It’s good cereal, anyway, although I will acknowledge that i have never yet tried to enjoy a bowl of it while leaning in cheek-to-cheek with my gay African-American neighbor from across the streeet. Perhaps I’ll give him a call and try it.

But at least it’s high in fiber, so you’ll know all your good friends will be regular. Maybe they should call it “Regular Friends?”

Now, this was an incredibly small sample size – two “experts” with a decade or more experience in animal welfare organizations versus two “novices” with no experience at all. Pilot, like I said. But the pattern I found was extremely clear-cut, and I think would hold up in a bigger sample from my personal experience: When I asked the question “If a person told you that they were an animal welfare activist, or active in animal welfare organizations, what values and beliefs would you assume they held?” the two experts just said “They would care deeply about animals and want to help their suffering,” plus maybe a couple of other very AW-specific beliefs like anti-declawing or pro-neutering. The novices, on the other hand, gave a big old list like “liberal, vegetarian or vegan, pacifist” and several other generally-liberal values.

This kind of generalization could have a real impact on public awareness/education efforts by animal welfare groups – if you’re trying to educate, say, people in a conservative rural area about spaying and neutering, and they see the message as coming from a bunch of hippies, that seriously undermines your ability to convince them. But at the same time, the people who are active in AW clearly don’t make these generalizations about each other, and so might not even realize that they would be seen that way.

Although maybe, as another comment said, it’d be nice to have, say, an asian person and a black person. It’s not only interacial if there’s a white person involved. But still, again with the overreaching.

1. Show that Kashi has deliberately styled its packaging to appeal to left-leaning consumers, or

2. Show that “left” cereals (defined as organic, “earth-friendly”, or in some other way) are more likely than other cereals to be accompanied by “left” symbols on the packaging.

Wow, what a stretch. If they’d used people of the same race, it’d just be another example of how companies refuse to show that people of different races can be friends because they’re afraid of pissing off the racists. They’re not even saying, “Eat organic and don’t be a racist!” they’re just using two multiracial friendships to sell a line of food that they want to promote with friendship. I don’t doubt that Kashi has political interests in both, but come on, they’re not a political organization.