Interracial Relationships in Commercials

      In 2013, General Mills, maker of Cheerios, released a wholesome Cheerio commercial that featured a biracial family.  In the commercial, an African American little girl asks her White mother if Cheerios are good for you heart, then the scene switches to her African American father waking up with Cheerios poured all over his chest. The audience assumes that the little girl poured the Cheerios on her father' chest to help his heart.

      The ad quickly became a very controversial video on YouTube with the comments section full of racial slurs an other hateful messages.  General Mills disabled the non-family friendly comments on the YouTube video, but elected not to pull the ad, sticking to their values.  The ad represents inclusion and progress in the media towards representation of interracial couples and families as many companies would stay away from the topic, fearful of the response.  Chapter 32 of the course reading discusses some of the struggles of discrimination interracial couples experience to include stigma from society, like with the commercial's response.  The chapter also mentions racist stereotypes which can also be seen in the response to the commercial in that some commenters were 'shocked that a black father would stay with his family'. Unfortunately, General Mills is not the only company to have had a negative, racist social reaction to an interracial ad.  In 2016, Old Navy posted an ad to Twitter depicting an interracial couple and family and experienced the same kind of backlash, receiving hashtags such as #WhiteGenocide and #BoycottOldNavy.  We would hope that three years later the reaction would be different, but it is the same.

Concept Reference:
 Steinberger, A. (2014). “Loving across racial divides.” In M. L. Andersen & P. H. Collins (Eds.),   
      Race, class, & gender: Intersections and inequalities (pp. 303-308). Boston, MA: Cengage.