Coon cheese

We think of coon, the offensive word for a person with black skin colour, as an Americanism.  And so it is, originally.  It is a shortened form of raccoon, a greyish possum-like animal with a ring of black on its face.  But we picked it up as well in colonial times as a term to add to our list of words for an Aboriginal.  There is a steady list of example sentences in the Australian National Dictionary from the 1860s to quite recent times, most notably in the sledging of Adam Goodes.  So it is, sadly, still part of our lexicon.

 However, it has nothing to do with Coon cheese, a popular cheddar in Australia,  but one derived from an American parent company in Philadelphia.  Coon cheese was developed by a new process which matured the cheese at a faster rate than usual by keeping it in high heat and humidity.  This process was patented in 1926 by Edward William Coon and is described in some detail in his patent.  There is a theory that Coon is an Anglicisation of the German Kuhn.

 The earliest citation for Coon cheese in Australia pops up in 1931.  It is an advertisement which describes the product as being new, a year old in Australia, and as being coated in red wax and called Red Coon Cheese.

 Unfortunately taboos are visceral responses taught to us in childhood and not subject to rational control.  We react to the shape and sound of coon with disgust wherever it turns up.  Those of us who see coon as offensive will have exactly the same reaction when we see the word as part of the name of Coon cheese.  It doesn’t help that the origin of the name is now obscure for most people, but, even if we did know that it related to Mr Coon, I don’t think that would stop us from reacting to it.  Taboos are very powerful.

 A Canadian company currently owns Coon cheese so they are perhaps more sensitive to the taboo in North America.  They are in the position where there is no actual reason to change the name but they are aware of the powerful and irrational response to it.  It would be more productive for them to change the name than to continue to argue with people who don’t believe the origin story, or don’t want to believe it, or who don’t care because for them the gut feeling is what matters. Perhaps the solution is to restore the German name and call it Kuhn Cheese.