Legislator who wanted to legalize race-based discrimination trying to honor Aunt Jemima in SD Legislature

I saw this, and my initial reaction was “oh, god.”

Rep. Phil Jensen, who once opined that people should be able to ban people of color from their business, introduced a commemoration in the South Dakota Legislature to honor Aunt Jemina today.

The commemoration of the woman who portrayed the pancake icon and died over 100 years ago actually has nothing to do with South Dakota if you read the language of the measure, which Senator Tom Pischke of Dell Rapids also signed on for as co-sponsor.

It is just another odd & bizarre action from Jensen, who seems to have a predilection for racially tinged statements.

18 thoughts on “Legislator who wanted to legalize race-based discrimination trying to honor Aunt Jemima in SD Legislature”

  1. it’s fascinating to have been unwillingly gerrymandered into rep jensen’s district for this election year. i do buy and enjoy the syrup.

  2. I disagree. This is neither odd nor bizarre…..for both Rep. Jensen nor Senator Pischke that is.

  3. the impression i get – just guessing – is that there is an unspoken feeling that observances like black history month, juneteenth, mlk day, and kwanzaa are low-value and meaningless observances that detract from the unified strength we’d have without cultural diversity – a true colorblind stronghold where no particular majority racial group has to endure being called out for their instances of insensitivity and uninformed cultural appropriation.

  4. I do not know these legislators but I read the commemoration 8030. What problem do you have with this commemoration.

  5. Zero accountability, just like all the other legislators, the media demonizes the other side, and when we get to pick one or the other, we pick the one. This is what we get with no checks and balances in our government, runaway spending, and requests to honor January 6th criminals. They add more laws to control us at home to take away our ability to govern ourselves and try to throw out the initiated measure process (HB 1244).

    1. i hope someone offers a motion to also commemorate Uncle Ben ™ and the ‘wazaaaaap?!” super bowl beer ad.

  6. Who was the legislator that something about could tell where they were from by the shape of their skulls?

    This legislator was fixated on human skulls. Makes you wonder if human skulls are found in a basement or garage.

  7. The text of this resolution was copied and pasted straight out of an error-riddled disinformation post that was hastily cobbled together from secondary sources on the day Quaker/PepsiCo announced its decision to rebrand. But primary sources show that Mrs. Green and the other women hired to play “the original Aunt Jemima” had no wealth, no public name recognition until after death, and no elevated “stature” during their lives to parlay into other ventures. An exhaustive search of both white-owned newspapers and the Black press yielded not a single mention of Mrs. Green serving as an “advocate” for anything. The federal census shows that Mrs. Green was already back to working as a cook in Chicago by 1900, and in 1910 she was employed as a housekeeper at the advanced age of 76. There was no “financial freedom.” She never owned a home, left no estate, and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave in the paupers’ section.

    It’s ludicrous to claim that Mrs. Green’s history somehow went *poof!* into thin air when a label that carried literally no information about her, at all, stopped getting glued onto a bottle of syrup that she never even heard of, on account of how it was invented 42 years after her death by a company she’d never worked for. The historical record of her life remains exactly as it was before the rebranding occurred, in public records and newspaper articles written down as the events of her life were happening. The truth that primary sources convey is completely at odds with the nonsense these two men had the gall to attempt to validate with an official state seal of approval.

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