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The Curry Report
March 3, 2009
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In This Issue
Not Out of the Woods with the Chimp Controversy
The Ape in American Bigotry, From Thomas Jefferson to 2009
Apology Not Accepted: Sharpton not Satisfied with Murdoch's Statement
Mayor who sent Watermelon E-mail Quits Council, Too
Top Officials Expand The Dialogue on Race
Let's Talk About Race-or Maybe Not
More TV Ads Project Images of Racial Harmony
Not Out of the Woods with the Chimp Controversy
 
Curry Headshot

By George E. Curry 

NNPA Columnist 

 

The crude New York Post cartoon starring President Barack Obama as a dead stimulus bill-writing chimpanzee has been roundly and justifiably criticized as racist. And the half-hearted apologies by the editor and, later, the owner of the New York Post have been exposed for what they are - half hearted. While much has been written about longtime efforts to equate African-Americans with apes, not enough has been said about the broader motivation behind portraying Blacks as less than human.

Depicting African-Americans as animalistic was part of a larger campaign, both in Europe and the early American colonies, orchestrated to rationalize slavery. No one claiming to be human can justify enslaving another group of people and violently stripping them of their humanity. So White supremacists launched a systematic effort to portray Blacks as animals unworthy of being viewed as humans.

Geocities.com has listed some interesting 19th Century examples of what it calls "scientific rationalism." 

The site opens with the observation: "Scholars began to take a more 'scientific' approach in understanding the difference between blacks and whites.  They placed great emphasis on environmental factors. French 'free' thinkers believed that every man was born equal, but their [environment] resulted in some kind of hierarchy with whites on top, blacks on bottom.  According to their train of logic, a black person could become just as superior as a European if they were removed from Africa and placed into Europe. During this time, philosophers used their claim to justify slavery."

The notion that Africans needed to be taken to Europe in order to be elevated was flawed. Civilization originated in Egypt, not Rome, Greece, France or Britain. That fact is undisputed yet the idea persists to this day that Africa represented jungles while Europe was the birthplace of a supposed higher order.

George Cuvier was considered the Aristotle of his age and is credited with being the founder of geology, paleontology and comparative anatomy. In 1812, he described Africans as "the most degraded of human races, whose form approaches that of the beast and whose intelligence is nowhere great enough to arrive at regular government."

By contrast, he asserted, "The white race, with oval face, straight hair and nose, to which the civilized peoples of Europe belong and which appear to us the most beautiful of all, is also superior to others by its genius, courage and activity."

Dr. Julien-Joseph Virey, writing an essay in the Dictionary of Medical Science, said in 1819: "Among us [Whites] the forehead is pushed forward, the mouth is pulled back as if we were destined to think rather than eat; the Negro has a shortened forehead and mouth that is pushed forward as if he were made to eat instead of to think."

As the American colonies fought for independence from Britain, their leaders advanced the idea that they were special people, chosen by God, to rule over expanded territories. That idea was best expressed by "manifest destiny," a term coined by journalist John L. O'Sullivan in 1845 to justify imperialism. The doctrine was invoked to defend the U.S. annexation of Texas, Oregon, New Mexico, California and later Alaska, Hawaii and the Philippines.

It was in 1859 that Charles Darwin posited that humans evolved from apes, with Blacks being an inferior order.

I have written in this space and in the Philadelphia Inquirer that Abraham Lincoln, the so-called Great Liberator, believed that Blacks were inferior to Whites, saying in 1858, "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races..."

The notion of White superiority was ingrained in this nation's racially-segregated customs and laws. In what became a landmark Supreme Court ruling, Dred Scott, who was enslaved, moved with his master from the slave state of Missouri to the free state of Illinois and then to the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was also prohibited. After Scott's owner, an Army surgeon, was reassigned to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom.

The case reached the Supreme Court, where it was decided that no slave descendant, free or enslaved, could ever be a U.S. citizen or had ever been a citizen and therefore had no right to sue in federal courts. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, writing for seven of the nine justices, argued that the Founding Fathers viewed Blacks as  "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

 That ruling, Scott v. Stanford, was the law of the land until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling outlawing separate but equal schools. As late as the mid-1960s, Jim Crow laws were still in effect.
 

Portraying African-Americans as less than human has a long, painful history. And the New York Post cartoon played into that ugly past.

 

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com.  

