There is a long history of Black archetypes and racist stereotypes in the food industry. Well known examples include Uncle Ben’s and Aunt Jemima.
In Spring of 2019, Terresa Moses had a group of six junior graphic design students in her class look at these two examples. Over the 15-week course, the students went through the Racism Untaught toolkit to help them critically think about the impact of these tropes.
The final results yielded a creative and anti-racist result that included a transition package that points out the racism in the original packaging. The students even went as far to think about providing royalties to the families of the original package models, Nancy Green and Frank Brown.
