The Black Lives Matter protests have caused many to call out corporations on their racist pasts. One of the companies is Quaker Oats, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, which owns the Aunt Jemima brand, and Mars Inc., which owns the Uncle Ben’s brand. The image of Aunt Jemima was inspired by a former slave Nancy Green who was used to create the fictional brand mascot. After calls to boycott the brands, entertainment mogul Master P plans to offer his own replacement with his new food brand.
The entertainer has experienced great success within the sector with his Rap Snacks brand and now he is expanding to breakfast foods, offering consumers Black-owned replacements for the famous brand items, including instant rice and syrup.
“When you look at Aunt Jemima, and you look at Uncle Ben, we don’t own those products, we never did,” Master P told Yahoo Finance.
“We need to understand that we’re not going to be able to put money back in our [Black] community because we don’t own those brands. Our grandparents [have] been having us buy those products because they think it’s people that look like us.”“What we fighting for right now, we got to do it on a financial level, and start fighting for those rights on the financial side and start showing people that we have people that are thinking outside the box, coming up with great ideas,” he added.
“If you have Aunt Jemima pancakes or Uncle Ben rice, you know, those are not real people. [There are] other guys out there and girls that have products, bringing it to life.”