Say What? Cheerios Planned the Whole Interracial Ad Backlash to Boost Sales?
If you haven't seen it yet, it has a white mom, black dad, their adorable little girl, and the requisite box of Cheerios. It's a super cute, feel good ad with a scenario that parents of all colors can relate to. In fact, it's so feel good it doesn't even mention how Cheerios may be made with GMOs.
GMO-wackness aside, Americans vomited up some typical racist bile: I'm never buying Cheerios again because thanks to BIRACIAL CEREAL, the purity of the white laydeez is destroyed forever. This is the racial genocide of white people and it's all Obama's fault! Don't force this black men having babies with white women on me and my 100 percent snowy white family.
Cheerios disabled the video's comment section because folks were trippin' so hard. Because, you know, INTERRACIALS, OMG!
Frankly, the racist comments and the whole "NO WAY, how can my fellow Americans be, like, totally racist?" reaction didn't surprise me. Don't get me wrong, it's all sad and disappointing, but it's not surprising.
If you're surprised by the racist reaction, you've also probably bought the lie that Obama's reelection means we're in a postracial era. You probably think racism is merely burning crosses on lawns. You keep your head in the sand about our current racial climate and tell everyone that will listen that you don't see color. I'd also bet that you'd never had a real conversation with any interracial couples--or you are not half of an interracial couple, and you've never showed up somewhere with someone who's a different skin color than you and been on the receiving end of dirty looks and rude comments.
But I digress.
While I was in the riding the bus this morning, a guy on there was yapping on his cell phone and told the person he was talking to the absolute dumbest conspiracy theory I've heard in awhile.
Apparently, the diabolical minds at Cheerios deliberately chose to feature an interracial family in the cereal advertisement because they know America's so deranged there'd be an epic outpouring of racism. Then the Cheerios people calculated that there'd be a backlash against the racist backlash and moms, dads, and carb-avoiding dieters everywhere would declare that they're going to go buy every box of Cheerios at the grocery store just to show their support of the depiction of interracial families in commercials.
The result: Cheerios sales go through the roof.
I don't even know what to make of this so-stupid-it's-brilliant conspiracy. But if a guy on the bus in Los Angeles is thinking it, you know it'll show up on Fox News in 3...2...1...
Comments
It's sort of like what happened with "New Coke" back in 85 (or was it 86). The backlash was so huge that people swore it was a publicity stunt. But the people at Coke said that they're not smart enough to pull off something like that.
Now…as far as what racism is, I see a distinction between being a racist and being a jerk, and sometimes a person is just being a jerk, and would be equally jerky to anyone else. And I say this as an African-American. I don't always assume that everything is about racism. And quite frankly, as half of a biracial couple, with two of those "beautiful" biracial kids, I have to tell you that we stopped counting biracial couples a long time ago (like about 25 years ago) because there are so darned many of us out there. I'm just surprised it took us so long to make it into a commercial.
Oh…and by the way…while things may not be perfect along the race front, they're definitely better than they were 50 years ago. Plus, unlike certain parts of Eastern Europe, at least we *pretend* that we're supposed to get along.They're still killing each other over things that happened back in the 1300s.