CVK
(Thanks Suzanne for letting us know about your article!) In this opinion piece for Advertising Age’s Marketing Y Medios magazine, Suzanne Irizarry de López questions the usefulness of racial categories when marketing to consumers:

And what does labeling people for socio-political advocacy purposes have to do with marketing anyway? Is it useful for a marketer in the 21st century, where micromarketing is the mantra, with a tendency toward segmentation by lifestyle, shopping patterns and media behavior? How useful can it be for a marketer to target a group of highly diverse “Hispanic” people who view different media, have different language preferences, upbringings, cultural backgrounds, socio-economic and educational attainment levels, nationalities, looks, religious beliefs, political views and lifestyles?

A racist outlook assumes that the human species can be meaningfully divided into races. If in marketing, we divide consumers by “race or ethnicity” — and typically ask consumers in survey questions like which of the following do you consider your race to be: white, black, Hispanic or Asian? —doesn’t that come dangerously close to this definition of racism?

Segmenting human beings by race (or ethnic group) has a purpose of dividing people into superior from inferior — majority from minority. This treads into the institutionalized purpose of racism: categorizing people for the purpose of social and economic gain.