The Title They Wouldn’t Use

In 2020, two of the most familiar faces in American supermarkets disappeared. Aunt Jemima became Pearl Milling Company, and Uncle Ben’s became Ben’s Original. Plenty of people were baffled. What’s wrong with “uncle”? It’s the friendliest word in the family.

The answer is about who got to use which title.

In the American South, through slavery and for a century afterwards under Jim Crow, white people did not call Black adults “Mr” or “Mrs”. Those courtesy titles were a mark of respect, and that respect was kept for white people. A Black man might be fifty years old, a father and a grandfather, and still be called “boy”. When age made “boy” too absurd, there was a fallback: “uncle”, or for women, “aunt” or “auntie”.

It sounded affectionate, almost tender. That was the trick. “Uncle” let a white speaker acknowledge an older Black man’s age without granting him the status that came with it. It placed him in the household, familiar and harmless, and kept him away from equal standing. The warm word did a cold job.

That’s the world in which both brands were created. Aunt Jemima dates to 1889, taken from a minstrel-show song. Uncle Ben’s arrived in the 1940s. According to company lore, it was named after a Black Texas rice farmer known for the quality of his crop. The face on the box was Frank Brown, a Chicago maître d’ who was paid to sit for the portrait. Whatever the story behind the name, the title on the box was “Uncle”. Like millions of real Black men of his era, Ben was never “Mr”.

The company did try. In 2007 a marketing campaign promoted Uncle Ben to chairman of the board. He got an office, a title and, finally, a surname-free promotion. It was still “Uncle”. By 2020 the company accepted that a new job title wouldn’t fix what the word had always meant.

There’s an Australian footnote that sharpens the point. In Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, “Uncle” and “Aunty” are titles of respect for Elders. They’re earned through knowledge, standing and service, and they’re given by the community. Non-Indigenous Australians use them only when invited. It’s exactly the same word, with the opposite meaning.

That’s the lesson. A word’s meaning isn’t fixed in the dictionary. It depends on who’s using it, about whom, and who decided. “Uncle” is an honour when a community gives it to its own Elders. When someone in power hands it out to deny a person something better, it’s an insult, however warm it sounds.

So the next time a rebrand looks like overreaction, ask what the old name was actually doing. Sometimes the friendly word is the problem.