 

The Ape in American Bigotry, From Thomas Jefferson to 2009
 
New York Post Chimp Cartoon

 

By Brent Staples

� New York Times

February 28, 2009

 

Hitler found quite a bit to admire about this country during its apartheid period. Writing in the early 1930s, he attributed white domination of North America to the fact that the "Germanic" peoples here had resisted intermarriage with - and held themselves apart from - "inferior" peoples, including the Negroes, whom he described as "half-apes."

He was not alone in these sentiments. The effort to dehumanize black people by characterizing them as apes is central to our national history. Thomas Jefferson made the connection in his notorious book "Notes on the State of Virginia," in which he asserted fantastically that male orangutans were sexually drawn to Negro women.

By defining Negroes not as human beings but as beasts, the nation rationalized subjugation and cruelty - and justified laws that stripped them of basic human rights. The case for segregation itself rested heavily on the assertion that animal origins made Negroes feebleminded, smelly and intolerably offensive to white sensibilities.

Acting on the ludicrous premise that people of color had coarser palates, Southern shop owners sometimes refused to sell them "white" foodstuffs, forcing them instead to buy inferior grades of flour and other goods.

Picture postcards, kitchen crockery and other media often showed Negroes with grotesquely distorted faces eating outsize slices of watermelon, which was said by racists to be catnip to the coloreds. In keeping with the animal theme, Negroes were typically depicted consuming food with their hands, while standing or sitting out in the open. White folks, of course, were shown sitting at the table, dining with utensils.

Ape propaganda reached a hysterical pitch during periods when African-Americans were winning rights or making racial progress. During the 1950s, for example, racists reacted to the movement toward integration with placards and broadsides depicting apelike caricatures of Negro men performing heinous acts or making sexual advances on the flower of white womanhood.

Every era of racial progress engenders a reversion to type. In last year's presidential campaign, for example, likenesses of the black presidential candidate Barack Obama portrayed as a monkey became distressingly common.

Monkey T-shirts were sold through the mail. Monkey dolls showed up at Republican political rallies. The most instructive image, which was spread over the Internet, depicted the presidential plane, Air Force One, renamed "Watermelon One." It carried the smiling face of a monkey holding, what else, a slice of watermelon.

Ape-inflected images come in the high-fashion variety, too. Consider the much-criticized Annie Leibovitz photo that appeared on the cover of Vogue last spring. It depicted the towering black basketball star LeBron James roaring at the camera while dribbling a basketball with one hand and embracing the white fashion model Gisele B�ndchen in the other.

Vogue proudly pointed out that Mr. James was the first black man to adorn its cover. Unfortunately, the image was a dead ringer for the movie poster from "King Kong," which shows the giant ape clutching his blonde lady love. The similarity was so obvious that it seemed premeditated.

The New York Post touched the same live wire with a recent editorial cartoon that was widely interpreted as a racist slap at the president. The cartoon satirized the story of a chimpanzee that was shot to death by the police after attacking a friend of its owner. The cartoonist implied that the dead chimp had written the federal stimulus package that President Obama had just signed into law.

The paper was targeted by demonstrators and threatened with a boycott. In an emotional statement broadcast on national television, Julian Bond, board chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, described the image as a throwback to centuries past and an invitation to assassinate the president of the United States.

Criticism seems to have subsided since Rupert Murdoch, chairman of The Post's parent company, the News Corporation, apologized for the cartoon. But the image should not be rushed off stage too quickly. It has something to tell us about the permanence of racist ideas through the centuries. Like it or not, those ideas have insinuated themselves deeply into the national consciousness.

 



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Apology Not Accepted: Sharpton not Satisfied with Murdoch's Statement on Controversial Post Cartoon
 
 
 Al Sharpton
 
By Adam Lisberg and Christina Boyle
� New York Daily News
February 24, 2009 
 

The Rev. Al Sharpton was still not satisfied Tuesday after New York Post owner Rupert Murdoch issued an unprecedented personal apology over a controversial cartoon that was branded racist.

Standing on the steps of City Hall, flanked by several City Council members and civil rights leaders, Sharpton continued his calls for a boycott over the illustration, which critics say compared President Obama to a chimpanzee.

He also demanded that the billionaire businessman explain how he will ensure that a similar gaffe will not occur in the future.

"[Murdoch] says in his statement this will never happen again. Well, he does not say how he intends to see that it never happens again," Sharpton said in front of supporters holding signs reading, "Yes we can shut you down NY Post!" and "How do you spell racism? New York Post."

"Is he asking the community to trust those that did it, to trust their judgment in the future?"

Sharpton called on Murdoch to come up with a plan for increasing diversity in his newsrooms. He said he's meeting with Federal Communications Commission members Wednesday to discuss the waiver that lets the Australian tycoon own several media outlets in the city.

