Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

This seems to be the way with modern-day radicals who have begun cancelling companies for actually trying to promote racial inclusivity and multiculturalism. 

The latest firm to receive public ire is Trader Joe’s, now the subject of an online petition to rebrand its products.

‘Harmful Labels’

According to ABC7, over 1,000 people have signed the petition started by a virtue-signalling Californian High School senior, who is accusing the grocery chain’s product labelling as being ‘racist.’

Years ago, Trader Joe’s felt like its name doesn’t give enough justice to the rich racial and cultural diversity present in the country and its shelves.

So it started to give its international food products ethnic-sounding names like ‘Trader Ming’s,’ for Chinese food, ‘Trader José’ for Mexican food, or ‘Trader Giotto’s’ for Italian food, among others. 

The company thought it would be laudable to make more people feel at home in its stores, but apparently, the effort is not good enough for some liberals.

‍

“The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures -- it presents ‘Joe’ as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters are falling outside of it -- they are ‘Arabian Joe,’ ‘Trader José,’ and ‘Trader Joe San,’ the petition reads. 

According to CNN, Trader Joe’s is the latest in a long line of firms that are rebranding products to make them more politically correct.

Quaker Oats has retired its 130-year-old ‘Aunt Jemima’ branding after recognizing the racial stereotype that plays into it. The same goes for Land O’Lakes, which removed the logo of a Native American woman holding up a package of butter in its packaging. 

Undoing Years of Hard Work

While most of these self-assessed adjustments are good and harmless, it strikes many people as sad that Trader Joe’s is being forced to undo years of hard work, which was precisely conceptualized to avoid the evils it is now being accused of perpetuating.

Now, the grocery store has to take three steps back in order to evade being cancelled.

“While this approach to product naming may have been rooted in a lighthearted attempt at inclusiveness, we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect -- one that is contrary to the welcoming, rewarding customer experience we strive to create everyday,” the store chain’s spokesperson said.

It remains to be seen which company or personality will be targeted next, but our only hope is for the radicals to see the light, and remember who the real enemy is.

Perhaps the far-left won’t rest until we have returned to the racial segregation that Martin Luther King Jr advocated tirelessly against. Rather than celebrating each other’s differences, we’re now forced to apologise for even recognizing them.