Aunt Jemima, one of the most recognizable mascots in modern advertising, has been selling pancakes for more than a century. The familiar image today on the company's packaging of a smiling older black woman still resembles its predecessor: a stereotypical mommy. Micki McElya's book, Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America, provides an in-depth analysis of the importance of the mammy figure and why characters who fit the mammy mold were so popular. Aunt Jemima constitutes one of the most recognizable forms of propaganda used in post-slavery America. Mom, a loyal, elderly, asexual, overweight, bandana-wearing black slave, seemed to remind people that slavery was a happy institution. Moms loved serving their families, as exemplified by the big smile on Jemima's face, and big companies wanted to capitalize on the feelings of familiarity, comfort, and nostalgia she evoked. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The marketing that made Aunt Jemima such a powerful company is a perfect representation of the type of exploitation that took place during the Jim Crow era. Big business created a mascot based on this false romanticization of the slave days. Aunt Jemima, and similar black caricatures created during the post-antebellum period, legitimized the master/slave relationship that underlay most black/white interactions until the mid-20th century. This company was able to make a profit by reminding people that Black people's primary role was their loyal servitude every time they picked up that box of pancakes. This distorted relationship is a perfect metaphor for the way blacks were treated during the century following the end of slavery. Jim Crow America relied on keeping power out of the reach of blacks: until they could achieve sufficient political and economic power, then whites would remain in control. Many institutions were put in place so that the majority of blacks could not gain this kind of power and to ensure that those who did could not have an impact significant enough to cause real change. Power comes from money. A person's assets serve as the best representation of wealth, so economic power came from owning a home. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was a government structure established to protect homeowners. They were the source of most of the difficulties blacks faced when trying to buy a home: “In practice, local FHA directors became the means of enforcing zoning and racial segregation by refusing to insure loans to members of the minorities in areas where they are not wanted." (Abrams, 124) Blacks could rarely get a loan (and if they did, it was at unfair interest rates), so being able to buy a house meant being in a good enough financial and social position to be respected by most cities and the cities were divided into districts based on racial separation. These areas were classified using the letters A, B, C and D, with A being the best and D being the worst. Area A was populated only by non-Jewish whites and had the highest real estate value Any neighborhood in which a person of color resided, regardless of their economic status, was considered a D neighborhood. This system further enforced segregation because if a person of colorcolor moved into a white neighborhood, the value of residents' properties decreased. As a preventative measure, home buyers were forced to sign an agreement promising not to sell their homes to people of color. “Almost since its creation this agency [the FHA] has been a moving spirit behind the racial restrictive covenant, the means by which homeowners in an area agree not to sell or rent to “non-Caucasians” or other groups excluded” (Abrams, 123). These restrictive covenants prevented whites who really had no problem selling to blacks from doing so. This means that even if a black person were able to afford a house in a decent neighborhood, they would not be able to move there. Many times the wealthier black citizens would simply live in the largest homes within the black slums. people were forced to live in a limited amount of space. These black neighborhoods had dirt roads and large numbers of homes condensed into a small area. Whites often purchased land in these neighborhoods and rented it to blacks. The houses they were renting were poorly maintained. Many were not adequately isolated; most had no heat or electricity; and some had no real toilets. Prices for these seats were greatly inflated to prevent blacks from being able to advance financially. These small spaces available to black renters were sometimes two or three times more expensive than their better-maintained counterparts available to white renters. These high prices forced renters to take in others to help pay the rent. This meant that sometimes multiple families lived in an apartment or house that barely had room for one. Furthermore, landlords have used this as an excuse to continue increasing the rent of these spaces, making it impossible for these families to achieve economic stability. “Perhaps the worst aspect of the whole situation is that the racial segregation factor makes it extremely difficult for any The black family, regardless of its character or aspirations, manages to escape these conditions. It is difficult for them to move into more desirable residential neighborhoods; there are few new developments in areas accessible to Negroes; the cost of home financing for them is often excessive” (Lamont, vii). Whites took advantage of blacks' limited power to take as much money as they could ever since, which further contributed to the vicious cycle that prevented blacks from advancing in society. The idea that black money was tainted applied not only to real estate. but to businesses. “The Negro population in 1930 was 11,891,143, or about 10% of the total population” (Johnson, 2). This meant that, even considering their general lack of wealth, blacks represented a fairly large portion of the country's capital. Segregation was a rather expensive institution. When you consider how much potential money was lost when black people were not allowed to bring their businesses into such a large number of institutions. This is highlighted when interracial parties wanted to gather in segregated venues: “[both in and out of segregated territory, the refusal of hotels catering to whites to admit non-whites costs owners considerable sums in their inability to host interracial conventions” (Kennedy, 314-5). Segregation and racism ran deep enough in society that people were willing to lose customers because of it. The exclusion of blacks from so many places resulted in a great loss of money. It is ironic that in a society where money equals power, these entrepreneurs.