Murdoch published his apology in The Post on Tuesday, declaring, "The buck stops with me."

"I have had conversations with Post editors about the situation and I can assure you, without a doubt, that the only intent of that cartoon was to mock a badly written piece of legislation," he said.

"It was not meant to be racist, but unfortunately, it was interpreted by many as such.

"Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted."

Mayor Bloomberg also weighed in, saying the apology was "the right thing to do," but adding that he hopes the community can move on.

An HCD Research poll of self-reported Democrats, Republicans and independents showed that a majority of voters in all three groups believe the cartoon had racist undertones.

More than half (61%) of those questioned felt it was directed toward Obama and that the editor who approved it should be held responsible.

 

 

 

Mayor who sent Watermelon  E-mail Quits Council, Too

 Watermellon Mayor Card
 
 
By Jeff Overley and Jaimee Lynn Fletcher
� Orange County Register
March 2, 2009
 

LOS ALAMITOS - Mayor Dean Grose, who last week decided to relinquish his ceremonial political title after e-mailing a racially explosive image of the White House with a watermelon patch, today stepped down from elected office altogether.

"For the love of my community, and the health and well-being of my family, I am submitting my resignation as a Council Member," Grose said in a succinct statement to his council colleagues and Los Alamitos' city manager.

Grose incurred withering fire after a local businesswoman who received the e-mail decried it as a racist embrace of a stereotype - borne out in a host of old sketches and sculptures - suggesting blacks have a special affinity for watermelon.

The controversy started Feb. 22 when e-mail recipient Keyanus Price, who is African American, criticized Grose's e-mail, which included the heading "No Easter Egg hunt this year."

The e-mail was "not nice at all," and Grose "should know better than that," Price wrote in a message to the mayor.

Price said she was angered further by Grose's e-mail reply: "The way things are today, you gotta laugh every now and then. I wanna see the coloring contests."

After that, Price went public with the exchange and said Grose should apologize. He did so, but national headlines ensued, and a smashed watermelon was found outside Grose's office, leading police to start regular patrols outside his home.

On Thursday, Grose said he would leave as mayor but remain on the council; that move, though, apparently failed to end outcry among those who said the e-mail wasn't befitting a public representative. Early today, a link to Grose's one-sentence resignation appeared on the city's Web site.

Calls to Grose were not immediately returned.

The Police Department has set up for nearly 150 people to attend tonight's City Council meeting and about 15 police officers are expected to provide crown control, said Cpt. Bruce McAlpine.   

McAlpine also said rumors have been flying that the Rev. Al Sharpton could attend tonight's meeting but, he said, the Police Department has not been contacted by Sharpton or his people.

"I don't know where that rumor started," he said. "We're really up in the air for what to expect tonight."

The council will have to prepare to appoint a new council member following Grose's resignation. Traditionally, Mayor Pro Tem Marilynn Poe would assume the mayoral seat and a new Mayor Pro Tem would be elected, pending a council vote.

  

 

 


 
Top Officials Expand The Dialogue on Race

Obama Poster 

 

 By Krissah Thompson
� Washington Post
February 28, 2009

 

When the country's racial chasms seemed to threaten President Obama's election, his team had to tread carefully. A month into his administration, the tone has changed. Top officials are engaging the subject of race more freely, with a boldness and confidence they once shunned.

With the federal government's annual African American History Month celebrations as a backdrop, the attorney general, the first lady and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency spoke more frankly about race recently than any of Obama's surrogates did during the hard-fought campaign.

Lisa P. Jackson, the EPA administrator and a native of New Orleans, told her staff about having grown up in an area where she would have had to drink from unsafe water fountains because of her race. "Now in 2009, I am, along with you, responsible for ensuring that all Americans have clean water to drink," Jackson said. "Change has certainly come to this agency."

First lady Michelle Obama hosted middle-schoolers in the White House East Room and taught the children about African Americans and their roles in the executive mansion: the slaves who built it, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation there, the meetings held with civil rights leaders.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who ignited the most debate, used his Feb. 18 address as an admonition that "to get to the heart of this country, one must examine its racial soul."

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," Holder said. "Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."

The plain talk may be an attempt to expand the racial dialogue Obama called for during his speech on the subject in Philadelphia last year, but whether Americans want to go there remains unanswered. White House officials said the African American History Month celebrations were choreographed across the federal government. Reaction so far has been mixed.

