Museum directors, college deans, and newspaper editors take note.

A few weeks ago a petition spearheaded by a San Francisco Bay Area high school senior was submitted to the Trader Joe’s supermarket company that included the following claim. “The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes [sic] other cultures — it presents ‘Joe’, as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters falling outside of it … The common thread between all of these transgressions is the perpetuation of exoticism, the goal of which is not to appreciate other cultures, but to further other and distance them from the perceived ‘normal.’” These days such statements are followed by steely-eyed demands, and these days most companies and institutions comply.

Trader Joe’s response? “A few weeks ago, an online petition was launched calling on us to ‘remove racist packaging from [our] products.’ Following were inaccurate reports that the petition prompted us to take action. We want to be clear: we disagree that any of these labels are racist. We do not make decisions based on petitions.”

As a dedicated TJ shopper I say, “Good for them.”