Racism in Trader Joe’s brands? How Bay Area teen opened eyes
Two weeks ago, Oakley high schooler Briones Bedell posted a petition on Change.org asking the popular national grocery chain Trader Joe’s to change its packaging on products that Briones saw as racist and harmful. Items such as Trader Ming’s Wonton Soup and Trader Jose’s Mexican Lager, Briones argued, played on racial stereotypes about Chinese and Mexican cultures, respectively.
On Monday, a spokesperson for
Trader Joe’s said that the company was already in the process of gradually phasing out those items, prompting headlines across the country. Even in a political and cultural moment where people are openly criticizing systemic racism, Briones has been surprised by the reaction her petition has received. The response from the company itself, however, she considers tepid. Trader Joe’s, she points out, said essentially the
same thing more than a year ago.
Briones, 17, an East Bay native and rising high school senior, spoke with Chronicle restaurant critic Soleil Ho about the petition and what led her to create it, as well as the backlash she’s received for her activism. That includes gripes from the right — but also objections from liberal Democrats who say they don’t want their side appearing to be offended by everything, or complaining that the issue dilutes other messages. But she said she’s encouraged by all the dialogue it has provoked.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How are you holding up? I mean, reading through the comments, which is something you never should do and I hope you’re not, all the hate just — sigh — seems very familiar to me.
A: I’m doing all right. It’s been very overwhelming, especially today. I’ve been getting a few death threats that were pretty concerning. And then just a lot of hate. I’m like, OK, it’s not completely unexpected, but I never thought it would reach this national — apparently international — level. A friend called me today from Denmark, telling me that it was on the news out there. I had no clue.
Q: Have you done work like this before?
A: Nothing that was like this. I have an interest in protecting intangible cultural content like oral traditions and rituals: how places like museums, archives and libraries can curate and display traditional cultural content in a respectful manner while employing Free, Prior and Informed Consent standards. (Editor’s note: Free, Prior and Informed Consent is a right granted to Indigenous people by the United Nations to give or refuse consent to projects that may affect them or their property.)
It was initially through a Human Rights Club at my school, and then I continued my interest independently after the club disbanded. But I think my prior interest and involvement in these kinds of topics made me more sensitive to what I perceived as the trivializing impact of Trader Joe’s branding. If you’re paying attention to these issues of protecting cultural content in general, you’ll see that there’s this growing movement and this heightened sense of awareness to the value of repatriating cultural content back to source communities, of allowing communities access to their content institutions in protecting intellectual property rights.
While the Trader Joe’s thing is a little different, I think that the central issue at the heart of all this is that when any community isn’t allowed control over their representation, harmful stereotypes and caricatures are allowed to be perpetuated.
Q: You’re arguing that the grocery store is another sphere where the same dynamics of appropriation seem to play out, though on the level of popular culture, yeah?
A: It’s just a general lack of control over a narrative that’s experienced by a lot of people. My previous work has been more focused on things that we can point to as being cultural spaces or cultural work. In the case of Trader Joe’s, there’s no “source community” for this stuff because these are just stereotypes and shells, where the cultures are represented as this marketing tool. All the products could just be named Trader Joe’s!
Q: In your petition, you talk about the company’s stated inspiration in Polynesianish Disneyland rides and literature like “White Shadows in the South Seas” (a 1919 travelogue by Frederick O’Brien) and ask the company to address what’s so ... inspiring about them. I would love to hear more about those connections.
A: My family and I — honestly, we shopped at
Trader Joe’s a fair amount prior to all this. I mean, it’s a fun grocery store. But I’ve noticed for a while that the branding is kind of weird. Trader Ming, in particular. It was like, it’s not even a derivative of “Joe” at that point. Like, OK, guys! (Laughs)
I wrote the petition on the same day I really thought about the branding. It didn’t seem to serve any real purpose, and it just seemed like a marketing tool that was insensitive and in poor taste. But when I went and looked on their website, (that) was when it really solidified for me that this was an issue. Under their “About” page, they mentioned that the founder was inspired by these two sources.
The (“White Shadows”) book really plays heavily on the white god and noble savage tropes, and then how those intersect with one another. It’s set in the South Pacific in Tahiti. It was actually a really interesting social commentary of the time: It depicted the trading companies as the villain of the story who were exploiting native people, but it presented this entire other racist view of native peoples as innocent and childlike. And then it presented the other white man who stumbles upon them as trying to protect them from the evils of the Western world and the Western man. They call him a god. And I found that to be odd that that was an inspiration for a grocery store.
But then I read the Disney Jungle Cruise part. I went there as a child and I remember something off about it. I went and watched videos of the ride, and it has these animatronic people that are this nonspecific ethnic tribe. They just call them “headhunters.” It really depicts native peoples as uncivilized and violent and as the punch line of jokes.
When you put it in this larger context of the Trader Joe’s corporate brand philosophy, it becomes more apparent that there’s an actual issue of systemic or institutional racism rather than just tone deafness.
Q: You’ve gotten a lot of pushback from people who are just like, why does this matter? What is your response?
A: It’s weird for me. I haven’t wanted to respond very much either to positive or negative feedback. I obviously have my cause and I have my opinion, but I did want to remain essentially, not impartial, but a facilitator of a discussion, rather than pushing for a narrative or agenda that people might find insensitive itself.
Some would argue there are clearly more serious issues going on right now, things like police brutality, that affect people in a very measurable and tangible way because actual lives are lost. But I’ve noticed this particularly among my peers that there’s this growing awareness of identifying and weeding out systemic racism on all scales. For example, police brutality affects someone very, again, tangibly; and the fact that statues, university buildings, military bases and even cities are named after Confederate soldiers makes many people feel unwelcome in their own country.
But I think the central issue there is that there is this deeply racist sentiment on many levels, both in the case of actual violence and in the case of more symbolic acts of racism. They’re both worth our time in addressing and resolving.
Q: Trader Joe’s has already said it’s been working on this for a couple years now and plans to finish getting rid of that branding soon. Was that enough of a response?
A: I did some digging on it. When I actually started the petition, I found this Nylon article called “Who is Trader Ming?”, and the company issued almost an identical statement over a year ago. It just seems like a continual deflection. Meanwhile, the company won’t commit to a date by which the products will be phased out. But they also have not made any statement regarding the broader corporate brand philosophy as pertains to “White Shadows in South Seas” and the Disney Jungle Cruise ride.
I appreciate (the company’s) response, but I’m disappointed by the lack of urgency that I think is needed to resolve issues such as this in the current climate. They owe their customers more accountability and transparency on this issue.