Holder has been rebuked by some who contend that with Obama's election, the country proved its willingness to move beyond the color line. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd likened Holder's remarks at the Justice Department's African American History Month program to a lecture on race by Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. "Barack Obama's election was supposed to get us past that," she wrote.

Jen Singer, author of "You're a Good Mom (and Your Kids Aren't So Bad Either)," wrote on the Web site BettyConfidential.com that "Michelle Obama could talk all she wanted about Black History Month, slavery and segregation, but no words could better illustrate to today's schoolchildren how far this country has come than her presence as First Lady."

There is a risk in talking about it too much, said Thomas Mann, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution, in an e-mail. During his campaign, Obama made an explicit decision not to emphasize race and did so only when it threatened to damage his candidacy. Changing course now could make some feel uncomfortable.

Nearly six in 10 Americans said Obama's presidency will do more to help race relations in this country, according to a January Washington Post-ABC News poll. But whites and African Americans start out with widely divergent views on the racial climate in the country. Overall, about three-quarters of those surveyed called racism a problem in society today, with one-quarter labeling it a "big" problem. Twice as many blacks (44 percent) as whites (22 percent) called it a big problem.

"They definitely have to be careful," Mann said of the Obama administration. "Better to have the president and his top African American aides serve as role models and achieve the broader objective by indirection."

Others argue that African American administration officials are simply bringing their background, perspective and history to the public sphere. Holder, Jackson and Obama are the first African Americans in their positions, and it should come as no surprise that their celebration of black history is different from their predecessors', said Shawnta Walcott, a pollster at Ariel & Ethan.

"I think what we know about the first lady is that part of her persona is to go one level down into something that she thinks is significant," Walcott said. "She is the first African American first lady, so we should expect to see those sorts of nuanced pieces of information coming from her. It is unusual for the norm, but she is not the norm."

There are attempts now to define the new normal. Last weekend, after Holder's use of the phrase "nation of cowards" drew criticism, it became a subject of discussion at a Princeton University symposium titled "From the Middle Passage to the Oval Office: Defining the Black Experience."

One of the panelists, Jeff Johnson, host and producer of Black Entertainment Television's "The Truth," said the reaction to the attorney general's comments read as if "he was saying only white Americans were cowards."

Holder "was talking about all of us, from white Americans to African Americans to Asians to Latinos," said Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton. "The fact that we would read Holder's comments as only about white Americans shows us how we are thinking about race when it is invoked."

Glaude noted that reaction to Holder's comments coincided with publication of a controversial editorial cartoon in the New York Post. NAACP officials decried the cartoon as a racist depiction of the president as a slain chimpanzee. The NAACP called for the cartoonist and his editor to be fired and held protests Thursday at Fox News affiliates in 50 cities. The Fox News affiliates and the New York Post have the same owner, News Corp.

Other people have shushed protesters as overly sensitive.

"It is just the traditional theater of American racial politics," Glaude said.

Rinku Sen, president of the Applied Research Center, a think tank on race in Oakland, Calif., Chicago and New York, said she also worries that the dialogue about race is being pushed back into the old paradigm that kept the nation in a stalemate.

"I think that the line is, 'We've elected the black president, and now we're post-racial and everybody should just shut up.' It's very dismissive," Sen said. "We did elect the first black president, but people seem to forget that it was a hard campaign."

To Jelani Cobb, a professor of African American history at Spelman College, the back-and-forth about race in the age of Obama already feels old.

"Our major concerns about race are not conversations," Cobb said. "They are about policies, and they are about entrenched legacies of privilege and underprivilege. So in some ways, these conversations are a substitute for other kinds of more meaningful reform or interaction."

 




Let's Talk About Race-or Maybe Not
Black and Whire hands

Coverage of Obama and ethnicity says more about media

(c) Extra! March 2009

 By

Janine Jackson

There were early indications that corporate media coverage of Barack Obama's candidacy would be squirm-inducing, putting on display the elite (mainly white) press corps' murky ideas about race much more than any straightforward reckoning of black Americans' situation or what an Obama presidency might mean for their concerns.

Journalists were sometimes embarrassingly frank about how they interpreted Obama's blackness and what they hoped his success might mean. "No history of Jim Crow, no history of anger, no history of slavery," declared NBC's Chris Matthews (1/21/07). "All the bad stuff in our history ain't there with this guy." "For many white Americans, it's a twofer," opined the New Republic (2/5/07). "Elect Obama, and you not only dethrone George W. Bush, you dethrone [Al] Sharpton, too." (
See Extra!, 3-4/07.)

