Stuff YOU Should Know
Aunt Jemima Logo to Change
A few months ago, btw brought you the story of the Land O’Lakes butter company’s decision to change its logo. The butter logo featured a young Native American woman in a feathered headdress, which many people felt was an offensive racial stereotype. Now, following George Floyd’s death and the protests that followed, another company is taking a hard look at the logos used to sell their products. Quaker Foods announced last week that it will be changing the name and logo of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup and mix. The company admits that this name, and the image of the African American woman associated with it, are rooted in troubling racial stereotypes.
The Aunt Jemima brand has been around for 130 years. Over time, the image of Aunt Jemima has slowly changed. She was originally dressed in the stereotypical domestic servant image of the time, with a kerchief holding her hair back. The name itself comes from a minstrel song called “Old Aunt Jemima,” which white actors performed in blackface. In recent years, the company made the decision to remove the kerchief and update her appearance. But now, they recognize that such revisions are not enough to counteract the fact that the entire brand is rooted in racial stereotypes and reminders of U.S enslavement. So they have decided to do away with the image and logo altogether.
Other food companies that are considering similar changes are Mars (Uncle Ben’s rice), Conagra Brands (Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup), and B&G foods (Cream of Wheat, which features an image of an African American chef on its packaging). Quaker Foods will roll out its new pancake syrup and mix brand in the fall.
Dig Deeper Interested to see what other companies are doing to help fight for racial equality? Research one or more of the other food companies in this article to find out more. Then write a short paragraph about one of the companies you learned more about.
Reopening and Unemployment: Good or Bad?
When it comes to unemployment in the United States, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that last week, another 1.5 million Americans filed for unemployment for the first time, bringing the total to 45.7 million. But the good news is that this is about 58,000 fewer people than the week before. During the first weeks of the coronavirus crisis in March, up to 6.9 million people were filing for unemployment weekly. The numbers, while still very high, have been dropping since then.
Another statistic to look at when we talk about unemployment is continued unemployment claims–the number of people who have made more than one unemployment report over time. This number is also dropping. In recent weeks, the number of people filing continued claims has dropped by 62,000 to its current level of 20.5 million. This suggests that people are slowly returning to work. Also important to consider are overall unemployment levels. In April, the unemployment rate was 14.7 percent, the highest number since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Since then, it has fallen slightly, to 13.3 percent in May.
Reopening businesses has improved economic numbers. But many experts still have health concerns, as states return to normal levels of activity without taking full precautions to keep residents and workers safe. One way to do this is to greatly increase the number of contact tracers a state has. Contact tracers are public health workers who work to identify people who may have come into coronavirus contact. The tracers provide the exposed with the resources necessary to isolate themselves safely to slow the disease’s spread. The number of coronavirus contact tracers has tripled in the past six weeks, but only seven states and Washington, D.C. currently have enough to fully do their job effectively, according to health experts.
Dig Deeper Visit this NPR news Web site which allows you to search for the number of coronavirus contact tracers in your state. Does your state have enough? How many more would have to be hired to meet the minimum need?
Scientists Discover Giant Dinosaur Egg
Take a guess: how big was the biggest soft-shell egg ever discovered? The answer is eleven inches by seven inches. Years ago, Chilean paleontologist David Rubilar-Rogers found the mysterious egg in Antarctica. He didn’t know what it was at the time, only that it wasn’t made of bone. (To clarify, soft-shell eggs are those laid by many turtles, snakes, and lizards. Bird eggs, by contrast, have hard shells.) Scientists have now determined that the egg likely came from a giant, ancient marine reptile called a monosaur.
Fossilized soft-shell eggs are incredibly rare finds. So how is it that this unusually large egg has survived for all this time? Soft-shell eggs tear easily, to allow the young to escape from the casing right after being born. In this case, the shell tore open and the egg became filled with dirt and sediment, preserving it for future discovery.
Why is a giant egg such an important find? Because up until now, scientists assumed that dinosaurs all came from hard eggs, as modern-day birds and crocodilians do. Most of the dinosaur eggs discovered in the past have supported this theory. But thanks to the discovery of this egg and others like it, scientists are getting a better picture of how eggs have evolved from soft-shell to hard-shell over time. This evolutionary development might have happened to allow dinosaurs to lay their eggs directly on the ground, rather than having to bury them.
Dig Deeper While the monosaur egg is the largest soft-shell egg ever found, there has been a discovery of one hard-shell egg that’s even larger. Use Internet resources to write a short paragraph about that discovery.
MLB Faces Hurdles to Start Season
First, Major League Baseball was canceled for the summer 2020 season. Then, as states began to reopen, MLB shifted its position and announced that it would go ahead with play, albeit with a shortened season. Now, the League has once again dialed that position back, and no one knows for sure whether any games will be played this summer or not.
While some of this has to do with disputes between players and management over money, fears about the COVID-19 pandemic also play a role. Usually, the MLB season runs from April through October. But Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview recently that it would be a mistake to continue the season into the colder fall months. This is because, even though warm weather doesn’t kill the virus, viruses tend to spread more rapidly in the colder months when people spend more time indoors. Fauci is also concerned that a possible second wave of COVID-19 in the fall could hit at the same time as other seasonal diseases, such as influenza.
UPDATE–As this story was being written Major League Baseball announced it WAS going to hold a 60-game season after a brief Spring Training session in July.
What Do You Think? Visit the official MLB Web site to learn the details of the recently announced season. Do you think the organization has done enough to be prepared for the problems of coronavirus in their plans?