Odd that they named it Uncle Ben. Would have thought being rice it would have had an Oriental slant.
Oryza glaberrima, is the one of the two varieties that was first domesticated in Africa between 3000 and 3500 years ago. Oryza sativa was probably first domesticated in the Yangtze river valley much earlier and is the most common today - cultivated more than any crop other than maize and sugar cane.
Worldwide, rice is certainly associated with the far East, but in America it has not traditionally been so. In fact, through the 19th century, nothing good was associated with the far east in American culture. While blacks were a major endemic population (market), Chinese and southeast Asians were banned from immigration (not much of a market). Within the few ethnic enclaves (China camps), consumers were more likely to buy imported rice than rice from Texas and the Southeast (like Uncle Ben's). Essentially, putting a Chinaman on the label would have made the product toxic among American consumers well into the 20th century. A black man (Uncle Ben) obviously did not have that effect, neither among the large market of black consumers nor among white consumers who for the most part did not consider crops associated with black people like olives, grapes, sugar, cotton, tobacco, coffee, and rice to be 'toxic.' What products associated with the far east did American consumers accept during the 19th and early 20th centuries? (Uncle Ben's was first marketed in 1943, but the decisions about it would have been influnced by a generation that had experience for decades leading up to that time). Seriously. Chinamen could work on the railroads or do laundry. In urban areas they might be associated with opium dens, brothels and gambling rooms. In essence, their image in the mind of American consumers was lower than that of blacks. Even the Japanese were deemed fit for US concenration camps. This all probably began to change rapidly following the end of WW2 with the rebuilding of Japan, then with the Communist revolution in China which initiated relations with Taiwan, then the US partnership with South Korea, and finally with Vietnam. All those things brought successive waves of immigration that ultimately allowed asian people to move out of what was before strictly delineated ghettos and ethnic enclaves. I can remember in the 70's a lot of wealthy immigrants coming into California from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Their kids began to fill American universities and they met a lot of the demand during the growth of high tech -- semiconductors, electronics, software, etc. Their image within US culture at the close of the 20th century was almost the polar opposite that it was at the beginning.
