Caitlin Robinson
It is obvious that media has a big impact on how society views others in the world today. Media has the power to convince people what’s right and what’s wrong in certain cases. A good bit of media that I see on a regular basis are advertisements. It seems like now a days they are trying to make advertisements more diverse and be on a more relatable level, but are they doing it right?
I understand the notion of wanting to include African Americans into advertisement (that is not something we shouldn’t be “allowed” to do) but the way we are showcased is not always in a pleasant way. It seems as if the creative writers are trying to depict what blackness is without getting much input from blacks. In more cases that not, the women are either the pretty, happy lighter-skinned woman with natural hair or an upset, angry dark woman. This makes me think are these the only types of African-American woman they think exist?
The way blackness is being narrated in the commercials and different advertisements are also the same in which they are portrayed in all other types of media like movies and television shows. They seem to make African American males and females fit in to some sort of typecasts as if blacks can’t be just like whites or this is the only way to connect with them. I think advertising as a whole needs to take a step black and realize that black people are just that, PEOPLE. Narrating blackness in terms of advertisements shouldn’t be as difficult and repetitive as they make it seem.