http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmQclpZVhoU
In class, we have been exploring the idea of black people trying to get others to acknowledge their humanity. The commercial for the Samsung Galaxy S III encourages the idea that everyone is a human and they deserve the same quality of life (in this case, a phone service), no matter what race or background a person has. That is why their slogan for the phone is “Designed for Humans.” Throughout the video, scenes of love and happiness are shown, and all races are represented. They even show a marriage between a white woman and a black man, further pushing the idea that every person is a human and deserves basic human rights. The black man deserves to be happy just as much as the Asian woman or the white man in the video deserves to be happy. The advertisement, whether by accident or design, encourages the ideas that black authors and artists have tried to put forward for many decades – black people are humans, just like everyone else.
This reminds me of a conversation I was having with a few classmates yesterday. We were talking about the Cheerios commercial that featured a biracial couple and their mixed child, and how much backlash the company has gotten for the ad. This Samsung commercial comes in stark contrast to the Cheerios one, as the idea of one common humanity and equality for everyone is encouraged. While I believe that’s what Cheerios was attempting to assert as well, audiences simply were not receptive of the idea, at least not in the way Cheerios chose to present it. In this example we see that, while media appears to be moving forward to an image of greater equality among all people, the public simply isn’t ready to accept the idea, regardless of how many of us claim to be “color blind.” People still have an issue with biracial couples for whatever reason, and therefore strictly opposed the Cheerios commercial. This perpetuates several of the ideas that we discussed in class, such as racial inequality, a lack of perceived humanity for black people, and segregation among the races. Though the commercial itself did not maintain these themes, the reaction of the public certainly did, revealing that the United States may not have come as far as we like to believe we have in regards to racial equality.