I have something to add regarding your Jan. 23 program on Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Chiquita Banana.

Your guest suggested that during the 1940's and 50's these were in some areas the only images white Americans had of black and hispanic people. Actually, the radio program Amos and Andy (with a white cast) was on radio then and giving a more derogatory impression of American blacks. Also, movie cartoons of the day were extremely racist, showing American blacks with gross racist physical and behavioral depictions.

Performer Carmen Miranda, with her huge fruit headdresses, probably had more impact than Chiquita banana on white American views of hispanics. Also, as with blacks, movie cartoons were as racist in their depiction of Mexicans as today's cartoons are of Arabs.

Regarding Chiquita Banana, that brand was owned by United Fruit Company, a U.S. company, which was notorious for having economically colonized Central American in particular, using the support of the U.S. politically--and, on occasion, militarily--to ensure its taking of large profits in the region. Through mergers, United Fruit became part of the United Brands Company, which later became Chiquita Brands International.

Sent by B.T. Mendelsohn | 8:35 AM ET | 01-24-2008

Regarding Aunt Jemima, unless I'm remembering this wrong, Alice Walker had an audio essay about how she is the "nurturing" part of a chopped-up black goddess, dismembered to keep only the "positive" parts. She said white people felt comfortable with images like that, of nurturing black women, without having to deal with the other components of black womanhood, i.e. power.

Sent by Damon Thomas | 4:56 PM ET | 01-24-2008

I was just thinking about Aunt Jemima while reading Claire Tomalin's biography of Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy, whose mother, Jemima Hand, was a servant and a cook for a wealthy family. Although she had only a minimal education herself, she was an avid reader and she used her connections to insure that her children were well-educated, beyond their social class, in fact. A very impressive woman.

I suspect that the physical image of Aunt Jemima - overweight, big-bosomed, etc. - was probably more destructive to women's self-esteem than the maternal or domestic image she presented.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in his new book about the Harlem Renaissance, is critical of hair care entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker and her daughter A'Lelia Walker Robinson, because their "hair-straightening empire" was (allegedly) built on "white ideals of beauty." At least that was the conventional wisdom in the 1960s, but I think it, too, is a stereotype. Their hair care products probably improved the low self-image of many women.

Although I admire Kareem, I disagree with many things in the book.

Sent by Mike | 11:37 PM ET | 01-27-2008

Lynn, Two of the short stories in All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones seem to reflect a class-based anti-doctor bias or stereotype. In "Bad Neighbors," the snoooty pre-med student makes life hard for the authentic working-class hero who later saves the doctor's wife from a mugging at the hands of the D.C. "mixed gang." In "Root Worker," a young D.C. physician visits a Southern herbalist in order to cure her mother's mystery illness, which we ultimately learn is the result of a curse imposed on the woman by a passing stranger who heard the doctor, as a child, disrespect an adult member of the community.

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the anti-doctor stereotype is both class- and color-bound. We're told that Belicia's skin color -- described in a string of "how black was she?" expletives -- may be the result of a cosmic curse (Fuku Americanus) imposed on the snooty "mulatto" Dr. Cabral for his association with the dictator "El Jefe." Belicia, a.k.a. "Queen of Diaspora" is less a woman than a repository of various forms of physical abuse (only). She's burned with hot oil, caged, molested, and as an adult is exploited for her killer body and beaten in a cane field. So sensitive! The 307-lb. main character Oscar is a Notorious B.I.G.-surrogate who's fast becoming a stock figure in hip-hop literary fiction alongside others like: the 328-lb. Russian rapper in Shteyngart, the 315-lb. brother in La Valle, and the 300-lb. ganster in Paul Beatty.

Mr. Abdul-Jabber notes the light complexion of the Cotton Club dancers but fails to note the similarity, with exceptions, to the musicians in Duke Ellinton's own band (Barney Bigard was a Creole, Juan Tizol was a white Cuban, et al). The gangster owners originally wanted to hire King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band instead, an ironic title because it was a "black" band.

Mr. Abdul-Jabbar quotes from former NAACP executive secretary Walter White's "first-hand account" of the 1906 Atlanta race riot from his autobiography, "A Man Called White" (a wry double-entendre) without knowing that Mr. White's story has since been discredited by Professor Kenneth Robert Janken who suggest that it was a fabrication intended to quiet his black critics.

Mr. Abdul-Jabbar states that Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen "was forced to take a job teaching English at Frederick Douglass High School, where he proved to be an inspiration to at least one of his students, future literary great James Baldwin." [108] That's true, except that Frederick Douglass was a junior high school, and Baldwin, like Cullen before him, had voluntarily attended a mixed-race, predominantly white high school in the Bronx where the award-winning literary magazine, The Magpie, was edited by Baldwin, Sol Stein, Emile Capouya, and Richard Avedon (who, incidentally, took the cover photo of the teenage Kareem but is not mentioned in the text).

I tend to think it's more than a typo because the same mistake is repeated by Essence Books Editor Patrik Henry Bass in his review of a completely different book, a biography of Baldwin by Herb Boyd:

"Did you know, for instance, that Countee Cullen, the Harlem Renaissance icon who wrote the poem "Yet Do I Marvel," was one of Baldwin???s teachers? And long before Baldwin contributed to The New Yorker, he dazzled readers at Frederick Douglass High School as the editor of its student magazine."

http://www.essence.com/essence/books/0,16109,1691867,00.html

Sent by Mike | 9:26 AM ET | 01-28-2008