Mixed Race Studies

According to Our Hearts: Lessons Lost and Learned from the Cheerios Commercial Controversy

MixedRaceStudies.org
2013-06-06

Steven F. Riley

Keeping our cholesterol and our expectations low

By now, most readers of MixedRaceStudies.org and other race-related blogs and social media sites are well aware of the “Just Checking” commercial for the cereal brand Cheerios, a May 28 post on YouTube featuring an interracial family.

I would guess that the same readers are aware that General Mills, Inc., the maker of Cheerios, removed the comments section for the video after fielding a number of remarks that Camille Gibson, VP of  Marketing, stated were “not family friendly.”

Most other media outlets however, have not been so benign. The Deseret News reported “Biracial Cheerios commercial sparks racist comments;” The Huffington Post reported, “Cheerios Commercial Featuring Mixed Race Family Gets Racist Backlash;” MSNBC reported, “Interracial family in Cheerios ad sparks internet backlash,” to name just a few. Specialty news outlets chimed in also with AdWeeks’s headline, “It’s 2013, and People Are Still Getting Worked Up About Interracial Couples in Ads” and Business Insiders’ “This Is The Mixed-Race Cheerios Ad All The Idiots Are Complaining About.”

Despite the extensive coverage about the General Mills’ actions in response to the comments, there has been little if anything said about the actual comments posted on their YouTube site. Such is the sorry state of journalism today that comments about the news—rather than the actual events themselves—become the news.

I speculate with confidence that the Cheerios commercial received negative and racist comments (and positive and anti-racist comments too). A cursory scan through the videos on YouTube reveals that even apparently non-controversial videos can elicit the most hateful comments imaginable. Because General Mills is in the business of selling food products—and not in debating racial dynamics of family formation—it is understandable that they would remove the comments from the site.

Yet, General Mills’ action to remove the comments and the inaction of the media to investigate and shed light on those comments denies us the opportunity to confront and refute the ignorance and bigotry continuing to fester within our still pre-post-racial society.  Also, the overreaction to the yet unexposed remarks has the unintended consequence of empowering the individuals who posted them. Informed rebuttals to these comments could 1) enlighten the ignorant and racist commenters, 2) encourage others from embracing racist ignorance, and 3) provide solace and support to those waging combat against racist ignorance.  This concealment of ignorance merely encourages more ignorance as exemplified by (self-described unemployed) Meagan Hatcher-Mays’ essay in Jezebel titled, “I’m Biracial, and That Cheerios Ad Is a Big F–ing Deal. Trust Me,” where she, without quoting a single comment on the YouTube page, states, “What’s up with you racist dicks, anyway? Don’t you have jobs?” One commenter on a Facebook group posting even suggested that we could guess who reacted negatively to the ad.

Confronting the racism in the comments might just also provide us with an answer to that rhetorical question. Such an exercise would likely provide us an uncomfortable reminder that resistance and hostility to interracial relationships need not necessarily come from trolls from under the cloak of internet anonymity, but also from a family member we have known all of our lives.

I have not seen any of the racist comments in reference to the Cheerios ad, so I cannot comment on them. Yet I will remind readers that family formation across racialized borders have been occurring centuries before YouTube (2005), the birth of Barack Obama (1961—in Hawaii of course), court decisions to remove existing anti-miscegenation laws (1967), and acts of congress to reform immigration laws (1965). In fact, such family formations are as old as the Americas.  Relations between European men and indigenous women were essential to the establishment of European settlements in the pre-Columbian period. And as Audrey Smedley states in her 2007 presentation, “The History of the Idea of Race… And Why it Matters,”

No stigma was associated with [in the 1600s] what we today call intermarriages. Black men servants often married white women servants. Records from one county reveal that one fourth of the children born to European servant girls were mulatto (Breen and Ennis 1980). Historian Anthony Parent (2003) notes that five out of ten black men on the Eastern Shore were married to white women. One servant girl declared to her master that she would rather marry a Negro slave on a neighboring plantation than him with all of his property, and she did (P. Morgan 1998). Given the demographics, servant girls had their choice of men. One white widow of a black farmer had no problem with remarrying, this time to a white man. She later sued this second husband, accusing him of squandering the property she had accumulated with her first husband (E. Morgan 1975, 334). In another case, a black woman servant sued successfully for her freedom and then married the white lawyer who represented her in court (P. Morgan, 1998).

