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Former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya said she had written to cereal giant Kellogg to ask why chocolate-flavoured Coco Pops are represented by a monkey while Rice Krispies are marketed using “three white boys”.
The former Peterborough MP caused Coco Pops to trend on Twitter on Monday evening after she revealed she had emailed Kellogg’s UK office asking for an explanation on the branding.
Ms Onasanya – who was removed from office last May after she was convicted of perverting the course of justice over a speeding ticket – tweeted: “So I was wondering why Rice Krispies have three white boys representing the brand and Coco Pops have a monkey?”
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Many on social media mocked her for suggesting there was something racist about the use of a monkey – with some pointing out that white chocolate Coco Pops used the same animal mascot.
“Seriously stop looking for things, it is getting embarrassing now,” tweeted Simon Hopkins.
The former Royal Marine Ben McBean appeared on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday to argue people were getting side-tracked by pointless culture war debates.
“I’m trying to fight real racist human beings who are going to cause me and my family harm and change my son’s future … and you’ve got people fighting to get the monkey taken off Coco Pops cereal for God’s sake.”
He added: “The reality is we’re fighting too many battles that aren’t really there.”
Ms Onasanya later tweeted: “Well, given John Harvey Kellogg co-founded the Race Betterment Foundation (the Foundation’s main purpose was to study the cause of and cure for ‘race degeneracy’), it would be remiss of me not to ask.”
The US founder of Kellogg’s was one of the co-founders of the Race Betterment Foundation in 1906.
According to Canadian academics at the Eugenics Archives project, Kellogg was a vocal eugenicist who feared “degeneracy” through racial mixing.
This isn’t the first time the Kellogg’s company has been caught up in culture wars. In 2016 the far-right news website Breitbart called for a boycott of the company’s cereals after it pulled advertising from the site.
