JC
The Houston Chronicle features a story on multiracial advertising of today. The author interviews some who criticize such ads (like Verizon’s “The Elliotts”, winner of a 2004 MMW Image Award) for reflecting a world where the races are intermingling and intermarrying without conflict. What about the families and people for which these images ring true? While it is clear that this is not reality for many, these images reflect a reality that *does* exist for many others. This is the very thing that we here at Mixed Media Watch are fighting for — representation of mixed individuals and mixed families. Census 2000 told us that there were at least 6.8 million mixed race people in this country. That number will only grow. I doubt that people will view these advertisements and be “fooled” into thinking that this is reality if it really isn’t the case for them. Let’s think positively. Perhaps those who are not seeing in their real life what is represented on their TV screens will be given a head-start in thinking about this growing demographic before it actually shows up in their neighborhoods (or dare I say families?).

…Critics say such ads gloss over persistent and complicated racial realities. Although the proportion of ethnic minorities in America is growing, experts say, more than superficial interaction between groups is still relatively unusual. Most Americans overwhelmingly live and mingle with people from their own racial background. Advertising, meanwhile, is creating a “carefully manufactured racial utopia, a narrative of colorblindness” says Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

About 7 percent of all marriages are interracial, according to Census data. About 80 percent of whites live in neighborhoods in which more than 95 percent of their neighbors also are white, and data show that most Americans have few close friends of another race, Gallagher said.

“The lens through which people learn about other races is absolutely through TV, not through human interaction and contact,” he said. “Here, we’re getting a lens of racial interaction that is far afield from reality.” Ads make it seem that race doesn’t matter, when real life would tell you something different, he added.