Be sure to Click LIKE at the bottom of this article, and share it everywhere!! By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot and Right Side Patriots – Commentary

Last week, B&G Foods Inc. released this statement: “We are initiating an immediate review of the Cream of Wheat brand packaging. We understand there are concerns regarding the Chef image, and we are committed to evaluating our packaging and will proactively take steps to ensure that we and our brands do not inadvertently contribute to systemic racism.”

First of all, it pretty hard to contribute to something that simply doesn’t exist as a real thing, and second off, I’m confused.

The B&G Foods Inc. statement came on the heels of Quaker Oats decision to pull the Aunt Jemima brand and brand imaging from the consumer market, which preceded a decision by Mars, which makes Uncle Ben’s Rice and a decision by Congara Brands, the parent company of Mrs. Butterworth’s to also pull from distribution to consumers their product brand names.

All of that follows the recent image rebranding of Land-O-Lakes butter so as to discontinue the image of the Indian maiden on their packaging.

It’s all about ending “systemic racism” we’re told.

Now I’m not trying to be snarky here. I have what I feel are legitimate questions and I’ll start with this one…

What in THE hell is “systemically racist” about any of those packaging brand images?

The Land-O-Lakes Indian maiden was originally drawn by a Native American artist for that brand. He did it to pay tribute to his own ancestry. Uncle Ben was a real person. He was a black rice farmer from Texas, and when he sold his farm, the new owner wanted to honor him and named the brand, Uncle Ben’s.  The original model for Mrs. Butterworth was Butterfly McQueen the actress best known for her role in Gone With the Wind, and the original Aunt Jemima was Nancy Green, a woman born into slavery who, in 1893 became the face and personal appearance of the pancake mix company.

Imagine the risk of hiring a former slave, just 25 years after the Civil War to be the face, and promoter of your product. In fact. Nancy Green was THE first black person in U.S. history to be a corporate spokesmodel.

NONE of those products were marketed to ANY specific race of people for the past 130 years…they were marketed to AMERICANS of ALL skin colors, and they have been VERY successful. NOBODY ever bought any of those products because they were racists, or because the products themselves were racist. People bought those things because they were good products, but now we’re being told that the packaging, the images portrayed on them and in some cases, the very brands ARE racist.

Why?

Because they have black people portrayed on the packaging? And it is now considered racially inclusive, or less racist to REMOVE the images of black people from the packaging?

That doesn’t make a lick of sense, and it leads directly to my confusion.

How many products do we see today in advertisements that feature black actors? Plenty. Dennis Heysbert is the face and voice for Allstate Insurance. Is that now to be considered racist? Should Heysbert lose his job and be removed as the Allstate spokesman? If not…why not?

Jake, from State Farm. The original Jake was an actual State Farm agent who just happened to be a white guy. NOW, Jake from State Farm is portrayed by Kevin Mimms, a black actor who the company says taps into culturally relevant situations that are necessary for the audiences.

So, if you have black people fronting your product to ALL races, that’s racist, but if you have a black person fronting your product for specifically relevant cultural situations…it’s NOT racist?

What about George Foreman and his grills? How about Shaq and all the stuff he is now the face and voice of? Sofia Vergara is featured in ads, Zoe Saldana is the face for L’Oreal and the list just goes on and on. Are any of those okay? Are any of them racist?

Who knows?

Aunt Jemima has always been portrayed by the face of a black woman, and that’s now deemed to be racist, but Betty Crocker has always been portrayed by the face of a white woman and that’s not racist. I’m confused. What would happen if suddenly there was a new face for Betty Crocker, and it happened to be black…would THAT then be considered racist? If Uncle Ben’s, Mrs. Butterworth and Aunt Jemima suddenly move to white images…is THAT racist and how is removing faces that aren’t white NOT racist?

Let’s be really clear about this rebranding nonsense…none of the companies with rebranding fever are doing it out of some sense of altruistic moral awakening. They are making bad business decisions based on an ass-backwards cultural sense of political correctness driven by the liberal thought police which is, by the way, the only police force they don’t want to abolish.

The named companies, and many to follow are rebranding so as not to be labeled racist, but none of those companies have ever been racist. Think about it. If they were racist, or real racists ran them, why would they have ever had faces on their products that were black to begin with? Those faces, those images and that branding sold their products to people of ALL races and that’s about as non-racist as it could possibly be.

But my confusion, and I’ll bet I’m not the only one confused, is not solely tied to this rebranding advertising stuff. My confusion, and probably yours as well also reaches into what is now being broadly called “racism.”

Black Lives Matter isn’t racist, but ALL lives matter is? Doesn’t ALL Lives Matter INCLUDE ALL skin colors? What could possibly be less racist than including ALL skin colors in a statement? Some black people today are demanding reparations for slavery from white people today when no white people today every owned a slave and no black people today ever were slaves? That infers that all white people today are racists…and that’s a pretty racist statement to make because only an abject minority of white people in the days of slavery actually owned slaves.

