I'm sorry, but I fail to see why this is considered racist and sexist.

Does hiring black actors to be in a commercial automatically make commercials racist?

Should they not hire minority members even if that racial group is over represented in the popultion being portrayed (in this case, gang memebers)? If so, someone better call up Nike because they racist for using African Americans like Lebron James and Tiger Woods to represent athletes.

And for sexism - did I miss the memo where women are not longer strippers? I don't go to strip clubs often, but I assumed they were still populated mostly with females stripper. I guess that was also on the memo where I would be informed that gang member no longer attend places like strip clubs.

So, unless I am totally uninformed, this add, while a pretty low blow, wasnt racist or sexist.

So, this ad is attacking what? Violence prevention programs demonstrated to be effective in numerous other cities?

Also that has to be the two least gangsta black dudes I've seen ever.

Another thing that's interesting to me about the ad is how aesthetically unprofessional it is. The visual style is almost as shoddy as the reasoning.

Honestly, this is so poorly made I can't take it seriously. It feels more like a satire than anything.

I thought this was hilarious when I saw it. I'm still skeptical that it's somehow a joke.

I thought this was a 2Live Crew video!

Honestly Gwen and Lisa, why do you bother with posting topics on racial issues? You seem to regularly encourage these issues to be discussed at the expense of any readers of colour. You have been criticized before for your handling of racial issues and never responded - yet one of the few times you intervene in a racial thread it's to defend a poster who regularly posts inflammatory comments in many threads. Meanwhile, posters of colour are regularly left to defend themselves in threads against blatantly racial attacks/implications/methods with no support from you. Are you interested in only white people having the space to discuss these issues and therefore make no effort to listen to the concerns of posters of colour or to create a space less hostile to readers and commentators who actually live these issues? I think you need to confront some of your own white privilege surrounding who controls discussions, on whose terms they take place and at whose expense, who is assumed to benefit from them, who is made comfortable and who is expected to endure discomfort, who feels good about these discussions and feels validated by them and why and other issues surrounding the terms of power on which these discussions are allowed to take place.

I have seen numerous self-identified posters of colour disappear from commenting this site (I am one of them), and I would guess for many it simply becomes too frustrating or draining to continue these discussions here.

I'm sorry to post anonymously to criticize you, but the reason I do so is precisely because you have not created a safe enough space for me to feel comfortable revealing any real information about myself that could lead to the usual vicious personal attacks and threats leveled at people of colour who confront racial issues online.

I can't help but wonder what exactly any "funding" went to. I mean, this looks like it was made for something like 25 dollars (unless they've bought TV time to air it, which I doubt). I mean, I could see a couple of idiots throwing this together over a weekend and posting it on Youtube.

Jenifer Lopez, if you prefer. It's all the same trash as the ad in question.

@Azizi (sorry, it wouldn't let me respond due to the nesting getting so narrow),

I didn't mean to be dismissive. I DO take this seriously--as I immediately said when Anonymous first posted, and when I forwarded it to Lisa so we can talk about it. I've been increasingly concerned about this, especially after a nasty set of comments on a post I put up about fat issues, and even though I closed comments after a few hours, I felt that I had unintentionally exposed some individuals to being mocked and addressing the exact type of attitude the post was challenging, and I felt responsible for having done that. I am not happy with our inability to manage the comments section more carefully, and that our initial policy of having a hands-off approach to the conversation, which we thought would keep it from being dominated by our perspective, can instead lead to us allowing the exact types of discourse about race, etc., that we argue is problematic. I know that the fact that I can say "well, that point is stupid, everyone should just ignore it" is because often they aren't saying things that directly apply to me (and not just because I'm White), or if they are, well, I'm an educated professor with a blog that gets a lot of traffic, and it's probably easier for me to shrug off than for a lot of people.

I can tell you that while I do post things I think our readers overall might be particularly interested in, I *never* post anything just thinking "ooooh, this will be controversial!" And sometimes if there is a topic I think is likely to lead to more problematic comments, I try to schedule it for a day when I think I'll be online and available more so I can delete comments or shut them down altogether if necessary. I do feel responsible if I put something up that leads to a conversation that is nasty or hurtful. I haven't yet figured out exactly how to manage that responsibility.

Here's the way I interpreted the video. The democratic politician was sponsoring a program to reduce gang violence that gave money to former gang members to engage in some sort of neighborhood anti-gang effort. The republican candidate wanted it to look like she was supporting gang activity itself.

What is the most iconic example and celebration of criminality in our society at this time? Gangster rap videos. I'm sure someone who lived during prohibition thought immediately of Al Capone when thinking of crime, in this day and age we might think of a rap music video celebrating a life-style of selling drugs, killing people and degrading women, associated with urban gang violence which is the modern day instantiation of the gangsters of the past.

So the republican decided to make a rap video showing two black men (usually the people in these videos are black, and the whole point of this is to basically piggy back off of this already created concept in people's heads, not to challenge them with the idea that wow there are asian gangs and white gangs etc etc) dancing and waving machine guns and talking about money while an attractive woman's ass shakes on a stripper pole in the background. Basically it was just a parody of a gangster rap video, and gangster rap videos are symbolic of crime and gang activity in the time period in which we live.

In the background, photographs of numerous white criminals flash by, ranging from Al Capone to Charles Manson. These images do not seem to be chosen for their relation to gang activity (Charles Manson was an ideologically driven serial killer cult leader rather than a simple gangster) but rather are chosen simply because these are famous criminals that the viewer will readily recognize. Then at the end they even mention that congress is filled with criminals, which it is.

Basically, as this is a campaign ad and the only purpose of the ad is to help the creator of the ad win, the idea is to simply take the most identifiable symbol of crime in the modern era, the gangster rap video, create a parody of it (complete with shaking stripper ass), and juxtapose that parody with a series of images of famous criminals from history to create a crude association in the viewer's mind between the democratic candidate and "crime."

I can see how the ad could be construed as racist, sexist is a little bit harder for me to see. I understand how one would be tempted to jump to the conclusion that anything with a stripper or the words "ho" and "bitch" thrown around is sexist, but it could simply be part of the parody of a gangster rap video. Those are words commonly used in gangster rap videos, and women are also commonly degraded in these videos, as such the degradation of women is incidental to the parodying of that iconic symbol of crime in the modern era, the gangster rap video.

Racism, as I said before, is an easier call, because gangster rap is so heavily associated with the african american community, and as such the video plays on people's fears of african americans as the criminal element in society (note that I didn't say white people, this fear can be found in people of all races).

It's difficult to say whether the direct goal of the video was to inspire racist backlash against the democrat, or rather to simply associate her with criminality in the crudest and most direct manner possible, but juxtaposing the modern symbol of crime, gangster rap, with a bunch of historical criminals and then mentioning congress, which as we all know houses more dangerous criminals than even the most violent federal prison.

Based on the comment thread upstream I feel I will be called a troll for posting this. This is actually how I felt after watching the video. If you disagree with me, please explain to me why I am wrong and don't just call me a troll. I like learning more about the world and new viewpoints and if you feel I have misinterpreted something I would genuinely appreciate it if you would enlighten me.

If not, I suppose you guys can go back to hating on each other for not creating a safe enough space and maybe discuss options for creating a comments section that does not contain views that upset, anger or challenge you. I wasn't aware that this blog was intended to be a safe space for victims or racial or gender oppression, I thought it was supposed to be a free exchange of ideas revolving around sociology, but perhaps you can take the blog in a different direction and create a place that is safe for certain views and non-inclusive of other views.

Wow.