Wade Keller and Bruce Mitchell had quite the enlightening conversation about the New Day’s current gimmick, with Mitchell citing past racist culture to explain why the pancakes are a juxtaposition for a publicly traded company that paints itself as celebrating MLK and Black History Month.
Bruce Mitchell compares the new day’s pancake gimmick to the book called Little Black Sambo.
it’s Roscoes chicken n waffles tho.
I thought this shit is entirely their idea…this is Freddie Kruger in a dark alley way level of reaching.
what’s next? the hip gyrations and kofi twerking gonna be called racist by next year?
Yeah, this is utter bollocks. They use pancakes because “LOL pancakes”.
It’s just a New Day thing just like ice cream & cereal previously, they will move onto something else soon.
I just assumed it was something easy they could make a big version of at mania. A great big fuck off pancake they could walk through or something.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure most of what the New Day does is their own ideas; at least when it comes to props they regularly use. This is might be a valid comparison from an outsiders perspective, but you’d think Keller and Mitchell would know enough to be aware that this is more than likely the New Day’s own idea and they might just be unaware of some old racist book that is tangentially related to pancakes.
As a minority, I always like being taught racism by white guys…on either sides in the spectrum of either it’s everywhere or doesn’t exist…fascinating…I mean, it’s not like I have firsthand experience of such things.
Torn on this one…
First things first, it’s REALLY nice to hear one of my Caucasian brothers in the wrestling journalism/commentary/analysis world speak on this company’s history of cultural insensitivity & appropriation. So while I definitely appreciate Brother Mitchell for pointing out some of the racially insensitive/inappropriate things this company promotes (and noting that this company & the sport in general have had long-standing issues with stereotypes & caricatures), I don’t think this is an example of that.
This seems to be a silly thing the New Day are doing to entertain themselves & the fans until the writers actually give them something substantive to do (like a Big E main event push). But also, I don’t think VKM’s brand of racial insensitivity is this subtle. Vince seems to like to hit you over the head with things (dancing mammys, jive soul bros, a Black character saying he was “born to shuck & jive”, or allowing himself to say the N-Word to a Black performer’s face), I think the sambo imagery is way too under the radar for him.
But it is good food for thought, though.
#ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmm 
Vince had a “diva” do a skit where she faked a sexual assault allegation 2 weeks after he was accused of sexual assault.
If it’s any subtler than THAT, it probably didn’t come from Vince.
After listening to that I have unsubscribed from The Wade Keller podcast.
I agree with pretty much everything that you guys have said. This looks like someone wanting to find a problem where one doesn’t exist. I believe that the New Day came up with his all on their own.
I think a better argument that should have been made on the podcast is the lack of non white performers in the main card. I can only think of Roman Reigns and Samoa Joe.
I must admit I hadn’t thought about it from the side of it being racist but the pancake deal isn’t a thing in the UK. I do still think it is ultimately something the new day did as a follow on from their other food stuffs that everyone loves. Its also something that kids particularly like which always helps with the old merch.
I just hope they have something decent to do at mania as I don’t see them having anything past a multi man tag bollocksarama.
Wade Keller is a joke and always has been.
I don’t think this is racism. But the pancakes and ice cream etc are fucking stupid. Big E went from the 5 count machine to crying over breakfast treats… Yeah great work Vince.
The crazy thing is, some White fans may actually think about this more because Bruce Mitchell is talking/writing about it than if I said something similar…And it’s not just because Bruce has built-up year’s of credibility from the Torch. I think when some fans hear a person of color bringing up stuff in wrestling that racially offends them )or even just makes them say “Hmmm”), too often it gets ignored or dismissed (“Why’s everything gotta be racial? Can’t you just enjoy the show?”).
So while I don’t agree w/Bruce 100%, I really do appreciate him using some of his “White credibility” to maybe make some folks think about a topic they normally wouldn’t.
There’s also the matter of why so few people of color are involved with the journalism/commentary/punditry side of wrestling on a major/semi-major level.
Off the top of my head there’s Brother Ting, Ciara Reid, Marcus Vanderberg (current King of Sport), Alfred Konuwa (former King of Sport), Alvarez, & me. I definitely think the punditry side of things could use some more diversoty. 
not surprised to hear keller be so analytical about something small like this. he knitpicks wwe booking so much. he was bitching on his show about Tye Dillinger being number 10 on the rankings.
I thought the pancakes had a good blow-off at the royal rumble. I enjoyed every week of it. I’m happy it’ll be done now.
I totally slept on this earlier but it popped me and deserves attention for being genius. 
…because?
Having actually sat down and listened to the whole thing now I can see why Bruce might see it that way but I think people need to remember that he’s looking at this from the perspective of a White man in the Southern States who remembers segregation vividly. He might be projecting a little because of his personal experiences but it’s not as if he’s basing this on nothing; McMahon and the WWE have a history of negatively stereotyping people of colour, that’s just a fact - now, the assumption he makes that McMahon must know this particular story and the character and is laughing at the New Day and this current obsession they have with pancakes, or that just because they’re all educated men they must be aware also, that’s stretching to validate a point, especially in the latter assumptions case. The New Day are all several years younger than Mr. Mitchell, it’s entirely possible that they’ve heard the term but are unaware of it’s origins and thus are/were entirely unaware of the pancake connection.
I see no reason, within all this speculation, to unsubscribe from a podcast that you’ve previously enjoy purely because they offer up a criticism that you disagree with. While there’s definitely issues to the argument they’re making, they’re making it with the best of intentions and there’s certainly a base there that suggests what they’re saying could be true. I don’t think that it is, in this particular case, but it certainly has been in the past and I won’t put it past the company to do it again at some point in the future.
Has this story got enough traction to end it? The pancakes have appeared on SmackDown since Royal Rumble, so that wasn’t a blow-off. Unless New Day/WWE see this story and feel like it needs to be ended, I can’t see it being the end for the bit quite yet.
Bruce and Wade obviously have the freedom to say what they want. But I do feel like they’re reaching and are just trying to create content for the sake of it. I’m confident New Day came up with it on their own.
Hey!
So as a white dude I was recently thinking about the pancake thing and the New Day’s appearance on Talk is Jericho a WHILE ago where I think Woods was saying that they really didn’t want to be stuck with the singing/dancing gimmick as part of wrestling’s long history of racism.
I always thought about that any time I saw them sing and or dance, and I’ve kind of felt like there’s another level to their whole thing. Their performance always seemed like they were making fun of the expectation, and when they became babyfaces people just continued to miss out that the joke was on ‘us’ as it were.
I felt this to be especially true any time any announcer would say they were ‘just having fun’.
Anyhow, it’s kind of like you’re saying above, that maybe it doesn’t matter if they’re being intentionally subversive (I feel like they are because of who they are), because it’s getting people to think about it.
The pancake thing, at least for me feels like a part of that subversiveness too. It’s wacky and irreverent but it doesn’t take an English major to see dancing black men whipping pancakes into the crowd as a kind of f-u to Aunt Jemima.