Controversial Cheerios Commercial, post #2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbWeH9cztHw

This Cheerios commercial from 2013, showing an interracial family, stirred up wild controversy. The commercial shows a young biracial girl asking her mother if Cheerios are good for your heart, and the mother answers yes. As a result the young girl innocently piles Cheerios on her father’s chest while he’s napping.

The comment section on the video got so filled with racial slurs that they actually had to disable them because the language was not family friendly. The Facebook page featured comments calling the commercial “disgusting” or saying that it makes them “want to vomit.” Some even expressed shock “that a black father would stay with his family.”

People demanded Cheerios to cancel the commercial but the company refused and even produced a second to show during The 2013 Super Bowl. Some did respond positively to the commercial, thanking them for keeping the commercial online despite the negative responses. Camille Gibson, Cheerios vice president of marketing states, “At Cheerios, we know there are many kinds of families and we celebrate them all.”

Some believe the issue was the normality of the family. Perhaps seeing a mixed race family too similar to their own family and not something “strange” or “odd” created a sort of panic. However, it’s more normal than people seem to think with racial mixes becoming more and more frequent. The 2010 census showed a major increase in individuals that consider themselves to be mixed race or multi-racial. Since 2000 this has increased by almost 50 percent.

These sorts of negative opinions could easily be from rural, isolated areas in the United States who are surrounded by the same race. Marcia Alesan Dawkins, a professor at the University of Southern California, believes a lot of upset was due to not only the fact that this was a mixed race family, but that for some it’s more difficult to see a white woman with a black man due to the horrific ways that black men were punished for “praying on innocent white women,” and often were beaten or lynched. She believes there is fear in some or mixed race families because when white is not the majority there will be a loss of control and power as society would became more equal.

Jenifer Bratter, professor of sociology at Rice University, observes the casting and way that the family could have been set up is interesting. If both parents were presented as African American there would probably be no major issues with the commercial. This speaks to the fact that the multi racial child featured in the commercial and many children like her in other forms of media are often multiracial. Many African Americans are mixed race, multigenerational but are rarely perceived that way.

This commercial is an example how interconnected our world is. Now that the nation can see the way the rest of the country is progressing and living many are forced to face their prejudices just by turning on the television. We know that interracial families are nothing new and have been a part of our society, but now images of American life throughout the nation are being depicted in the media, social networking, and on television, and many now are being faced with the reality that interracial families are a regular and growing part of our society.

 Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/cheerios-commercial-racist-backlash_n_3363507.html

http://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/cheerios-super-bowl-ad-brings-back-interracial-family-from-controversial-2013-commercial-2014291

http://www.today.com/news/cheerios-ad-mixed-race-family-draws-racist-responses-6C10169988

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2013/06/11/daily-circuit-cheerios-multiracial-family