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A petition is asking Trader Joe’s to change its labeling of international food products, considering that much of its brand is “racist.”
A petition is asking Trader Joe’s to change its labeling of international food products, considering that much of its brand is “racist.”
Photo: Trader Joe’s
A petition is asking Trader Joe’s to change its labeling of international food products, considering that much of its brand is “racist.”
A petition is asking Trader Joe’s to change its labeling of international food products, considering that much of its brand is “racist.”
Photo: Trader Joe’s
TO UPDATE: The company responded to calls to change the packaging of its international products with the following statement:
“While this approach to product naming may have originated in a lighthearted attempt at inclusion, we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect, one that is contrary to the welcoming and rewarding customer experience that we strive to create. days, “said Kenya Friend-Daniel, national director of public relations for Trader Joe’s. “With this in mind, we made the decision several years ago to use only the Trader Joe name on our products going forward. Since then, we have been in the process of updating older labels and replacing any variations with the Trader name. Joe’s, and we will continue to do so until we complete this important work.
“At this time, I don’t have an exact date, but we hope to have the work completed very soon. The packaging for various products has already been changed, but there are a small number of products where the packaging is still working through the process.” .
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As companies hurry away from troublesome representations of the breed, from Aunt Jemima to the Washington NFL team, Trader Joe’s is another brand being asked to change its packaging for international products through a request.
The products in question are foods from various parts of the world that are renowned under the Trader Joe’s umbrella. But instead of the typical food-stamped merchant name Joe, the products are often derived from the name Joe. Instead, these items are called “Trader Giotto’s” or “Trader Ming’s” or “Trader José” to refer to Italian, Chinese, or Mexican products, respectively, among other ethnic product names.
The petition asking the supermarket chain to change the name of the products says that the various labels create “a narrative of exoticism that perpetuates harmful stereotypes.”
“The Trader Joe’s brand is racist because it exoticizes other cultures: it presents’ Joe ‘as the default’ normal ‘and the other characters left out of it are’ Arabian Joe ‘,’ Trader José ‘and’ Trader Joe San “says the petition.” … The common thread between all these transgressions is the perpetuation of exoticism, whose objective is not to appreciate other cultures, but to promote others and distance them from the “normal” perceived.
The petition goes on to point out that the story behind Trader Joe’s is perhaps problematic in the modern context, claiming that the origins of the store’s nautical theme (as published on the store’s website) comes from the book “White Shadows in the South Be “. that the petition described as racist. In addition, the trip to Disneyland’s Jungle Trip, which is also mentioned on the store’s website as the inspiration for founder Joe Coulombe, received criticism “for romanticizing Western imperialism and fetishizing non-Western peoples.”
This is not the first time that the grocery store brand has come under fire for its international food labeling; In 2019, food website The Kitchn noted the company’s use of “authentic” on its labels, using it “almost exclusively in reference to Indian and Mexican dishes,” the writer found. In contrast, European products were not promoted as “authentic,” as Kitchn noted. His use of the word has a different context when used for Indian and Mexican products, given the history of colonization of those countries by European countries, said the writer.
“By using the word ‘authentic’ to highlight these two countries, TJ’s is reinforcing some subtle but really important assumptions,” the article reads. “What are those assumptions? To describe the food of an entire nation as authentic or non-authentic is to reduce it to a singular conception of what that food can be while ignoring regional differences, class differences, and historical precedents.”
Nylon magazine also addressed the topic of tagging in its 2019 article, “Who is Trader Ming?”
“Although he pretends to be innocently capricious, [the international labels] it lends itself to a variety of interpretations, the first being that there is something intrinsically comical about ethnic names: ‘Ming’ and ‘José’ are somehow witty and fun, while ‘Joe’ is the unadorned neutral, “notes Nylon. .
SFGATE contacted Trader Joe’s for comment, but received no response in time to post. For its part, however, the store brand said in a statement to Nylon magazine that it had already decided to use only the Trader Joe name on newly introduced products and that “these designations do not appear on any new products that we have introduced in Over the past two years, and as we go through label upgrades on older products, we will change any pre-existing variations to Trader Joe’s. While these names were considered a cheery designation for your kitchen, we recognize that they may have been inconsistent with the welcome a satisfying customer experience that we strive to create every day. “
Despite this, it appears that several specific ethnic labels still linger on the shelves in 2020, judging by local merchant Joe aisles and this latest petition.
SFGATE will update this article in case we receive a comment from Trader Joe’s.
Dianne de Guzman is a digital editor at SFGATE. Email: [email protected]
