Like I’ve discussed a few times on this blog (like here and here), the past couple years have not been America’s proudest in terms of race relations. Regardless of whether you feel the nation’s actual situation has worsened, or rather that greater transparency and awareness are revealing more clearly how bad that situation has always been, one thing is for sure; Americans are feeling a greater level of anxiety around race than they did just a few years ago. A Gallup poll recently found that 35% of respondents worry “a great deal” about race relations in the country, the most since the organization started asking the question 15 years ago.
The great irony here is that even as Americans’ collective anxiety over race has risen, our society’s most vital institution — the nuclear family — is more racially integrated than ever before. A generation ago, about one-in-a hundred babies born in America could be considered multiracial; that number is now about one-in-ten. Not surprisingly, our attitudes about interracial marriage have dramatically changed as well. Back in 1958 just 4% of Americans said they approved of black-white marriage. Today that number is 87%.
But never mind all that for a moment. Let’s talk about something that really matters: TV commercials. Because the way I see it, the number of interracial romances, families and friendships you see on TV says a lot about American attitudes towards race.
I’m not aware of any quantifiable data on this (I’m either too lazy or too unskilled to find it, if it exists), but it seems to me there’s been an explosion of racial diversity in the past few years in commercials as well as print and electronic advertising. A couple years back General Mills sparked conversation with a TV spot for Cheerios that featured a white mom, a black dad, and their adorable biracial kid, a decision which somehow stirred controversy and nearly made racist internet trolls’ heads explode. But since then, there’s been an unusual number of mixed race couples and families in mainstream advertising which have seamlessly blended in to the landscape. Both American Airlines and Amazon, I noticed, recently had promotional images on their websites of black-and-white couples (in the case of the latter, with their biracial kids). Ford ran a commercial for its Escape SUV featuring a pretty black girl with a beaming smile camping with her white boyfriend, accompanied by Rachel Patten’s “This is My Fight Song” in the background. Another ad by JBL features young, attractive joggers, one white and the other black, exchanging subtly flirtatious glances over the subject of tangled headphone wires. For a while USA Today has run a TV commercial of a handsome Indian-looking guy and nerdy-but-cute blonde chatting casually on a park bench. Keep in mind these are just the ads I’ve actually seen and can remember off hand. Needless to say there are many more. None of them alone is earthshaking, but together they say something significant, I would say.
Screenshots from the websites of American Airlines (above) and Amazon (below).
To be clear, movies or advertising companies or whoever else who put interracial couples front-and-center are not doing so out of some sense of civic duty or expression of high-minded ideals. This is about money. But making money in this case is about recognizing and responding to consumer tastes, and the fact that advertisers are so much more likely to feature mixed-race couples and families than they used to be is undoubtedly the result of painstaking research and careful insight suggesting this strategy now works with the broad American public. Do not for a second think this is an accident; multiple companies are clearly concluding that consumers will react positively to different races of people meshed together in the same ad, movie, or whatever.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be skeptical of this trend’s importance and its actual impact on people’s lives. Even I find it curious that pop culture now seems to have a fascination with black women coupled with white men. (Indeed, that’s the set up for many of the TV spots mentioned above.) In that sense, one could be tempted to brush the trend off as just a shallow fad. And even when companies seek to make a statement of multiculturalism in their ads, sometimes they miss the mark badly and their efforts have exactly the opposite effect, as was the case just a few weeks ago when The Gap released an ad showing a white child model awkwardly resting her elbow on her black counterpart.
The heavier and more serious criticism, of course, is that even as our pop culture changes, real life racism, from criminal justice to bank lending, has its roots planted deep in this country’s social soil. We do not, in fact, live in a so-called “post-racial” America. Nonetheless, even as it’s important to be real about our nation’s shortcomings when it comes to race, I think it’s far too easy to be negative and dismissive about how the country is changing, both in terms of demographics and attitudes.