Looking to find parallels for the "stuff" they did like, journalists turned to fiction, as when Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, 10/27/08) alleged that voters "decided they liked Obama when he reminded them more of Will Smith than Jesse Jackson," or when CNN (6/22/08) told viewers that Michelle Obama "wants to appear to be Claire Huxtable and not Angela Davis."

The fondest hope seemed to be that an Obama victory (if not his strong candidacy alone) would absolve us of any need to talk about racism any more. Newsweek's Howard Fineman (5/14/08) wrote that, in announcing his run for office, Obama

was making a statement: that his candidacy would be the exclamation point at the end of our four-century-long argument over the role of African-Americans in our society. By electing a mixed-race man of evident brilliance, moderate mien and welcoming smile, we would finally cease seeing each other through color-coded eyes.


It's not clear if Fineman meant Obama said that exactly, or if it was just implied by the way he "radiat[ed] uplift and glorious possibility." Alas, he continued: "Well, that argument did not end. He and we were naive to think it would."

Of course, "we" didn't all imagine that a nonwhite man running for president would mean an end to racism; that belief seems endemic only in a press corps with a myopic understanding of how racial inequality works.

Thus Fineman lamented, "far from eliminating racial thinking from politics," Obama's campaign actually drew attention to the subject-in part because Obama let the Finemans of the world down by having a "message" that was "race-aware, if not race-based."

Fineman, like many pundits, seemed to think that acknowledging the distinct experiences faced by people of color is tantamount to claiming these differences trump all other factors in life. Talking about race equals harping about race, and, well, that's being racist, isn't it? The goal is to be "post- racial," which seems to mean maintaining that racial differences have no impact, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.


For some, last November 4 saw the disappearance of racial inequity in America ("Promised Land: Obama's Rise Fulfills King's Dream"-Oklahoman headline, 1/19/09), and with it the need for any countervailing measures.

Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg (Chicago Tribune, 1/22/09) suggested that "opponents of racial quotas and other champions of colorblindness on the right should be popping champagne," not to mention "rubbing Barack Obama in [the] faces" of all those foreign "finger-waggers eager to lecture . . . America about race and tolerance."

For those who don't see racial inequity playing out every day in disparate joblessness, incarceration or mortality rates, the presence of a brown-skinned man in the White House means there's no more structural work to be done; those struggling from now on have no excuse.

At the very least, the black guy winning proved that there are no more voting rights concerns. USA Today (1/9/09) wondered whether the whole Voting Rights Act should be junked "now that a black man has won the presidency." And for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jim Wooten (1/20/09), the Obama victory "plainly" meant that "the political system that discriminated and the people who designed it are dead and gone."

The Obama victory was credited with the existence of a demographic of "successful" blacks, as illustrated by a magazine (Uptown) that launched in 2004 ("Magazine for Age of Obama," New York Daily News, 1/19/09). And the hiring of an African-American to coach the Yale football team was "particularly significant in light of both the election of Obama as the nation's first black president and in the consistently meager numbers of black head coaches at the top level of college football," according to the New York Times (1/8/09)-though the particular relevance of the former is kind of hard to figure.


I
f being "post-racial" involves pretending race/ethnicity doesn't affect opportunity, acting "post-racial" means renouncing any measure aimed at ensuring that. Post-election, Obama was called upon to follow through on his "promise" in this regard in early decisions on appointments and policy.

The New York Times (1/15/09) gave the New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen space to put some questions to new attorney general Eric Holder, including: "Do you agree with Mr. Obama's implication that the Supreme Court needs someone who will side with the powerless rather than the powerful? What if the best nominee happens to be a white male?"

The L.A. Times editorial page (12/28/08) lauded Obama's cabinet picks, in so doing matter-of-factly contrasting the hiring goals of "quality" and "identity politics"-in this context meaning the hiring of anyone who is not a white man; Obama, it declared, "has succeeded on both levels."

Obama could also prove himself to be the right sort of black leader-the kind who places responsibility for black people's problems largely with black people themselves-with an embrace of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind law. USA Today (1/6/09) draped the case in appropriately patronizing tones with the cringe-worthy "How to Turn Obama's Success Into Gains for Black Boys":

You can see the message on brick wall murals in inner cities: Yes we can. You can hear it in the music of Black Eyed Peas' frontman will.i.am: Yes we can.
You can imagine hearing it pass the lips of thousands of black mothers, perhaps after awakening their sons early to complete homework before they head off to school, just as President-elect Barack Obama's mother did: Yes you can.


