Zac Johnson

This week Aunt Jemima announced it would be rebranding to address criticisms that their name and image were based in a racist stereotype of Black women. Without a doubt, this is the right thing to do, yet just last week, dozens of social media posts exposing Aunt Jemima, owned by Quaker Oats, for supporting or using prison labor circulated my networks. Suspicious, no? Are they merely rebranding to escape a name that no longer carries the same connotations? Will they deal with their use of prison labor too?

Quaker Oats is one in a million companies that have most certainly touted their steps ” . To me, this points to what seems to be an increasingly common trait among modern corporations: the political image they purport does not match the actions that they uphold. Especially in a world that has only become more critical of human rights violations, companies have taken it upon themselves to maintain their regularly scheduled use of slave labor by crafting progressive images that are palatable enough for the general public.

As I begin work on my individual project for Accountability Counsel, more and more examples of this pattern appear. My project requires that I sift through hundreds of complaints filed with accountability mechanisms around the world in AC’s Accountability Console regarding internationally financed projects. At first glance, a good chunk of these complaints seem to involve projects designed with good intentions.

A closer look, though, reveals that the name and description of these projects so often distort their deeper purposes and impacts on the larger population. Biodiversity protection, for instance, is repeatedly cited as a project goal, but too often such “protection” comes at the expense of Indigenous communities and their livelihoods. More than one community has reported being forcibly removed from their homes, which were subsequently set ablaze, all in the name of environmental protection.

Another striking example within the Accountability Console of the surface-level change touted by international financiers comes to fore with the creation of a system of English-based schools in Mexico. Undoubtedly, English schools in developing areas could easily be presented to fit the narrative that onlookers want to hear. Don’t we want to teach kids the tools they need to succeed in a world so oriented around English? Honestly, maybe we do.

But behind the curtain of progression purported by the English school project lies a more complicated network of impacts that people often fail to see. Are English schools more beneficial to the students they teach or the culture that it supports? Many linguist scholars argue that, if anything, these schools contribute to the extinction of

Understanding the deceptive nature of such internationally financed projects sheds light onto the developments with Aunt Jemima/Quaker Oats/PepisCo and so many other companies seeking to escape the critical words of growing social movements.

Yes, it’s necessary that Aunt Jemima rebrand, but it’s also necessary that they truly engage with the impacts of their practices. While prison labor is often equated with modern-day slave labor and while Quaker Oats should be held accountable with every other entity profiting off of it, is ending this practice enough ? Will ending prison labor be yet another step in the development of capitalism, further entrenching corporations in images of goodness despite capitalism’s intrinsic relationship to racism, ableism, and sexism?

As social movements, like BlackLivesMatter, gain traction in white, mainstream audiences, it’s to be expected that rich, white people in power are more inclined to change their practices. But these same white people that are late to the game of liberation are the ones who so easily accept the

Unfortunately, this process of dismantling may never end. Aunt Jemima’s rebranding is the first in an infinite line of steps needed to address the oppressive systems integral to its existence. Their name change cannot void their accountability, and I hope we hold them to that.

In 2017 I had a best friend. A best friend who lived in a two-bedroom apartment with her mom, sister, brother-in-law, and their two kids. A best friend with asthma that only seemed to complicate over time. Many people grow out of their asthma by early adulthood, but for my best friend, her inhaler was only increasingly relevant to her life.

When breathing became a chronic issue for my best friend’s niece and nephew living in the apartment with her, not much was thought of it at the time – a family problem perhaps. But when black mold was discovered growing out of a crack in their bathtub, suspicions arose. They moved a few doors down, compliments of the apartment complex, to a unit with the same design. Breathing problems persisted.

Several months later, black mold was discovered all over their furniture – the same furniture that two toddlers treated as a climbing wall. A lawsuit quickly uncovered that the HVAC systems in the apartment complex had been illegally installed and remained unchecked, allowing for black mold to develop in many of the apartments and irritating, if not inciting, my best friend’s asthma. Her family received a settlement and they quickly escaped the soaring rent prices of Carrboro.

A smattering of oppressive systems intersect at this story, and each of them relate to the community-based approach utilized by Accountability Counsel, underutilized by nearly every other institution, and touted by members of the transformative justice movement. A few of the many include: the environmental racism forced upon poor black and brown urban communities, the lack of corporate oversight on development projects, and the cycle of poverty that disproportionately pushes people with one or more marginalized identities into unstable living situations.

But how would this story be different if, like Accountability Counsel, the town of Carrboro (or whoever) listened to the demands for community oversight and involvement to be central to the development of the town? Could my best friend’s trips to the hospital have been saved? Would the apartment complex still have illegally installed malfunctioning HVAC units? Would it even exist in the part of town it did, so close to some of the only other apartments in town?

These questions arise at a time when community-based approaches are extending into parts of the national conversation that, until today, have yet to engage with such a fundamental concept. Now more than ever, impacted communities are demanding a community-based approach to the systems that govern their lives, such as with agriculture, local safety, housing development, and any other altercations to the physical and spiritual landscape around them.

This summer, and for years prior, The BlackLivesMatter movement has demanded the defunding and abolition of police in lieu of more community-based approaches to safety and accountability. At least in my white-aligned circles, social workers, mental health professionals, and mediators trained in de-escalation are seen as some of the immediate alternatives to police. While it should be noted that social workers can function within the same medical-industrial complex that serves to incarcerate non-white and disabled Americans into prisons or mental health facilities (often one in the same), the discussion of locally-based workers being involved in the response to community needs is certainly a conversation in the right direction.

