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| What's in a name? Coles biscuit slammed as racist | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 29 2009, 10:30 AM (65 Views) | |
| Sayf Udeen Ismaeel | Oct 29 2009, 10:30 AM Post #1 |
Icon by meagan_chelsea @ LJ
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What's in a name? Coles biscuit slammed as racist The name of a range of Coles chocolate and vanilla biscuits has been labelled racially loaded and a throwback to Nazism by a prominent Brisbane Indigenous leader. The name of the Coles brand biscuits, Creole Creams, has sparked controversy in the wake of the much-derided Hey Hey It's Saturday blackface skit earlier this month. The biscuits, similar to Arnott's Delta Creams and Oreos, with a chocolate exterior and cream centre. Sam Watson, the deputy director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, said the word "Creole", often used to describe a person of mixed European and Africa ancestry, was a racially loaded term. "The word Creole comes from a period when people's humanity was measured by the amount of white blood they had in their bloodstream. This is the same kind of thought that underpinned horrific regimes like the Nazis," Mr Watson said. "People need to exercise their intellect. This so-called blending was actually the institutionalised rape of black women. They were victims of brutal regimes of rape and victimisation." Mr Watson described the biscuit name as deeply insensitive and indicative of a "deep undercurrent of racism in white Australian society". "It virtually infects every level of Australia's consciousness, language, culture and history," he said. "Why the need to use that sort of language to market a confectionery?" Coles has not responded to brisbanetimes.com.au requests for comment. It is not the first time a food name has caused controversy. In the mid-1990s Arnott's renamed its controversial Golliwog biscuits Scalliwags before finally discontinuing the line of biscuits altogether. In Europe, chocolate and marshmallow biscuits produced by the Dutch biscuit maker Van der Breggen were still marketed as Nigger Kisses as late as 2006, when they were finally rebranded as Buys Kisses. In 1995 Fyna Foods' changed their cigarette-imitating lollies, called Fags, removing the lollies' red tips so they did not look like cigarettes and then renaming them Fads. |
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| gingerwitch28 | Oct 30 2009, 09:04 AM Post #2 |
twenty-first century ennui
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Oh come on  So why is it that nobody has forced Coon Cheese to rename itself? Edited by gingerwitch28, Oct 30 2009, 09:05 AM.
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11:32 PM Nov 26