Black mothers encouraging their children? Just imagine!

The idea that, in the Age of Obama, a little early morning encouragement is all that separates black Americans from socio-economic success was abetted even by less unctuous reporting; in the midst of a fairly thoughtful, 8,000-word piece (New York Times, 8/10/08) on complexities in black political leadership, for instance, one is jarred to read that, now that "legal barriers no longer exist," the "inequities in the society are subtler-inferior schools, an absence of employers, a dearth of affordable housing-and the remedies more elusive."

If discriminatory treatment in education, employment and housing are deemed "subtle," little wonder that calls for institutional change are heard as strident and outmoded.


Some journalists' desire to "not see" racism as an obstacle led them to downplay the historical significance of Obama's election. Finding "all the hoopla" unseemly, press critic Howard Kurtz scoffed (Washington Post, 1/20/09), "It is hard to envision this level of intensity if John McCain were taking the oath of office."

It is indeed unlikely that McCain would have been heralded as the first black president in United States history; that's true. Nor would he have been greeted with the overwhelming relief of those who wanted above all to see the back of a Republican White House that has brought endless war and economic havoc.

There are probably a number of multi-layered reasons many people-including, yes, some in the media-greeted the Obama victory with some measure of satisfaction. But when rich white pundits start suggesting that "there's a lot of advantages to being black. Black is in" (Larry King, 1/21/09), all you can do is laugh.

As the Obama presidency moves forward, we should expect continued awkwardness: chin-stroking on how his "loping stride" and "fondness for pickup basketball" make for "a new White House iconography" (Washington Post, 1/19/09), and contentless verbiage a la Joe Klein (Time, 2/2/09): "He came to us as the ultimate outsider in a nation of outsiders-the son of an African visitor and a white woman from Kansas-and he has turned us inside out."

Also unlikely to abate is elite media's recourse to a litmus, usefully vague and changeable, as to whether Obama is performing like the approved sort of black politician, who is, in Howard Fineman's words (Newsweek, 1/24/09), "shaped but not limited by [his] heritage."

That line between being "shaped" and being "limited," of course, will continue to be defined, and vigorously policed, by the elite white press corps.

 


 




More TV Ads Project Images of Racial Harmony
 
E Trade Baby Ad
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
By Todd Lewan
� Associated Press
March 1, 2009

Ever see an inner-city schoolyard filled with white 

Asian and black teens shooting hoops? Or middle-aged white and Latino men swigging beer and watching the Super Bowl on their black neighbor's couch? Or Asians and Latinos dancing the night away in a hip-hop club?

All it takes is a television.

Yes, that mesmerizing mass purveyor of aspiration, desire and self-awareness regularly airs commercials these days that show Americans of different races and ethnicities interacting in integrated schools, country clubs, workplaces and homes, bonded by their love of the products they consume.

Think about one of Pepsi's newest spots, "Refresh Anthem," which debuted during the Super Bowl. The ad, which features Bob Dylan and hip-hop producer will.i.am, is a collage of images from the '60s and today that celebrate generations past and present.

Whites and blacks are shown returning from war, surfing, skateboarding, dancing and waving American flags at political rallies, while a boyish Dylan and a present-day will.i.am take turns singing the Dylan classic, "Forever Young," each in his signature style.

Or, take the latest hit spot from E TRADE, which stars the E TRADE Baby, a 9-month-old white boy, and his newest buddy - a black infant who, from his own highchair, agrees with the wisdom of online investing even in a down economy.

Ads like these are part of a subtle, yet increasingly visible strategy that marketers refer to as "visual diversity" - commercials that enable advertisers to connect with wider audiences while conveying a message that corporate America is not just "in touch," racially speaking, but inclusive.

It wasn't always like this. For much of the past century, "minorities were either invisible in mainstream media, or handed negative roles that generally had them in a subservient position," says Jerome Williams, a professor of advertising and African-American studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

"Today, you're starting to see a juxtaposition of blacks and whites together, doing the things people do ... Now, advertisers are not in a position of pushing social justice. But to the extent that they can put whites and blacks together in situations, I think that's a good thing."

These "multiculti" ads may be evidence of the vitality of assimilation, America's distinctive, master trend. To advertisers, though, they're simply smart business - a recognition of a new cultural mainstream that prizes diversity, a recognition that we are fast approaching a day when the predominant hue in America will no longer be white.

"Going forward, all advertising is going to be multicultural by definition, because in most states, majority ethnic populations will no longer exist," says Danny Allen, managing director at SENSIS, an ad agency in Los Angeles that specializes in reaching multicultural audiences through digital and online media.

