On Aunt Jamima, Bernie Sanders and the National Debt

Thank you to the news gods and Lil Scotty for dropping a column into my lap. I was tired of writing about SARS2 and suggesting that perhaps the protesters should target Pence, not Trump. (They still should, now more than ever),

Updating the picture was the wrong choice when it was made. It should have been re-branded "Grandma'" with an old while woman on the label. Bill Maher is going to have a field day with this one. Sarcastic question is, would the sentiment evident now have been protesting that all grandmothers are not white? Maybe not - but it is not a far-fetched idea. I am glad the brand is gone - it was branded in simplistic images - but that was mid-century America - our not so golden years.

We never used the brand.  We were a Bisquick household. Of course, making Bisquick semi-complete (rather than just add water) was market tested. Women did not like to think that they were buying something too easy. Like politics, no one makes marketing decisions (then or now) without running a poll.

Note that at the time, quite a few Black women from the northern migration did do domestic and housekeeping work - also women who did not migrate. There is a reason that "The Help" was a best selling movie. It really happened all across America, although it usually involve no surrogate parenting. My mom was on bed rest because my mother had difficult pregnancies. Without Willie Bea, who cleaned our house while my mom was on bed rest, probably saved both of our lives. As it is, I am on borrowed time, as are my siblings. We were also told to stay out of her way when she came over. Multiple children underfoot makes cleaning efficiently impossible. She was no Aunt Jamima.

Black women have been largely replaced by migrants, first from the Caribbean and Vietnamese women. Nowadays, the housekeepers are Latinex, possibly without documentation and, if so, maybe working under bondage (meaning that they are working off a debt).

Any owed labor situation, from being a West Point graduate, to paying off student loan debt to, to having a work related visa (H-1B, H2A) dependent on performance, to paying off a debt bought from a Coyote are all bondage.

The light should be going on as to why people are so committed to Bernie - it is because they are defacto slaves who see their student debt as unpayable. They have reason for concern. I am 57 and still owe. 

Even high income taxpayers considering owing debt to eventually pay the Social Security Trust Fund to be involuntary servitude. They have no problem with the national debt that they can then turn around and add to their portfolios, but when it is owed to someone else, they start talking about the need to get entitlement spending under control.

Owing a mortgage is seen by many as bondage - because it is. So, how do get stuff when we need it but must pay it back later. Social democracy is a trade that allows capitalists to own workers as long as they pay citizen benefits through being taxed more heavily. Seen that way, it is still a slave bargain. The answer is to replace capitalism with cooperation and mutual ownership.

A final comment on Quaker Oats. My ancestors go back to the Plymouth colony and were members of the Society of Friends. Ralph Allen, who was persecuted for his faith. Mary Dyer was hanged for hers. The Allen family moved to the Disciples of Christ for centuries, however my brother Greg got married in what was essential a Quaker wedding. No one looked like the old white dude on the oats box.