[ClearCase_guy]

The change reflects the crudest kind of social engineering.

I do agree that it is social engineering.

But, playing devil's advocate,I have seen a different analysis which I thought was interesting.

According to this other analysis, if blacks see commercials that have nothing but white people, the blacks conclude, "That product isn't for me. It's not something I would buy." Now, if I think about that, I think it shows a bad (racist) view on why blacks may buy one product but not another product. It seems to "expect" a simple-minded response from potential black customers ("I see a black person drinking Pepsi, that means I ought to drink Pepsi.") That's part 1 of the analysis.

Part 2 of it says that whites don't care. They don't see that stuff. Show a commercial to a white person and the people in the commercial may be white, black, brown, asian, gay, straight, whatever. The white person may barely notice. They are looking at the product. They are asking themselves, "Is this a good product? Would this meet my needs? Should I buy this thing?" Now, if I think about that, I think it shows an expectation that whites are totally not racist. But at the same time it betrays a rather racist expectation of the marketers ("Whites are smart shoppers and they know that the content of the message is all that really matters rather than silly demographic marketing gimmicks.")

Part 3 of this analysis is that marketers figure that blacks care very much about being represented in commercials, and whites tend not to think about it, then it just make sense to make sure that blacks are everywhere in commercials. The theory is that there is no downside to it and there is an "up" side to it. Alternatively, showing all whites has a "down" side.

Of course, this thought process (if it is even a real marketing theory) has gone too far, and now whites are actually noticing how many blacks are all over the commercials and the whites are now pushing back and saying, "Where am I? Why is this so unrealistic?"

[FormerFRLurker]

Good analysis.

[Joe Brower]

Perhaps one positive aspect of the massive prevalence of blacks and other POC in commercials nowadays is that, in these commercials, they are portrayed having solid families, cookouts, trips to the park, etc., and a lot of generally wholesome stuff. So they are behaving the same way and 'living the American dream' just like the whites in the commercials do... except they're black. Or hispanic, or whatever.

Which is what we want -- a unified culture and set of values, origins be damned. Not sure if this is intentional or just a side-effect.

[cgbg]

Re-read your post, and replace white with “hispanic” or black with “hispanic”.

Something else is happening here...

and it is not good.

[MayflowerMadam]

Your three points are things I’ve considered about this. It clearly shows that blacks care about skin color and whites don’t. Bottom line: blacks are racists and whites aren’t. It’s simple.