Sweet as Candy

In advertising, companies often use race to try to prove a point about their product. Unfortunately, this often ends up being racist. In my opinion, telling a story using race is acceptable as long as the stereotypes aren’t negative. Often when advertisers use race, they use extremely offensive stereotypes about the race. Depending on the product they are selling, one race may need to be targeted more and therefore the ads will feature that race more. Whether or not this ad is acceptable depends upon the racial stereotype they choose to go with and the inclusiveness of the ads. In the example we looked at in class with Levy’s Rye bread, they used racial stereotyping in a positive way to illustrate a point. In this day and age, companies are expected to use diversity in their ads but are simultaneously expected to not use stereotypes of any kind. Often, when we think about racism in ads, we think only of the minority races being stereotyped: blacks, Native Americans, Asians. We often don’t think that whites can be racially stereotyped also. Whites can be illustrated as red necks or hillbillies and these ads would be racist also. When a company illustrates the negative ideas of a race, that is when the stereotyping is wrong.

Racism in advertising is not a thing of the past. In this advertisement for American Apparel, we see obvious racism. The woman’s lips are large and bright pink in contrast to her dark skin tone, which brings you back to all the exaggerated features that white people used to assign to blacks. We can see by this ad that some current ads use racism that isn't even subtle or accidental.

I do think companies have a moral obligation to try to keep racism out of their ads, much as they should keep other negative stereotypes out of their ads. They are the ones who really determine what people see on a day-to-day basis because advertising is so prevalent in our society. Because of this, they should encourage acceptance in their ads because they have the largest sphere of influence on society.