Abdu’l-Baha said of America’s race problem nearly a century ago that “marriage between these two races will wholly destroy and eradicate the root of enmity” between blacks and whites. That surely isn’t an overnight solution, nor is it a solution all on its own. But reflect on the tenfold increase in the proportion of multiracial kids being born in America, and imagine the effect it’s sure to exert on how we recognize and value eachother over the next one, two, or three generations. The increasing regularity and social acceptance of mixed-race couples and families isn’t just an ancillary story in America’s broader racial narrative. This is about drowning racism in the purest form of human love: that shared between man, woman, and child.
Even as we recognize where we continue to fail as a country, let’s acknowledge the positive. Who we date, marry, and have children with is changing rapidly and for the better. And increasingly, our pop culture suggests our attitudes are changing as well.
fruittreeblog.com 
Reblogged this on Blogs by Bahais.
As a multi-ethnic, multi-racial woman, I truly appreciate the increase of interracial families in commercials because it is reality. Though not enough, it has been in film and stage for a long time and growing up I always wondered why not in commercials? It is my reality and the reality of so many families! It also represents love in the times of so much judgement and turmoil in racial tension which is hurtful to everyone including us multis and we get left out or put into a label…we belong everywhere and nowhere at once and this welcomes EVERYONE.
U r a subhuman nigggger
Interracial marraiges are around 17% of marraiges, not the norm as they would like you to believe. So why the push? What’s the advantange? I could care less if two folks get marraiged and what race they are but I am SICK-&-TIRED of the TV molgals shoving it in my face and claiming it is “NORMAL”. It is not! I boycott the advertizers that use this method.
Its gone ridiculous. We talk about representation yet near enough all tv adverts showing family’s etc are of BAME or mixed race when its such a small minority in the UK. Why is it that its always a knee jerk reaction we go from one extreme to another instead of finding the obvious what should be normal. These adverts have managed to start to alienate the large majority of people now. I along with quiet a few people have turned away from companies using this type of cheap virtue signalling.
I think it is disgusting to pretend that’s this normal when it is not. This Hollywood and this fad will pass but the danger to our Black Race is threatening to their families. When will this stop?
Jews promote this filth for all white countries but love Is real being a Jewish Ethnostate.
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Stop pushing interracial relationships in our face. If you really believed it was ok and a natural way of life then relationships would have just happened years ago., but as usual the media and the advertising giants are only doing this to make money. The real world knows that these relationships are still looked at oddly.
No, Barbara. You mean YOUR real world. Time to wake up and see God created ONE race and Jesus would be ashamed of your way of thinking.
Your stupidity gives me a headache. You’re the problem with this world but you’re so far gone you think we’re the problem. Glad I’ll be gone before your generation destroys the west . Also there is no God and there is not just one race. That’s something that the lesser races tell themselves. Like ” real beauty is on the inside,”
The truth is, while interracial marriage is more common, white male/black female couples are still rare. It is generally the opposite, black male/white female.
White men who marry outside thier race more commonly marry Asian or Hispanic females (who are technically considered white).
I have also seen a commercial depicting a Asian male/black female couple with kids. That coupling is so rare as to be nearly non-existent.
But the media needs us to believe thier world view, to drink that kool-aid
The increase in commercial and advertising including mixed race and same sex couples can also be attributed to pressure from lgbtq and other activist groups threatening advertising companies and thier clients with harassment, negative press and targeted social media campaigns if they did not begin including bi-racial and same sex couples in their ads.
Essentially we are being influenced to believe that these relationships are more common than they truly are. I have no issues with inter-racial couples or same sex couples. Im fact, I’m pretty ambivalent about it.
What I do have a problem with, is the concerted effort to make us believe that it is more common than it truly is. Social engineering is a slippery slope. Do you slowly replace one ethnic group for the sake of others that are preceived to be more deserving of majority status? Who decides which group becomes marginalized? There will be consequences, some good, some bad. Time will tell.
You are not very factual in your post, but more opinionated. Made of over 20 ethnic regions, I am years and years of families that married into different “races.” We millennials and younger are just more exposed and more opened to just being exactly who we are and the generations before us that lived in a different time are fading out. Soon, as long as we exist, it won’t matter what “group” is “marginalized.”
