Advertising and People of Color Essay

In their article â€Å"Advertising and People of Color,† Clint Wilson and Felix Gutierrez talk about stereotypes being portrayed in the media, even today. A good example of this is of the Aunt Jemima pancake mix. Then, the company featured a stereotypical, heavy, loud black woman (mammy) advertising the pancake mix. Some of the advertising was more neutralized; for example, Rastus is shown serving both black and white children breakfast (284). Another issue Wilson and Gutierrez talks about is the courtship of blacks and Latinos in advertising. From the civil rights movement, advertisers specifically targeted minorities, specifically blacks and Latinos for products such as liquor and cigarettes, but also advertised to minorities in culturally related advertisements. Articles such as â€Å"America’s Spanish Treasure† and books such as The $30 Billion Negro were written for advertisers to show how important it was to reach minorities to make more money. Overall, I don’t think the media has made much of a difference. I watched tv for a couple hours today to see if there were any advertisements directed toward minorities or that used minorities. My conclusion: not many. I didn’t see any that specifically were directed toward minorities and the ones that did portray minorities was a house cleaning commercial. The black lady was doing what every other middle class housewife does-clean all day (note sarcastic tone here). She was using a cleaning product while the announcer said his piece. Other than that, there was not anything (this was Fox 12, between 10 AM and 12 PM and I did do other homework while watching, lol).