But, of course, color blindness fails because race, despite being a social invention, still matters in our society. \u00a0Enter the ongoing scandal about the Cadbury candy bar ad featuring Naomi Campbell, sent in by Dolores R., \u00a0Jack M., and Terri. \u00a0The ad compares the Dairy Milk Bliss Bar to Campbell. \u00a0It reads: “Move over Naomi, there’s a new Diva in town.”<\/p>\n
The ad has been called racist because it compares Campbell to a chocolate <\/em>bar; chocolate is a term sometimes used to describe black people’s skin color or overall sexual “deliciousness.” \u00a0The ad, then, is argued to be foregrounding skin color and even playing on stereotypes of black women’s sexuality.<\/p>\n So what happened here? \u00a0One the one hand, I see the critics’ point. \u00a0On the other, I can also imagine the advertising people behind this ad thinking that they want to link the candy bar with the idea of a diva (rich, indulgent, etc.), and choosing Campbell because she is a notorious diva<\/a>, not because she’s a black, female supermodel. \u00a0They could argue that they were being colorblind and that race was not at all a consideration in designing this ad.<\/p>\n The problem is that being colorblind in a society where race still colors our perceptions simply doesn’t work. \u00a0The truth is that race may not have been a consideration in designing the Cadbury ad, but it should have been<\/em>. \u00a0Not because it’s fun or functional to play with race stereotypes, but because racial meaning is something that must <\/em>be managed, whether you like it or not<\/em>. \u00a0This is where Cadbury failed.<\/p>\n In my classes, I ask my earnestly-anti-racist students to replace color-blindness with color-consciousness. \u00a0We need to be thoughtful and smart about race, racial meaning, and racial inequality. \u00a0Racism is bad, but color-blindess is a just form of denial; being conscious about color — seeing it for what it is and isn’t, both really and socially — is a much better way to bring about a just society.<\/p>\n Cadbury, for what it’s worth, has apologized<\/a>.<\/p>\n See also the Oreo Barbie<\/a>, the Black Lil’ Monkey Doll<\/a>, the Obama Sock Monkey<\/a>, Disparate Pricing for Black and White Dolls<\/a>, and Accidentally Illustrating Evil with Skin Color<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The U.S. is not a very race-literate society. \u00a0We aren’t taught much about the history of race relations or racial inequality in school and almost nothing about how to think about race or how to talk to one another about these theoretically and emotionally challenging issues. \u00a0Many Americans, then, don’t have a very sophisticated understanding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,2124,23703,283,285,1760],"class_list":["post-36579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-foodagriculture","tag-marketing","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36579"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58854,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36579\/revisions\/58854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2011\/06\/14.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n