For some, Cheerios commercial crossed a line by depicting mixed-race family as normalPosted in Articles, Audio, Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2013-06-11 21:23Z by Steven |
For some, Cheerios commercial crossed a line by depicting mixed-race family as normal
The Daily Circuit
MPR News
Minnesota Public Radio
2013-06-11
You might not think a cereal commercial would serve as a vehicle for a heartfelt conversation about race, but that seems to be what’s happening — both around the country and on The Daily Circuit.
Not all of that conversation is respectful. Some of the reactions to the current Cheerios commercial were so ugly, the company asked YouTube to turn off its comments function.
What made some watchers angry was the racial mix of the family depicted by the commercial…
…. But in some parts of the country, especially in rural America, such images still take some getting used to.
“The presence of these couples is opening up a new conversation that hasn’t been there,” said Jenifer Bratter, professor of sociology at Rice University. “In a space where there is almost no racial diversity, where it’s dominated by one group, it’s hard to really gauge what people think about race.
“It’s that act of forming a family that I think is really still a powerful moment for people to deal with their own racial attitudes.” …
… “We know that one of the most charged couplings is white women and black men, for many reasons,” said Marcia Alesan Dawkins, a professor at the University of Southern California. “There’s a history of lynching black men for their perceived threats against white women. … A lot of people said in the comments, ‘It’s only white women who can have white babies, so if they start having babies or keep having babies with African-Americans and Asian-Americans, etc., etc., what’s going to happen as white people become not the majority race in the United States?'”
In a different context, Dawkins said, the race of the little girl in the commercial would not have attracted attention…