Commodification of race or commodification of racism?

I found Osucha's analysis of commodity racism very much insightful and thought-provoking, in that the idea of “commodity racism” is not just a temporal phenomena but rather ongoing, multi-level process. On the most apparent level, “racial blackness” is the subject of commodification. “Racialized commercial imagery” (81) such as blackface stereotype distorts and transforms essence of “blackness” as mockable, entertaining image to be consumed. But when we think about it, this commodification black ness targets white audience. What commodity racism does on the deeper level is actually to sell “whiteness” by presenting “whiteness” as agency to mark (or stigmatize) other race and to preserve rights (not) to self-represent. Therefore, commodified blackface caricature in fact commodifies “whiteness” as desirable qualities to be purchased.

But on the most fundamental level, I think, what commodity racism really commodifies is the very ideology of racism – or reincarnated slavery – that enables this thought process, and that enables commodification of both blackness and whiteness. To buy a pack of Aunt Jemima's pancake flour is to buy the “appeal of the nostalgic figure of the plantation mammy” attached to the personality of Green, which is a permanent property of the Davis Milling Company. In other words, to buy a product with Green's mass-produced portrait on it is to subscribe to the structure that “transformed this former slave into the living commodity she was hired to portray” (98), which can be arguably translated as a new form of slavery.