Choosing When to Give a S**t: Controversial Language and the Trader Joe’s Boycott

By DAVID SCHMIDT

Progressive preacher Tony Campolo used to exhort his Evangelical audiences to respond to the widespread injustice in our world. “While you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or malnutrition. Most of you don’t give a s**t. What’s worse is that you’re more upset by the fact that I said ’s**t’ than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”

Tellingly, many Christians took one thing away from his events—they were upset by his profane language. “That was really uncalled for,” said one friend from my childhood church. Few people got the message. Almost none of them took any action against world hunger. It was much easier to fixate on language.

A petition was recently launched against the grocery store chain Trader Joe’s, calling for a change in their “racist names” for ethnic foods: Trader José’s, Trader Mings’s, Trader Giotto’s, and so on.

The petition was penned by Briones Bedell, a high school student from San Francisco. “The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures,” she wrote. “It presents ‘Joe’ as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters falling outside of it.”

The company issued a statement in mid July announcing that it would change the product names. Two weeks later, they reversed this decision, rejecting the claims of racism and stating that “this naming of products could be fun and show appreciation for other cultures.”

The controversy over product packaging has reached other companies as well. Quaker Oats recently announced the withdrawal of the character of Aunt Jemima, the longstanding pancake syrup icon. Uncle Ben’s rice will no longer feature the image of an avuncular Black man, and Dreyer’s plans to change the name of their “Eskimo Pies.” The mascots of Mrs. Butterworth and Cream of Wheat may be on their way out as well.

Let us make no mistake about it—language and images matter. It is no accident that Orwell dedicated so much of 1984 to the role played by language in oppression. The Newspeak of his dystopian future served to eliminate subversive words and create euphemisms for state violence. We’ve all seen the Nazi caricatures used to dehumanize their victims.

Many of the product images being challenged today contain stereotypes from the ugliest chapters of US history: caricatures that accompanied xenophobia and oppression, genocide and Jim Crow. It makes sense to cut ties with such roots. Nobody wants to go back to the days when companies shamelessly sold products with names like “Chinaman’s Delight.”

Of course, many have challenged the accusations against Trader Joe’s labeling. They contain no images of cultural stereotypes, and most of the light-hearted product names are nothing more than a translation of the name “Joseph.” The Italian and Mexican foods are labeled “Trader Giotto’s” and “Trader José’s,” respectively, avoiding the overt prejudice associated with names like “Guido” or “Julio.”

Beyond the specifics of these names, however, is the larger issue — is language the best crusade to focus on?

While we debate product names and logos, millions of our fellow humans are hungry and oppressed. This is more than a historical atrocity from the age of colonialism; it is a present reality, one built into the modern economy that brings us those products. Where are the boycotts and petitions aimed at these real world horrors?

Three of the world’s top consumer goods — coffee, chocolate, and bananas — are primarily produced in the Developing World, with profits benefiting companies in the Developed World. 80% of the world’s resources are consumed by the top 20% of its population. Sweatshops and child labor are still the norm for much of our world’s clothing, textile, and electronics industry. Child slavery in Ghana is a mainstay in the production of cacao.

My own experiences alongside coffee farmers and migrant farm workers in Mexico taught me valuable lessons about modern-day colonialism. The horrific, grinding poverty of our world is no accident of history — it is the direct result of global forces that bleed wealth out of regions and into First World coffers. Poverty is created. This is the norm.

The “locally grown, ethically sourced” product is the exception to the rule. Of course, there are global efforts that aim to change that. The Fair Trade movement supports worker-owned coops who receive a guaranteed baseline price and additional Fair Trade premium. Some companies make a significant effort to support Fair Trade — ironically, Trader Joe’s is one of them.

The coffee aisle of Trader Joe’s is stocked with more Fair Trade-certified coffees than most competing supermarkets. The same can be said of their cacao products, and organic fruits and vegetables are ever present. True, Trader Joe’s has had labor issues in the past, recently pressuring workers not to unionize. And yet, none of these labor issues were the subject of the petition.

With all the potential causes to focus a boycott or petition on, why the nearly exclusive fixation on language?

Conservatives might blame it on “political correctness overreach,” while the conspiracy theory crowd might be tempted to see a false flag operation here, one launched by Trader Joe’s competition to drive them out of business. The more likely explanation is one both mundane and insidious: the fetishization of commodities.

Marx coined this term to describe how we think about what we buy. Products seem to appear on the shelves as if by magic, prettily wrapped and ready for consumption. We don’t think of our fellow humans who labored to create them.

Inasmuch as progressives fixate on product image, this fetishization will continue. As long as the package is free of anything offensive, progressive consumers are happy. No need to think about where it comes from or the sweat and blood that went into its production. All we need is a little window dressing, a P.C. label, and everybody’s happy.

This is what passes for “social justice” these days.

Mexican author and linguist María del Pilar Montes de Oca has spoken at length about the movement for inclusive language in Spanish. “Language can naturally become more inclusive,” she said recently at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, “but only in response to changes in society. If society becomes more equal, the language will change to catch up. But the opposite rarely occurs.”

At best, the recent brand name changes are an example of this — language updated to reflect greater societal equality. At worst, though, they may serve to obscure the present-day horrors of exploitation and poverty.

And for those that profit from this exploitation, the fixation on language must seem like a godsend.

David J. Schmidt is an author, podcaster, multilingual translator, and homebrewer who splits his time between Mexico City and San Diego, California. He is a proponent of fair and alternative forms of trade. See holyghoststories.com. Twitter: @SchmidtTales.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2020

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