A famous Portland-based doughnut chain is set to open a new location in New Orleans, but its name and symbolism is causing outrage, Willamette Week reported.
Voodoo Doughnuts has been accused of being ethnically and religiously insensitive by local Voodoo practitioners and historic preservationists.
“The more I look at it, the more horrible it seems,” leading New Orleans Voodoo practitioner Dianne Honoré said. “When people think of Voodoo they think of people of color and then you have these doughnuts that look like characters from Vaudeville or whatever. I can’t find anything cute or interesting or right about it.”
Speaking to Willamette Week, Times-Picayune reporter Tony McAuley said Voodoo Doughnut’s "main brand image is a straight up black face golliwog doll, supposedly representing a ‘voodoo doll.'"
“I’m not on the ‘woke’ spectrum myself (i.e., I’m moderate on the Culture War issues), but even I can readily see that images they use would be taken by most Black Americans as racially offensive," McAuley said. "The owners clearly didn’t consider for a second how their branding and gimmicks might be taken in a majority-Black city like New Orleans, one that is unique in America in that its culture dates to well before the founding of the country (or even the City of New Orleans), to the time African slaves first arrived in the Mississippi Delta in the 1600s.”
“Voodoo Doughnut has managed to piss off both the preservationist folks, who skew patrician, white, Old South, and the traditionalist core of the Black community,” he continued. “Can’t think of any person or organization who’s managed that lately.”