Excellent point.. couldn’t have said it better. Tolerant peaceful liberals will attack anyone who dares to step out of line
The real problem here is that SOCIAL ENGINEERING on a MASSIVE SCALE IS TAKING PLACE & I would bet that NOBODY KNOWS where it will lead & NONE OF US HAS BEEN ASKED TO PARTICIPATE. We all are guinea pigs for ad executives, tv executives & rich people. The WAY TO FIX THIS IS TO TURN OFF NETWORK TV. STEER CLEAR OF CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, & CBS. Those are corporate owned & operated & you will ONLY GET THEIR SKEWED VERSION or their ‘side of the story’. They LIE BY OMISSION. You will NEVER get an honest objective ‘news’ story from ANY network ‘news’ outlet. NEVER.
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There are GOOD PEOPLE AND EVIL PEOPLE,
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✌😈 Translation… Because God loves the REDEEMED and THE INNOCENT, NOT, the GAYTHEISTmanifesto.secularmediagroup.com MAKES YOU MURDEROUSLY JEALOUS!
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#2Corinthians6
14 Do not be unequally yoked together with UNBELIEVERS. For what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion has LIGHT with DARKNESS
15 What agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what part has he who believes with an unbeliever?
interracial marriages on TV all of a sudden popping up everywhere is not by accident. It smells of an agenda and that agenda is to continue to stirrup racial contention. Proof: just watch the news! The shadow government wants division among the races it makes it easier to control them, then they will bring order out of chaos!
Wow. What are you even talking about?
More commercials now feature mixed-race couples more than they do same-race couples. Far from reality.
No. Far from YOUR reality. It is years and years of my reality.
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Get cancer you freaknigger
Tashiana, no, YOUR ‘reality’, is NOT THE NORM. That’s why it was, is & will continue to be ABNORMAL, until it isn’t. It’s like seeing a 2 headed person, they EXIST but THEY are abnormal. By abnormal I do not mean, ‘bad’, I just mean that they are NOT THE NORM. Interracial couples are NOT THE NORM. No matter how much tv says they are. They aren’t. Yet.
Jeez you know how to ramble a very very very ong time without saying much of anything…..
It does seem strange to see so much of it in commercials, but almost never in real life (in 39 years I’ve seen 1 interracial couple in real life). It makes it seem like the commercial is fake or somehow like false advertising and so makes me not trust/not want to buy the product the commercial is for. Like it makes me not take the commercial seriously.
You’re living in a one mind one track world then. Go Explore and you will see many of us exist whether people like it or not. My family from generations from years and years of generations all married for live and just so happened to be of bi or multi race.
Of course you exist, but that does NOT MAKE YOU & YOUR FAMILY ‘THE NORM’. No matter how much you say it does, it IS NOT what most families look like. It’s a Hollywierd construct of what THEY WANT OR THINK, THE WORLD SHOULD OR DOES LOOK LIKE. In the 1950’s & 1960’s, Leave it to Beaver was NOT what most peoples family life looked like. It WAS A HOLLYWOOD CONSTRUCT. Just like gays are EVERYWHERE. They really aren’t the NORM, nor are they always ‘sassy’ & well dressed. That’s all MAKE BELIEVE, from Hollywierd.
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Not going to apologize about appearing so base but it is what it is.It is clear that blacks have some superiority at physicallity in sports. It is clear that whites have been leaders. It is clear that when blacks are left to their own there will be trashy ass hoods and crime. The educated ones rarely reach back to help the others out. The agenda of this whole ‘ mix relationships as the norm’ is to better the chances for a greater increase in the intellectual ability of the lessor evolved race to try to play catch up with the greater evolved race. It truly is that plain and simple. We have tried to act like we are all the same and it has crashed our public school systems. Noone will say it out loud but it as true and as right as rain. Blacks need to breed with whites to skip evolutionary steps and keep up intellectually.
Absolutely right.much like how socialism attempts to lift the bottom up when in reality it merely tears everyone else down
I am sure I will be slammed but truth hurts
It’s gotten to the point where literally every single commercial is interracial couples and it’s quite annoying now your bias is showing
What I’m concerned about , is 95% of the interracial couples I see on TV are white males with black women. When did black men stop marrying black women? Is this an attempt to make the “Black male” nonexistent? Why is the black man not seen to be a part of the family dynamic?