Importantly, many of the (dis)services provided by police can be accomplished by other trained professionals that are far more woven into the fabric of the local community. Car assistance, nighttime safety, and emergency response are just a few of the roles that should be played by people with more than six months of training and a real stake in the community they aid.

Focus on impacted communities should be integral to development going forward, in the United States and beyond. Accountability Counsel understands this, although it takes cases outside of the U.S. far more than within, and carries this principle throughout their work on community cases around the globe.

But how does one “focus on impacted communities” in the detached world of internationally financed development projects? For one, listen. Accountability Counsel exclusively works for communities that ask for it and when AC commits, it commits until the community decides our work is finished, an important principle for privileged persons to understand about working with and being with marginalized communities.

But the community-based approach must not end until all of our institutions are rooted in the people that they may impact, and certainly not until the community decides so. Having community accountability and oversight mechanisms, coupled with community involvement in development, could serve wonders in addressing the individual needs of unique communities around the globe. With this, maybe we could truly address issues of global and local inequity. Above all, maybe my friend would have lived happily and healthily in her apartment until she saw fit.

On Sunday night, a flash bang grenade exploded a dozen feet in front of me, sending small pieces towards my chest and the bodies of those around me. The air around my head tensed like a muscle. National guardsmen, heavily armed police, and swat teams marched down the streets of downtown Raleigh in formation, firing tear gas, smoke bombs, and rubber bullets at protestors. My eyes burned.

The following morning, I began a position as a research intern at Accountability Counsel, an organization dedicated to expanding corporate accountability frameworks for internationally financed projects. In many ways, such frameworks allow people who have been trampled over and displaced by the World Bank, such as these herders in Mongolia, to address human rights violations and work with international partners to bring about (occasionally sub-par) results.

Yet in other ways, Accountability Counsel’s work solidifies and betters the corporate frameworks that exist today – those which are directly responsible for the oppression of the global South, the mass incarceration of black and brown Americans, and the enslavement of young children around the world – by making corporations more palatable, a little bit more just, and all the more confident.

The irony in this dichotomy between my day time job, what I must do, and my evening activities, what I volunteer to do, is common to my time at Duke. Although at least partially because I’m a stubborn twenty-year-old, the things required of me don’t always sit well. As a first year getting a head start on the Public Policy major requirements, I took Introduction to Policy Analysis (PubPol 155) where I learned about cost-benefit analysis and game theory, both heavily rooted in capitalist, selfish, and individualist assumptions about the nature of humanity.

At the same time, I took a Marxist writing class entitled End(s) of Work. For the first month, this class paralleled the course content in PubPol 155 except from a dissenting point of view. End(s) of Work discussed the misleading implications of such individualist mindsets, the sexist and racist ideologies festering within them, and the blatantly immoral practice of monetizing human life so essential to the widespread application of these economic policy principles. While often seen as a necessary evil of current public policy, the monetization of human life indicated to me that perhaps there was an intrinsic flaw in the way our economic and political systems treat people based upon their financial worth to the empire of capital. By the end of the semester, things were pretty clear – I could not pursue a degree in public policy if this is what it meant.

Of course, I ignored my own advice and continued steadfast in my career as a public policy major, taking up another in History as well. As you can imagine, these dichotomous parallels remained present in my life.

As a second year, this situation appeared once more, but this time, discord struck between Stat 101 and my independent study about the intersection of Mass Incarceration and Disability (one of the few elective classes that gave me hope as a public policy major). Again, the first few weeks of classes appeared in direct conversation with each other. By the time I garnered some statistical basics, I had also started to engage with the rich and jarring history of statistical science.

White, able-bodied Europeans and Americans used and continue to use statistical science to create and expand upon hierarchies of infirmity. The striking overlap between early eugenicists and statisticians, such as Karl Pearson, makes this fact clearer.  These notions of infirmity, often based in a perceived “normality,” have been used to justify slavery, incarceration (including in mental health facilities), and every other kind of oppressive system integral to the capitalist world we live in today.

Unsurprisingly, the public policy major’s core classes had disappointed and confused me once more. Why would I want to learn about a science that has been utilized to help create the world’s oppressive systems? Isn’t it alarming that I was learning concepts with such toxic assumptions and undertones in a major that has direct ties to the creation of laws, institutions, and government? I was again unsure of the path to my degree.

On par with the rest of my questionable decisions, I’ve directed myself to attend law school since I was 14. My justifications continue to change, but I’ve always wanted to help victims of this oppressive society and advocate for lasting change. As the realities of public policy and economics became clearer to me, I began to question law school, or even working with the law. Would improving the law make it more difficult for activists to rip down legal institutions in the future, something that might need to be accomplished to address historic inequalities? Do the legal frameworks pushed by Accountability Counsel make it more difficult to end harmful globalist development?

Despite all these dilemmas bouncing around my head, these first few days with Accountability Counsel taught me something new: we must operate within the present. On a Zoom call with the research team at Accountability Counsel, we discussed what this principle meant for our work during the Summer and beyond. We acknowledged that, in the end, someone might just have to burn the whole system to the ground to achieve a world where Accountability Counsel’s services would not be needed; yet, we also acknowledged that people need help and they’re asking for it now.

Accountability Counsel offers up to 40 hours per year for engaging with local movements denoted as Good Ally time, another one of the many ways that Accountability Counsel seeks to operate within the present, and yet still advocate for lasting institutional change. I am undertaking this method in my own life as I continue to use my privilege to aid in present-oriented work, but also in building a better future through active engagement with communities in need. While the ironies in my life make me unsure of many things impending in the adult, graduate world, I know I am eager to begin the work I will be doing this Summer.