Just as the Obama campaign sensed the nation's desire to reconcile its racial problems, he adds, "advertisers are also tapping into that same yearning, particularly among younger Americans, to put racial divisions behind us and move forward in a more unified way."

And yet, some critics wonder if depicting America as a racial nirvana today may have an unintended downside - that of airbrushing out of the public consciousness the economic and social chasms that still separate whites, blacks and Latinos.

Even on Madison Avenue, which is generating the inclusive messages, recent studies find few nonwhites in decision-making and creative positions within the advertising industry itself.

Are multiculti ads, then, an accurate barometer of our racial progress, a showcase of our hopes in that direction - or a reminder of how far we still have to go?

---

In the days when Aunt Jemima appeared on boxes of pancake mix as a servile "Mammy" character - a plump, smiling African-American woman in a checkered apron and a kerchief - advertisers aimed largely for the so-called "general market," code for white consumers, rather than smaller, satellite "ethnic" markets.

Whites still hold most of the economic clout in the United States - 85.5 percent of the nation's annual buying power of $10 trillion, according to a 2007 study by the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia.

In recent years, though, marketers have been revising old assumptions and campaigns in anticipation of profound shifts in the nation's demographics, and in reaction to changes already under way in what the Selig Center describes as "The Multicultural Economy."

They note that:

-African-American buying power has risen from $318 billion in 1990 to $845 billion in 2007 - a 166 percent gain. Whites' buying power rose 124 percent during that period.

-The combined buying power of African-Americans, Asians and Native Americans was $1.4 trillion in 2007, a gain of 201 percent since 1990. Meanwhile, the economic clout of Latinos rose by 307 percent, to $862 billion, over that span.

-The number of black-owned companies rose 45 percent from 1997 to 2002 - 4 1/2 times faster than the national average - and their receipts grew slightly faster than all others. Native American-owned businesses increased by 67 percent, Asian firms 24 percent, Latino companies 31 percent.

-The black population grew 27 percent from 1990 to 2007, compared to 15 percent for whites and 21 percent overall. And the percentage of multiracial citizens, though just 1.6 percent of America's 302 million people, is swelling at 10 times the rate of white population growth.

If current trends continue, demographers say, nonwhites will be in the majority in America by 2042 - a prospect not lost on advertisers, says Melanie Shreffler, editor of Marketing to the Emerging Majorities, an industry newsletter.

Marketers "aren't turning out multicultural ads for the good of society," says Shreffler. "They recognize there is money involved. If you skip out on a group that is going to be half the population by 2042 - good heavens, who are you marketing to?"

Which, perhaps, explains a couple of other current ads: A black-and-white commercial produced by Spike Lee for Gatorade Mission G features close-ups of white, black and multiracial athletes, staring straight into the camera to tell viewers about heart, hustle and soul; a spot promoting Cash4Gold.com has two famously bankrupt celebrity pitchmen of different races, Ed McMahon and rap artist MC Hammer, explaining how easy it is to liquidate gold cufflinks, golf clubs and the like.

Karl Carter, chief executive of the Atlanta marketing agency GTM Inc. (Guerrilla Tactics Media), calls this the "Benetton Approach" since it echoes a 1980s campaign by United Colors of Benetton that pictured interracial close-ups, such as a white woman and a black woman hugging an Asian baby.

Such ads often depict, Carter says, "a bunch of different races playing along, side by side, Kumbaya."

The ads may play well now, but Carter wonders how long they will be effective - particularly as America "beiges" and race becomes less essential to how individuals self-identify. Over the long run, advertisers would do better, he says, to focus on a cultural approach with versatile images and campaigns easily adapted to highly individualized tastes. Put another way: How do hip-hoppers feel? What are the common desires of surfers, or skateboarders, or kayakers?

"With young people who've grown up biracially or surrounded by different cultures and races, it's more about what connects them."

Pepsi appears to have digested the message. Though its "Refresh Everything" ads include people of multiple races, "We're targeting anyone who embodies optimism and the spirit of youth," says Nicole Bradley, a Pepsi spokeswoman. "It's more about a mind-set than a demographic."

In these times, multiculturalism is cool - and likely to get cooler, says Sonya Grier, a marketing professor at American University who is studying how consumers of different races respond to multicultural ads and "ethnically neutral" models in ads.

The Obama presidency, in her view, will have enormous impact on the industries that set out to mold our desires at a subconscious level.