The destruction of the black nuclear family has been fully carried out. Black men are now stereotyped and memed as useless deadbeat drug-addicts who flee at the slightest prospect of fatherhood. Those who seek to do right by their children wind up castigated and mocked, seen as unmasculine. Utterly disgusting that for black man/white woman interracial depictions, cuckold/BBC porn vastly outweights SFW feel-good advertisements.
To make things worse the dominant ghetto culture openly glorifies cheap carnal pleasure over any idea maturity or fatherhood, perpetuating the stereotype and resulting in single-mother families whose children usually go on to consume and perpetuate violent ghetto gang culture and continue the cycle.
When it comes to racism against blacks, sometimes, no one inflicts it as well as blacks themselves.
I think it offends all races and most individuals. I mark the products so that I will never purchase them.
That is 1 way to let them know & it’s a GREAT 1. DON’T BUY THEIR BULLSHIT PRODUCTS. I don’t, & won’t. You shouldn’t either. Turn them off. Stay away from Network ‘news’, they are horrible liars & u will NEVER get an objective story from them. NEVER.
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It’s all to do with what WAS the Coudenhove-Kerligi plan from the 1920s which Hitlers rise to power and persecution of the Jews halted. “The man of the future will be of mixed race. The races and classes of today will gradually disappear due to the elimination of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-negroid race of the future, similar in appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the current diversity of peoples and the diversity of individuals. Instead of destroying European Judaism, Europe, against her will, refined and educated this people, driving them to their future status as a leading nation through this artificial evolutionary process. It’s not surprising that the people that escaped from the Ghetto-Prison, became the spiritual nobility of Europe. Thus, the compassionate care given by Europe created a new breed of aristocrats. This happened when the European feudal aristocracy crashed because of the emancipation of the Jews [due to the actions taken by the French Revolution]”. A solution to declining and aging population,” Europe will need to accept 159,000,000 migrants by 2025. In 1995 50 years after the end of WW2 when most of EUrape had recovered and Communism had fallen this was replaced by the Barcelona Declaration 1995 which allowed free movement of materials between Muslim countries in North Africa & the M.E. This again was morphed into the Marrakesh POLITICAL declaration 2018 in which the leaders of the EU agreed to import between 150-200 MILLION people from Africa & the M.E Muslim Countries to bred out the WHITE race. The use of mixed race families IS indoctrination of OUR children & Grand children into accepting the future “THEY” have planned and EVERY Corporation is complicit with this. WAKE UP AND FAST. The days of the “Professional Politician” must come to an end and soon.
The destruction and genocide of ethnic cultures and traditions, fully acceptable because the victims are white. Replace smart and well-adjusted nuclear families with violent rape-happy thugs from barbaric war-torn sh!tholes too stupid to think beyond themselves and rebel against the overlords.
I could be wrong but I get the feeling that using interracial couples on commercials has more to do with virtue signaling than anything else. Most colleges and universities are progressive indoctrination camps. Media and marketing professionals likely have respective degrees among their credentials and were taught the way they think. Do not underestimate the social pressures to conform. Virtue signaling is an easy way to keep rich white 20 somethings wearing all black from throwing bricks through your windows. BTW, I’ve dated outside of my race and am attracted to beautiful women of all kinds.
You are right, this is all virtue signaling. Nothing more than seeking that endorphin rush of thinking of oneself to be one of the “good guys”.
Nothing wrong with interracial relationships, but excessively done can lead to the end of timeless cultures and traditions… and I’m not talking about the “end hate” nonsense pro-IR advocates love to spew about.
What a joke are liberal friends in the media and the corporate world are. Seriously, they think inter-racial commercials sell Their products!! If anything it does the opposite, remember the Cheerios commercial? That soon went off the air after a huge backlash.
It’s time for whites to take back their countries. They keep using our niceness against us!!enough. all non whites out of white countries!!!!