Is it ever right to racially stereotype for ad purposes?
I would say no. Racial stereotyping almost always uses ignorance to create something nasty and offensive. It is possible that racial stereotypes can be used to create positive images? Maybe so, but it doesn't change the fact that it is still stereotyping, just assuming a fixed image or concept on a certain group of people. These generalizations we have are so deeply rooted in our culture that using these racial stereotypes in ads only help to perpetuate the idea. They only help to cement the idea further in for those who already are familiar with it, and help lend that idea to anyone who hasn't caught onto the particular concept yet, like our young children. For example we'll use the Popeye's commercial below.
The ad shows a black woman from the south preparing good fried chicken. The alternative choice in the commercial shows a white man preparing to serve previously frozen, not so good, food. This plays on the racial stereotype that black people cook and love to eat fried chicken. You can take this in a positive light and say that it is something to be celebrated that black people make this delicious food and you would therefore want to purchase it from this black woman on the commercial, but it is still taking a concept and generalizing it for an entire group of people. This is clearly an example of racial stereotyping.
I don't believe however that all racial stereotypes originated as something sinister. Where did the idea that black people love fried chicken come from? In a filmed interview by black comedian Mike Epps taken with Pete McGraw, Professor of psychology at UC Boulder, McGraw states that "poultry has a lower status in this country than steak, and fried foods have a lower status than a lot of non-fried foods." He goes on to say that the stigma also plays on the idea that "decent people don't eat with their hands, they eat with a fork and knife." The origin fried chicken cooked by black people in times of slavery was because most were impoverished and chicken was something they could afford. Frying it helped to make the chicken last longer without use of refrigeration. Through the years the concept has been embedded into so many types of ads and television shows that it has become the norm of how black people are perceived. That's the power of racial stereotyping. It doesn't have to be necessarily true, it just has to be perpetuated and played enough to make people believe it and turn it into something negative.
Is racism in advertising a thing of the past?
Racism in advertising still exists today. It helps that advertising undergoes more filtering and analyzing than it had historically, but the fact that it does still happen, be it less often or more subtle, is still alarming.
This was an ad pulled by Nivea after they received so much backlash for being overtly racist using the "clean-shaven" African American holding the head of an "afro-haired" African American. According to the article "10 recent racist ads that companies wish you would forget," in Business Insider, the Nivea company apologized for the ad on their Facebook page stating "This ad was inappropriate and offensive. It was never our intention to offend anyone, and for this we are deeply sorry. This ad will never be used again. Diversity and equal opportunity are crucial values of our company."
Do advertisers have ethical responsibilities?
Yes they do. It is important to ensure advertisers produce ads that are not racially stereotypical not because they want a wider audience for their product/brand, it is because you want to exist in the advertising industry with a particular moral compass. Various ethnicities and races are misrepresented in advertising using racial stereotypes. The more these stereotypes are exploited by advertisers, the more people will feel offended and abused. Advertisers must reach further than the racial misrepresentations and be creative enough to produce an ad that sends the message of the brand- not the stereotype.
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