"Advertising has to reflect reality, to some degree," she says. "So, now that the president is African-American, I think companies that were once afraid to put members of multiple ethnic groups in their ads might see a chance here to go ahead and take a risk, or even see it as necessary."

---

Four men in suits and ties are eating in a Holiday Inn Express breakfast bar when they see a pretty white woman enter.

"We're going to send her a plate of bacon," says the black member of the group.

His white colleague suggests a cheese omelet. No, an English muffin would be more proper, advises an older, white friend. How about a hot cinnamon roll, asks a fourth man, who looks multiethnic.

"Cinnamon roll?" the black man asks, incredulously. "That's something you send your sister. I'm going to send her some bacon." He hands a plate of bacon to a waitress, who delivers it to the young woman - "Compliments of those guys."

"Ohhh," the woman exclaims, uncomfortably, and with an awkward smile and a sheepish shrug, holds up what she really wants for breakfast: "Yogurt?"

This 2008 spot is clever not only for its humor, but because it gingerly tests one of several racial boundaries most advertisers are still loath to cross: The presentation of interracial courting or romance.

"It's still one of the three taboos in the industry," says Williams, the University of Texas advertising professor.

Each semester, he hands a Valentine's Day ad to his students that depicts a black man presenting flowers to a white woman in a romantic setting. Most of his students don't see anything wrong with it.

However, he adds, "When I ask them to take it home to show their parents and grandparents, the reaction I get is still, 'We're not quite ready for that yet.'"

Other no-nos?

There aren't many ads depicting multiracial families or biracial couples interacting normally at home, whether having supper or watching a movie. And in ads that depict professional settings, people of color rarely appear in charge - as CEOs, say, giving presentations to their board of directors.

"Every now and then you see something that bucks the trend," says Williams. "But when you do content analyses of ads, you are astounded by how much stereotypes are still part of the advertising we all digest."

One reason that racial distortions persist may be the relatively low numbers of blacks in the $31 billion advertising industry, and a dearth of blacks in positions of power.

A report released in January by the Madison Avenue Project, a coalition of legal, civil rights and ad industry leaders, found dramatic levels of bias in the industry, with African-American professionals lagging in pay, hiring, promotions and assignments.

Some findings:

-Black college graduates earn 80 cents for every dollar made by their equally qualified, white counterparts, and salaries of $100,000 are disproportionately less likely for African-American managers and professionals.

-Sixteen percent of large advertising firms employ no black managers or professionals; in the overall labor market, 7 percent of companies are without blacks in those positions.

-Blacks are only 62 percent as likely as whites to work in the powerful "creative" and "client contact" functions.

Numbers are not the only reason black voices go unheard as ads are made. Says Grier, the marketing professor at American University: "I often have former classmates and MBA students who are in brand-marketing or advertising-related functions call me and say, "My company showed an ad, I thought it was stereotypical, but I was the only one in the room and did not know how to bring it up.'"

Despite their flaws, it would be hard to argue that the multicultural messages of today aren't vastly more dignified and realistic in their portrayal of minorities than those that appeared a few decades ago.

And yet, might today's ads also be implanting false assumptions that our race problems have been fixed, that all Americans are living comfortable, upper-middle-class lifestyles in racially harmonious settings?

Charles Gallagher, chair and professor of the sociology department at La Salle University, worries about just this.

"If you were to come down from another planet and watch TV, you'd think that all of these human beings share a lot of intimacy, regardless of the way they look," Gallagher says. "But the reality is, people of different races don't share social space like that."

An ad showing Latinos and Asians eating potato chips at a softball game or whites and blacks sporting pricey watches while dining out can, he says, "hide the fact that poverty disproportionately affects certain groups."

Indeed, African-Americans' median income is just 61 percent that of whites, and blacks are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed, government figures show. Whites 65 or older receive 25 times as much income from retirement investments as elderly blacks, and poverty rates for black children are 2 1/2 times higher than for whites.

About 80 percent of whites live in neighborhoods in which 95 percent of their neighbors are also white, and census data shows 90 percent of the neighborhoods that were predominantly or exclusively black in 1990 remained that way a decade later.

"My students always say to me, 'Isn't it better to have these ads? It's kind of a fake-it-'til-you-make-it kind of thing,'" Gallagher says. "The problem with that, I tell them, is that distortions and false impressions never do anyone any good."

Shreffler, the ad industry newsletter editor, says marketers aren't sociologists and in the end green - not black or white or brown - is often the most important color.

"Advertising is aspirational," she adds. "It's who we want to be, a lifestyle we want - not always who we are."


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