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Photo: Everett Collection.
After writing about Aunt Jemima for a previous Slashfood post, I became curious about the dark side – racial images used in food advertising – and it seems I'm not the only one. Texas A&M journalism professor Marilyn Kern-Foxworth wrote a whole book about blacks in advertising, entitled "Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Rastus" (the guy on the Cream of Wheat box). But what's more amazing is that all three of these icons are still found on packaging today.
Okay, there is nothing inherently racist about putting black people on breakfast boxes, or else Wheaties would be in a lot of trouble. And I'm sure that the popularity of those icons, not to mention their products, had something to do with the diaspora of Southerners throughout the country, who associated freed slaves and faithful retainers with the comfort food of their ancestral home. The derogatory nature of some of these ads (a 1915 Cream of Wheat ad showed Uncle Sam looking at Rastus, bearing a bowl of cereal, and saying, "Well, you're helping some!") changed with the times.
When I think of my mom, two things usually don't come to mind: beer and Frank Zappa. Which made it odd earlier this week when I opened an email to find she had sent me the following quote: "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."
I used to be one of those guys that didn't drink domestic beers. Well, in my teen years I drank pretty much whatever they were serving at the party (disclaimer: don't drink - and stay in school!), but in my 20s I tried to drink nothing but Red Stripe, Corona, maybe a Heineken here and there. But then something happened and I started drinking American beers more and more. Maybe it was because I tried a few beyond Bud and liked them or maybe they actually got better in the 90s, but now I drink Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada a lot, and some blonde ales. When I drink beer, that is, which isn't often (I'm more of a wine and cocktail guy now).
The Watson family loved the city, but decided to move to a farm to raise their children. The Globe 
