The Haggar brand also had those same guys ripping a stereo out of a teenagers car. The kids were white of course. Middle aged white men ripping a stereo out of a black teens car wouldn't be on tv.
no, but one commercial that bucked the trend was the VW "unpimp your ride" series.
I've noticed the behavior being discussed on this thread for years. I once did an analysis of commercials in exactly the way it was described above, with winners/losers, and the demographics of each. The results were stunning.
If one of the characters was a white male, the chances of him beng the "winner" of any particular situation was vanishingly small, somewhere in the less than 3%, and was even lower if he were not "tied" to another character.
Commercials are a really distorted lens through which to look at the world.