Though we are unable to learn much from the negative comments about the Cheerios commercial, I suggest we can learn much from the commercial itself.

As a person in an interracial marriage (25 years), I’m glad see yet another commercial featuring an interracial family. And the “Just Checking” commercial—in and by itself—is a amusing, pleasing, and does an excellent job of extoling the supposed health benefits of Cheerios. However, what troubles me is twofold. Firstly, the depiction of these families is far too rare. It is as if advertisers believe that these families do not exist, or worse, they believe they should not exist. This rendered invisibility contributes to the fear and animus that can occur when the rare depiction occurs.

Because interracial depictions are so rare, those of us who are supportive of such relationships far too frequently give our uncritical enthusiasm their visualizations. Yet, the depictions of these relationships are as important as their occurrence.  Images of interracial couples and families that are absent of the full range of intimacy of other relationships have the potential to foster harmful and demeaning attitudes to those couples and their families.

In Erica Chito Childs’s excellent monograph, Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture, she describes how such depictions can be used to simultaneously both demean and deviantize interracial relationships and normalize monoracial (particularly white) relationships when she states,

Throughout the various media realms—television, film, news media, and the less clearly defined intersecting worlds of music, sports, and youth culture—representations of interracial sex and relationships follow certain patterns, and what emerges is a delicate dance between interracial sex sells and interracial sex alienates.  The small number of representations as well as the particular types of depictions of interracial relationships, when they are shown, reveals the lingering opposition to interracial sexuality and marriage as well as the persistent racialized images of racial Others and the protection of whiteness. Interracial representations are symbolic struggles over meaning, not only in how interracial relationships are portrayed but also in how they are received, understood, and responded to in the larger society.  In particular, interracial images are used to perpetuate negative stereotypes yet are simultaneously marketed as an example of how color-blind we have become and of the declining significance of race. Yet one may ask, Why are interracial relationships shown at all if they are still widely opposed by whites and other racial groups? The answer is twofold, as we have seen throughout the book, that showing interracial relationships is a necessary piece of the current rhetoric that asserts race no longer matters and the representations are only shown in ways that either deviantize these relationships, privilege whiteness, or support the contention that America is color-blind.

Thus my second concern is that when interracial couples are depicted, there is a often a distinct lack of intimacy between the couple/family. (Contrast this to the highly visible illicit extra-marital interracial intimacy on a newly popular television show, provocatively named Scandal.) As is often mentioned in media studies, what is not seen is often as important if not more important than what is seen. In many instances, if you blink or are not paying close attention, it is difficult to know that the individuals are a couple in the first place. For example, I have yet to see an interracial couple depicted holding hands, kissing or appearing in a bed mattress commercial (although I have been informed that Ikea had such a commercial.) While the “Just Checking” ad uses the young girl’s words “mom” and “dad” to create the familiar and marital connections between characters, her parents are situated in separate rooms. In the context of a portrayal of families within a commercial ad, this physical separation is hardly an issue. Yet, General Mills continues with the apparent proscription of interracial intimacy within their ad.

With the Pew Research Center reporting that 15% of all new marriages in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, it is no longer acceptable for advertisers to suppress the portrayal of interracial families or obfuscate the intimacy within their infrequent portrayals. I do not believe that is unreasonable to suggest that viewers should see at least one interracial couple or family depicted within commercial ads during the daily television prime-time period. The time is now that we as viewers—and more importantly—as consumers, demand the public depiction of images of interracial couples exchanging wedding vows, in hospital delivery rooms expecting the birth of their child, buying homes, laying in bed, and sharing meals (including breakfast) at the same table.

A few years back, Giant Foods (a supermarket chain in the Washington, D.C. area) aired a television ad featuring a (real-life) mixed-race family with similar issues that I described. Since the theme of the commercial was family meals, this necessitated having the entire family at the table. Despite this fact, tightly cropped camera angles where used to frame each family member separately, only revealing their relationship to each other via the passing of a salad bowl.

