Racist Ad?

I'm better than to think everything has to be something racial because you perceive something to be amiss.

Hahaha, you think so?

And yet, looking horrible equates to looking "uncivilized." Looks, my man. LOOKS.

 

I agree but, I don't understand why we can't have a disagreement without being so borderline hostile toward each other.

I agree.

 

THIS. Exactly this.

 

but nivea did have a decapitated white man's head in his respective ad

wtf are you cosigning about

 

Where's the ReCivilized in that ad Ness?

 

They had a severed head in an ENTIRELY different context, with an entirely different tag line. I'm glad the ad was pulled, I just have no clue how it got past whatever internal checks the advertising agency and the company have

 

I will happily mail you $5 per post if you stop doing that.

 

It's so funny how people want to tap-dance and dip and dodge around the patently obvious.

 

I'm a little privileged white girl and it didn't take me even 1/2 a second to register the racism in that ad. I didn't even have to think about it. It was posted on a blog I read yesterday, and it gave me the creeps right from the get go.

 

Careful you're making sense

 

It's been over 1,000 posts but I finally agree w/ you.

 

Doing what?

 

I know, it's confusing when I do that.

 

Cart before the horse.

 

You want to ride a buggy?

 

lol, that's the same pickup line I use.

 

Great! We can ride with Miss Pee-Putt!!!

 

I hear he has his own chariot....

 

We're all Black Greeks here! I'm Negroles!

 

Ok, I'm going to live up to my forum moniker here. The second I saw this ad, it made me think of the late Edward Said's work on colonialism. Said was a professor of comparative literature and he wrote about the ways that popular culture were produced by the structures of domination but also reinforced them. If you read his Culture and Imperialism, you will never look at 18th century literature in the same way. As a quick example, he talks about how the Caribbean colonies figure into works of literature like Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. They're a source of wealth for the rich British family and a convenient plot device in ways that naturalize European domination over non-European parts of the world.

This ad strikes me as being largely the same thing. It reflects themes of domination within society - black people are "uncivilized." It also reinforces that same theme by proposing that the black man in the ad "recivilize" himself. It may not even be a conscious thing. Perhaps the person who created the ad did not set out to create a racist ad. Likewise, I doubt that Jane Austen wrote her novels for the purpose of serving the project of British Empire. The ad is a reflection of these larger structures of domination and reinforces them at the same time, making it more (rather than less) natural to think of black people as needing to be civilized or tamed.

Sorry, LittleBrotherWise.