture. It is just a game (which is meant to get laughs from the crowd of friends witnessing it), but getting into a fight and directing a personal insult at somebody's mother is quite different than "playing the dozens" and can get you seriously hurt.

No one would suggest that playing "step on a crack, you break your mama's back" masks a hatred for one's own mother, so why would black children playing a variation of the same game be considered some deviation from normal child's play? From personal experience and observation, I can assure you that black boys and men have a holy reverence and deep love for their mothers as opposed to some subconscious resentment as is cited in this book. Indeed, many an R&B artist, and even more Gospel artists, have written, recorded and sold a plethora of beautiful anthems in honor of their mothers. I have yet to meet a black man who did not dearly love his Mama. So, to purport that playing the dozens springs from some latent hatred for Mama and serves as a passage from "mother-oriented to gang-oriented" life is overreaching and a gross mischaracterization. Mama jokes are just that, jokes...and they're very common; there is no mysterious psychological pathology connected to playing this game. Just as there's none connected to playing "step on a crack, you break your mama's back."

This is a simply fascinating work that weaves business history, marketing theory and techniques, economic differentiation, and overt and unconscious racism. The most interesting dimensions (for this unapologetic Son of the South) is the isolation of the feelings and thoughts of nostalgia that the Quaker Oats image of Aunt Jemima invoked and Manring examines in detail. He follows the work of James Young and illustrator N.C. Wyeth's creation and adaptations of the image from conception to modern politically correct adaptation.

I'm not sure I completely buy into Manrings total thesis, since as a child I always just thought of Aunt Jemima's big old smile as normal, and after all, who doesn't like pancakes? Her image to me meant "proud," "good cooking," and "skilled" not contented servitude as Manring proposes.

Still, this is a fascinating and challenging read.