I guess KFC and Popeyes chicken better be wary the next time they feature a black actor in one of their ads.
God forbid the hell to pay should some supermarket promote their watermelon sale by encouraging a purchase to a customer who happens to be black.
Or allowing for an ad to be published where a white kid is resting her elbow atop the head of a black kid. Must be due to either straight up racism or “systemic (latent) racism”.
The latest self-inflicted faux outrage from the race-fixated conspiRacists occurred over the weekend:
Soap company Dove has apologized for a racially insensitive Facebook ad it said “missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully.”
The advertisement, apparently for some sort of soap but which has since been deleted, showed a black woman wearing a brown shirt removing her top to reveal a white woman in a lighter top. A third image shows the white woman removing her shirt to show a woman of apparently Asian descent.
Dove’s been in hot water before. Is the ad team that was oblivious to potential problems with the ad then, the same one as the ad that was recently produced? I don’t think it was due to racist attitudes; but how on earth did someone along the way- anyone!- not take pause and let the production know, “Um…..this might not be such a great idea.”
On a Facebook news page, this was my reply to one commenter:
Dawn wrote: “Is racism so ingrained in our culture, so systemic that we cannot actually recognize it when it appears before us?”
Actually, I think the concept of racism has become “so ingrained in our culture, so systemic” that people’s perceptions of what’s going on is absolutely colored into looking at the world through a racist lens. That is, seeing racism in everything. It’s the default knee-jerk response because we’ve been conditioned to look for it; to be hypersensitive to it.
Interpreted another way, maybe Dove’s mentality operated on a post-racial modus operandi whereas the rest of us are stuck and fixated and suspicious and skeptical of any hints of racism in anything and everything. Our reading of the ad (and the selective misrepesentation of it) says as much about us and the racism within ourselves as it does about those who created the ad.
Yes, someone in the production dept. should have caught this and said, “Hey! Society’s not ready to be colorblind yet. This is a bad idea; maybe put the white woman in first transitioning into a black female and people won’t even second-guess…”
I don’t know much about the company and I’ve read other comments claiming this isn’t the first time. Yet when I looked on YouTube in search of the FULL ad, I also stumbled upon Dove ads celebrating women who happened to be black and overweight, one that’s transgendered, etc. Makes me inclined to give Dove the benefit of the doubt. Critics are exercising their own brand of stereotyping in assuming everyone on the ad board must be white and privileged.
To which some subsequent commenter took offense and wrote:
Do you realize that calling the white person an actual woman but calling the black woman a female… indicates inferiority? Using the word female is akin to indicating she’s an animal. ( female dog) you need to research current racial culture. My friends and I just discussed this. This ad is indeed racist. Asian women also are often quite discriminated against in these ads. I’ve been in a Dove ad and it was a tough process. Since you aren’t a woman, you’re perception may be off about what we struggle with regard to beauty stereotypes.
Wow.
I wonder why she didn’t pick apart my usage of the word “black” instead of “African-American”. After all, the color black is linked to “darkness” and “evil”. The opposite of “light” and “goodness”. I should check my Asian-ass privilege at the door.
I think the Dove ad can be read another way: Not having the fear of presenting the black WOMAN (happy now?) first and the white female second shows confidence in the racial equality of all races. Too bad those with an inferiority complex still choose to infer racist motives, projecting their own perceptions upon reality.
And it’s too bad that Dove saw fit to apologize instead of defend and educate the brainwashed, racially-fixated conspiRacists.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.