Blue Bell ice cream has a flavor called "The Great Divide" which is half chocolate and half vanilla split evenly down the middle. Apparently the ice cream is racist according to blogger and mother of a "mixed-race family" Traci Schmidley.
On her blog, the mother of six and foster parent from rural Louisiana retells a story where she and her family were indulging in some Blue Bell ice cream at the end of the week and her 10-year-old son made a joke that the flavor should be called "The Civil War" instead.
"The line down the middle of the carton reminded him of the Mason Dixon line, and the name reminded him of a time in history when our nation appeared to be irrevocably divided," she wrote. "He looked at our table and saw a mixture of both black and white people, not divided on one side or another like in the ice cream but gathered around the table together."
Schmidley then asked her children to come up with different names for the flavor and decided that she and her family would petition Blue Bell to change the name to "Better Together" in order for the flavor to be more inclusive.
Pause. We’re now starting movements because of what 10-year-olds interpret of their ice cream?
Schmidley took her petition to Facebook where the post has since had over 12,000 shares.
After the post went viral, Schmidley noted on her blog that she never "claimed the original name was racist," but that she and her family "just didn’t think the name ‘great divide’ was the best name for something as wonderfully unifying as Blue Bell ice cream."
Twitter users had some mixed responses:
Wow are you serious? It is a ice cream! That’s it. Seems like every one wants to find something to cry about. Who grew up having rock fights, lawn dart fights, running in the woods, scrapping your knee, playing mud football, or just being a real kid? We aren’t dead.
— Proud American! (@colt_leonard) June 21, 2018
Yes. In our current culture. We need to unite and not divide. Even with our ice cream. I miss our PC world. People are cruel and mean to each other. Let’s get back to kindness and honor.
— barb morris (@barbmorris32) June 20, 2018
According to CBS News, “it is unclear at this time if the Texas-based company has responded to the Schmidley family or heard about the campaign to change the name of ’The Great Divide.’”
I guess we'll have to wait and see.