Posted on 01/10/2022 11:09:11 AM PST by Kaslin
Blacks have been a growing presence on television for decades. This reflects their huge and positive impact on the most visible aspects of American life—the arts (especially music), entertainment, religion, politics, and sports. Black leaders and stars achieved this even though they often faced discrimination and their group today is still only 13 percent of the population.
But that is not enough to satisfy today’s identity activists. From 2018, advertisements on television changed sharply. The actors in them had been mostly white, presumably because over 60 percent of the population is white. But now suddenly most of the whites vanished, replaced by actors of color, especially blacks. And most of the remaining whites were women. Identity politics had completely taken over. A survey by the Geena Davis Institute confirms that characters of color in ads grew sharply in recent years, reaching 46 percent in 2019, or well above their share of the population.
A friend in the advertising business explained that the companies funding the ads had demanded that the ad industry show more “diversity” on the screen. The pressure came from “Free the Work” and other activist groups. They contended that women and minorities had been excluded unfairly from leading roles, not only in the ads but in the business behind the camera. So producers have scrambled to make amends, although except on the screen industry leaders remain largely white and male.
The ads do give a highly attractive image of an integrated America. They typically show men and women of all races, and also children, interacting amicably as they display and recommend the advertised products. And the whites who still appear ignore race entirely. If a multicultural America really was this harmonious, everyone would cheer.
But the ads vastly over represent the minority presence in the society. They often depict minorities as outnumbering whites, who remain a large majority of the population. And the impression they give of a sudden minority advance is entirely artificial, the result of a mandate from on high.
The change reflects the crudest kind of social engineering. The research behind the demands, done at UCLA, defines equity solely in terms of groups, not individuals. These studies say that the share of a group hired must at least equal its share of the entire population, not simply of those who applied, let alone the most qualified. Anything short of equal group representation is taken as proof of discrimination. In this calculus, only gender and race are even considered.
The Biden administration is leading America down this path. Of all appointments to Biden’s Cabinet, 40 percent were white men; of earlier presidents, only Obama named so few. The woke vision imagines an America where all visible positions are divided up by gender and race to enforce equality. As in the ad industry, advocates will hound all firms to produce equal group outcomes, regardless of the merits.
Norms of equal opportunity have been totally trashed here. To date, white leaders have not resisted. They even confess their own racism, even though few if any of them can believe it. None of them dares to defend white men, for to do that would invite angry charges of racism or sexism. It is like the show trials in Communist Russia in the '30s, when senior apparatchiks were not only condemned but forced to admit fictitious crimes. But if preferences escalate, white men are bound to resist.
The emerging regime, however, is equally insulting to those favored by it. Women and minorities will get more and better jobs than before, but they can no longer take pride that they were hired on the merits. Maybe their role is only to satisfy a quota. Some of the production companies who generate ads for television are already owned by blacks. They are ambivalent about the new demands. After all, they got where they are without preferences. The effect of the new regime is inevitably to demean their accomplishments.
Blacks would do better to rely on the individual achievements that have already made them leading creators of American culture. They did that on their own, and they should keep doing it. Progress that way will be slower than the instant transformation promised in the ad world, but it would be much more real. The building of a freer, more integrated society cannot occur overnight.
The racial composition of these TV ads reflects the reality that fewer and fewer white people even watch network television anymore.
I think I see the problem.
White Americans, and blacks too, have been dispossessed of their birthright.
It’s called Cultural Marxist engineering. The lone exception is when criminals are depicted. They are always white actors. Just watch any ADT commercial. This has been growing incrementally for over two years, and it’s only getting more dystopian in its shameless absurdity.
What TV?
Unfortunately it’s not just network TV.
This woke crap is all over the streaming networks too.
Ultimately, this will not matter at all. If the demographics continue the way they are going, blacks will be a non-entity in anything. The black population aborts nearly half of their new generation every year. adding to this is the number of black women and men who specifically seek out white or lighter skinned mates.
The real blacks will be gone from the public eye, just like the Democrats and liberals are getting rid of the American Indians or native Americans. Within ten years most kids won’t even understand what a Native American is. And within 50 years most Americans will be asking “Que es African American?”
So when will activists start complaining blacks are portrayed in commercials with white characteristics? They always have their pants pulled up, you won’t hear profanity, and from what I have heard, they speak in complete sentences using words in their proper form. They may be surging in commercial presence, but they are being whitewashed to hide their real culture.
I guess I’m the last one to know that … because I don’t even know what the hell a “streaming network” is.
The removal of the Land of Lakes Indian maiden was the worst. I cannot begin to understand how the company could have killed one of the most beautiful and nicest representations of American Indians in any product placement.
I actually have trouble buying their product anymore because of that removal.
Maybe it is because most white people are no longer watching the trash on TV, so there is no use in having advertisements for white people. The advertisers aim their commercials at those watching.
This is the third article that I have seen in the last week or so that shines a light on the NBN (Nothing But Negroes) phenomenon. BTW I first heard the NBN reference from my very liberal B.I.L. - I couldn’t believe it! Interestingly the article mentions that the social objective of all this crap is equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity is not something a lefty considers to be a part of the cause. I guess they have never heard the term ‘garbage in - garbage out’ which explains why the leftist way is the road to failure.
WOKE Bingo
If it was just blacks, or mixed race couples or gay men kissing, I could write it off as just simple pandering.
So, now I play WOKE Bingo.
The WOKE-ist commercial yet feature a woman of color, dressed to (IMO) show the person is gay - then it goes for the gold
The parson is in a wheelchair and signing (ASL) to a friend.
= total WOKE.
This woke crap is all over the streaming networks too.
And magazines. And corporate websites. And store displays.
Check out some print ads for smart phones or laptops. So many dreadlocked and Afro-haired black college students, corporate executives, and scientists. Sophisticated in dress, often wearing glasses, yet with dreadlocks or Afros. And white girlfriends.
If you mean that advertisers are only trying to please their audience, I don't think so. Ads these days lecture to their audience. The Gillette ad is an especially grievous example, but there are many.
The people behind the ads -- the companies and Madison Avenue -- hate their customers. They're more interested in expressing their wokeness than in making money.
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?"
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