Despite my mixed feelings, I did contact Giant Foods to compliment them for portraying the family, if not only to encourage them to do more commercials featuring interracial families, but to counter any negative responses they may have received.  In the case of General Mills and the Cheerios ad, I would suggest supporters do the same, but I would also they suggest that advertisers add more intimate family interactions.

And to General Mills, I would suggest that the next cereal commercial produced could depict the same family sitting together at the breakfast table eating a bowl of Cheerios. It will be good for their hearts, and ours too.

^©2013, Steven F. Riley

Can Losing Your Job Make You Black?

Boston Review
2013-06-03

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Most Americans think a person’s race is fairly obvious and unchanging; we know it the minute we meet him or her. Similarly, most academic research also treats race as fixed and foreordained. A person’s race comes first and then his or her experiences, education, job, neighborhood, income, and well-being follow. My research with sociologist Andrew Penner on how survey respondents were classified by race over the course of their lives, calls into question this seemingly obvious “fact.”

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth has been following a group of about 12,000 Americans since they were teenagers and young adults in 1979. From 1979 to 1998, the survey interviewers had to identify the race of the people they interviewed, even when those people had been repeatedly interviewed. At the end of each session, interviewers recorded whether they thought a respondent was “Black,” “White,” or “Other.” Here is the surprise: nearly 20 percent of respondents experienced at least one change in their recorded race over those 19 years.

These changes were not random, as one might expect if the interviewers were just hurrying to finish up or if the data-entry clerks were making mistakes. The racial classifications changed systematically, in response to what had happened to the respondent since the previous interview…

Read the entire article here.

Cheerios stands by TV ad showing mixed-race family

Associated Press
2013-06-05

Leanne Italie, Entertainment and Lifestyles Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — A mom sits at her kitchen table when her grade schooler saunters up with a big box of Cheerios.

“Mom,” says the girl. “Dad told me Cheerios is good for your heart. Is that true?”

Cut to dad waking from a nap on the living room couch with a pile of Cheerios on his chest (where his heart is) crunchily cascading to the floor.

The message is in line with the company’s Heart Healthy campaign, except this 30-second ad features a black dad, white mom and biracial child and produced enough vitriol on YouTube last week that Cheerios requested the comments section be turned off.

This week, the company is standing by the fictitious family, which reflects a black-white racial mix uncommon in commercials today, especially in ads on TV, at a time when interracial and interethnic couples are on the rise in real life, according to 2010 U.S. Census data, brand strategists and marketing consultants.

“The reality is that in general most big companies don’t want to take a lot of risks,” said Laura Ries, who has written five books on marketing and brand strategy and consults for companies large, small and in between.

“The ability for nameless, faceless people to get on the Internet is out there, and companies don’t like it when people yell at them,” she said.

Camille Gibson, vice president of marketing for Cheerios, said it’s the first time the ad campaign that focuses on family moments has featured an interracial couple, with General Mills Inc. casting the actors to reflect the changing U.S. population.

“We felt like we were reflecting an American family,” Gibson said…

Read the entire article here.

Black-White Biracial Children’s Social Development from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade: Links with Racial Identification, Gender, and Socioeconomic Status

Social Development
Volume 23, Issue 1 (February 2014)
pages 157–177
DOI: 10.1111/sode.12037

Annamaria Csizmadia, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Connecticut, Stamford

Jean M. Ispa, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Missouri, Columbia

In this study, we investigated trajectories of Black-White biracial children’s social development during middle childhood, their associations with parents’ racial identification of children, and the moderating effects of child gender and family socioeconomic status (SES). The study utilized data from parent and teacher reports on 293 US Black-White biracial children enrolled in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K). Growth curve models suggested increasing trajectories of teacher-reported internalizing and externalizing behaviors between kindergarten and fifth grade. Parents’ racial identification of children predicted child externalizing behavior trajectories such that teachers rated biracially identified children’s externalizing behaviors lower relative to those of Black- and White-identified children. Additionally, for White-identified biracial children, the effect of family SES on internalizing behavior trajectories was especially pronounced. These findings suggest that in the USA, how parents racially identify their Black-White biracial children early on has important implications for children’s problem behaviors throughout the elementary school years.