Democrats are now demanding any depiction of Confederates be removed from public view. Why? Because they were racists? Just who were the Confederates? They were southern DEMOCRATS. Just who commissioned those depictions of Confederates that are now being removed from public view? DEMOCRATS. Democrats say those depictions promote racism, but that’s not true. Those depictions remind democrats that THEY have always been the political party OF racism.

Here’s a case in point…in the Virginia State Capitol Building, there stands a bronze statue of a KKK leader. There exists today, some 55 bridges, highways, dams, and other facilities in Virginia that carry the name of the man depicted by that statue, and none of those things have been removed, or vandalized. Why? Because that man’s name is Robert Byrd, and he was a close friend of both Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.

Now they want to make Juneteenth a national holiday. Well, guess what? I have no problem with that. In fact, I welcome it. It would be a holiday to celebrate the end of slavery, and who was responsible for the end of slavery? A REPUBLICAN President.

That’s right…an old white REPUBLICAN President, Abraham Lincoln, would be the brand name for Juneteenth. In the third year of the Civil War, in 1863, President Lincoln declared, “I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves, are, and henceforth shall be free…” and on June 19^th 1865. Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free.

Democrats and many black people want this to be recognized as a national BLACK holiday…but isn’t THAT racist? Shouldn’t it be an AMERICAN holiday…skin color be damned? Ironically, some of the very same people who are now demanding a black holiday called Juneteenth, are the exact same people defacing and vandalizing statues of Abraham Lincoln, and black Civil War heroes who made Juneteenth possible.

The thing about racism is that it is subjective, and as it is being tossed about by today’s democrats and some in various minority communities it is a lie. The term racism, or racists as it is being employed today has nothing to do with skin color, and everything to do with trying to shut down an opposing political view. Racism, or the label of racist today is used to dismiss those whose political affiliation is opposite of liberalism. Calling someone a racist today is done by liberals to distract from a political argument because today’s liberals are losing those arguments.

Throughout this commentary, I have posed a good many questions and they’re all very valid questions none of which today’s liberals will answer honestly.  They are also rhetorical questions in that were today’s liberals and those employing the racist, or racism labels to answer those questions honestly, they would have to admit either the smoke screen they’re trying to throw up, or admit to their own racism.

Companies like Quaker Oats, Congara Brands, Mars, Land-O-Lakes and  B&G Foods Inc. are bowing down to false accusations. They are providing validation to a false narrative and they’re admitting to being what they’re not. Why? Because they are being intimidated by hypocrites, liars, and panderers. They are fools who have been tricked into believing that racism…real racism is promoted by an image on a box of rice, a box of Cream of Wheat, a brick of butter or boxes of pancake mix and bottles of syrup.

Are there real racist in the world today? Of course there are, but racism is a learned behavior, and there is not a single racist in the world today who learned that behavior because there was a bottle of Aunt Jemima on their breakfast table.

No real racist in America today learned that behavior from a picture of Uncle Ben, the image of Mrs. Butterworth, the chef on the box of Cream of Wheat or because a beautiful Indian maiden was on the wrapper of their butter. It’s not learned from statues, paintings or names on buildings, bridges or streets either. No one has ever been taught anything by a box of pancake mix other than how to make pancakes.

Today’s democrats tell us we need to have an honest conversation regarding Racism in America, and yet everything they say about racism is dishonest. That’s a non-starter for any honest conversation. Today’s democrats say we must do away with the stereotypes of racism, while at the same time they label ALL cops, and ALL white people as racists over what a scant few may say or do. You cannot do away with stereotypes by employing stereotypes to do it.

Today’s democrats say they want to completely eliminate racism from America, and yet the cities where they claim racism is at its worst, are the very cities that have been controlled by democrats for generations.

You can’t create unity by forcing division, you can’t stop trouble by causing trouble, and you can’t build bridges by burning down everything in sight and you can’t preach diversity while you demand group-think.

If today’s democrats really want to have an honest conversation, let them answer the questions posed in this commentary…honestly…then we’ll talk.

Copyright © Craig Andresen/thenationalpatriot.com 2020/ All rights reserved

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For more political commentary please visit my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner Diane Sori’s blog The Patriot Factor to read her latest article  No Holiday Created Will Erase The Past

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Tomorrow, Friday, June 26th, from 7 to 9pm EST, RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS Craig Andresen and Diane Sori discuss ‘No Holiday Created Will Erase The Past’; ‘Racism – Liberalism’s Dishonest Label’; and important news of the day. 

Hope you can tune in to RSP Radio at: https://streamingv2.shoutcast.com/right-side-patriots