Hat tip Dagelijkse Standaard. Translation by Fousesquawk.
Last year in the US, we bid farewell to the Washington Redskins. While scrapping the old name, the team owners had no clue what to name the team, so this past season, they went by the name, "Washington Football Team", which drew a lot of hoots.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, which for the past few years has had to wrestle with the Black Piet controversy, an old cookie company, Davelaar, has changed the name of one of its products from Jodekoeken (Jewish cookies) to Odekoeken. The reason? To be more "inclusive".
The conservative Dutch site, Dagelijkse Standaard, has the following take on the move.
Woke cookie baker renames Jewish Cookies to Ode Cookies because "equality and inclusivity are important!"
by Wout Willemsen, 19 February 2021
Once more, a delicacy is offered upon the altar of Inclusion and Diversity. The Jewish cookie of the centuries-old Davelaar manufacturer is now an Ode Cookie because the old name "can really no longer be". Nobody here was really asked, and even the Central Jewish Consultation never objected to the old name.
Another victim has fallen: After we were earlier forced to "kiss" (a reference to "Negro Kisses" candy), and certain lollypops had to be banned due to racism. And now the Jewish cookie is also disappearing due to alleged anti-Semitism. From now on, only Dad's cookies are to be had in the shops. Yes Yes!
The Davelaar producer imposes this change willingly on itself, and, in its explanation, checks all the boxes on the woke bingo card.
"We live in a time in which equality and inclusivity are important values. This concept, inclusivity, does not stress the difference between people as does diversity. Inclusivity is about mutual interconnectedness. An inclusive organization is a coherent whole of people who relate to each other and identify with each other. Because we at Davelaar open our doors to anyone who is motivated to work, the name 'Jewish cookies' does not fit."
The Jewish cookie comes from a traditional Jewish recipe, and the name ensures that a bit of history remains illuminated, namely, that of the Iberian-Sephardic culinary tradition in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. With that, the name also refers also to a bit of tolerance and inclusivity because the only reason that we have Jewish cookies here is that the Jews from Spain and Portugal centuries ago had to convert or they were persecuted. Their only place of refuge at that time were the Netherlands or Scandinavia.
But Davelaar doesn't seem to care about that aspect of history. They are just afraid that the name, "Jewish cookie" will, sooner or later, come under the cross-hairs of the Woke-inquisition, and therefore, impact sales numbers, therefore better safe than unsafe. Thus comes Ode's cookies.
The company bases this decision completely on their own survey they conducted "where it was revealed that the majority of the respondents, especially "the younger generation" found that the name "Jewish cookie" was no longer possible," states Nieuwnieuws. Even the Central Jewish Consultation never reported objections to the old term.
If the "younger generation" had the slightest grasp of the rich history behind the name, they would probably (hopefully) see it quite differently. But this type of idiots thinks no further than "that must be racist, so get rid of it." So companies willingly help bit by bit to make this society "offense-free". And the average citizen gets no farther than, "Ah, what's the difference? It is only a cake/tradition/piece of history/our culture," and so we gradually become a meaningless uniform sausage, cut off from our roots. It is so sad what is happening here. Who is going to stop this cookie jar phobia?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fousesquawk comment: I may be off base here since I am not in the Netherlands and am myself, a stranger to this brand. Is this a perceived case of mocking Jews, as was perceived by some to be the case with the Washington Redskins? I don't know. As pointed out by the writer, there were no complaints from the Jewish community. One aspect the writer did not point out was the possibility that the company had done a study and determined that a particular segment of its clientele wasn't buying the product precisely because it had a Jewish connotation. In other words, it would be akin to football fans refusing to support the Redskins because they didn't like Native Americans. Of course, that is not why the team dumped the name, and I don't know if that really was a reason behind the cookie name change in the Netherlands.
No comments:
Post a Comment