Read or purchase the article here.

White or Black? Conservatives, Liberals See Faces Differently

Pacific Standard
Santa Barbara, California
2013-06-05

Tom Jacobs, Staff Writer

New research finds people on the political right are quicker to classify a racially ambiguous face as black.

Did you notice that mixed-race gentleman who passed you on the sidewalk yesterday? During the split second as he walked by, did he register in your mind as black or white?

Disturbing new research suggests the answer to that question may depend on your political ideology.

In three experiments, “we found that conservatives were more likely than liberals to categorize a racially ambiguous person as black than white,” a research team led by New York University psychologist Amy Krosch writes in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Intriguingly, this dynamic disappeared when the study participants—white Americans—were told they were judging Canadian faces. The tendency for those on the right to more quickly categorize someone as “black” only occurred when they were evaluating their fellow countrymen…

Read the entire article here.

Representing Mixed Race: Beyond “What are you?”

Talking Race: A Digital Dialog
2013-05-28

Laura Kina, Vincent DePaul Associate Professor of Art, Media and Design
DePaul University

My 2011-12 oil paintings Issei, Nisei, Sansei, Yonsei, and Gosei are on view in “Under My Skin: Artists Explore Race in the 21st Century” at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle May 10-November 17, 2013. The Japanese language titles mark the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth generations from my father’s lineage to live in the United States.

Issei is a ghostly indigo blue portrait of my great grandmother, who came in 1919 through the “picture bride” system of arranged marriage from Okinawa, Japan to the Big Island of Hawai’i to work on a sugar cane plantation in Pi’ihonua (near Hilo). Her image flickers in front of a row of female sugar cane workers dressed in protective work clothes made from repurposed kasuri kimono fabrics. Nisei features a similarly blue tinged portrait of my grandmother in front of a steamship, the Kamakura Maru, circa 1937-39 when she was sent back to Okinawa for high school. Sansei is a sepia toned image based on my mom and dad’s engagement photo from 1968. Next to their image is a colorful patchwork quilt made from vintage Aloha shirts. Yonsei features my own black and white wedding portrait rendered on top of an auspiciously celebratory red enameled background. I wore a white kimono and constructed Japanesque identity and my husband, who is Ashkenazi Jewish, looked like a young Sean Penn in his black tuxedo. Gosei is a portrait of our daughter Midori wearing a Hello Kitty t-shirt, the ubiquitous consumer sign of global Japaneseness. I painted her during the first weeks of September 2012. She is standing on the beach at once a little girl, my baby, and on the cusp of tweendom and about to enter her Hebrew school education. Midori’s expression and the formal composition directly reference the viewer back to Issei while the exaggerated blueness of her eyes and lightness of her skin signal her potential passing into whiteness…

…I identify as hapa (half Asian), yonsei (fourth generation), Uchinanchu (Okinawan diaspora), and more generally and politically as Japanese American, Asian American, and mixed race. I’m also white but in Chicago, where I live, I am usually read as “Latina” but I have yet to embrace a Hispanic identity (I do have a Mexican American stepdaughter though). I live in an urban South Asian/Orthodox Jewish immigrant community. I’m a convert to Judaism, but no one ever guesses I’m Jewish. I don’t look the part. I’m more likely to be mistaken as Indian, vaguely reminiscent of the Bollywood movie actress Preity Zinta. My father is Okinawan and grew up on a sugar cane plantation on the Big Island of Hawai’i and my mother is from Kingston, Washington, where her family ran a roadside motel near the Kingston ferryboat landing. Her mom was a seamstress from a Basque-Spanish agricultural family and she grew up speaking Spanish in Vallejo, California. Her father was French, English, Scotch-Irish, and Dutch heritage (aka “white”) and hailed from Wacko, Texas, by way of cotton fields in Tennessee. He was a descendent of James Knox Polk, the eleventh president of the United States, as well as Major General George Pickett, whose infamous charge was the last battle of Gettysburg. Sometimes I think it’s funny that I’m simultaneously eligible to claim membership as a Daughter of the American Revolution and to throw my lot in history as a descendent of a Japanese “picture bride.”…

Read the entire article here.