Trader Joe’s pushes back

It’s good to see that at last one American company is pushing back against a petition to change the labeling on some of its products because they were said to be racist.

After initially saying the company was in the process of removing all “ethnically” modified versions of Trader Joe’s from its branding, officials reversed their decision, saying they disagreed any of their labels were racist.

The company was responding to an on-line petition created by a 17-year-old Bay area California white high school senior named Briones Bedell. The petition of more than 5,000 signatures called for the removal of the company’s “racist branding and packaging,” referring to such items as “Trader Ming's” on the Kung Pao Chicken and “Trader Jose's” on Premium Lager from Mexico. Here we go again with everything being “racist.”

In reversing its initial decision to remove all “ethnically” modified versions of the company’s branding in the near future, a later statement explained that it will not take any steps to remove the modifiers deemed to be racist by the petition.

"Recently we have heard from many customers reaffirming that these name variations are largely viewed in exactly the way they were intended–as an attempt to have fun with our product marketing," said a company post.

Anyone who has shopped in a Trader Joe’s knows it is a fun place to spend your money. There are only about 3,000 items for sale in the stores, many with the exclusive Trader Joe’s label. Employees are all attired in island-themed clothing of colorful untucked shirts and shorts.

We fail to see how any of their labels would be offensive to anyone, but we are now living in a culture where something is deemed offensive to someone somewhere. This is the first case we know of where a company has actually pushed back on one of these petition attempts forcing it to cave to a small minority of the population. 

Those who don’t like the labeling can shop elsewhere where they feel more comfortable. We will continue to patronize the business wherever and whenever we can. 

After all, isn’t this the American way?