News articles that are about an issue (e.g., housing, employment, education, poverty, language, laws, etc) being experienced by one entire specific racial or ethnic group, who are residents of the United States, and published within the past 4-weeks. Students are to post a (a) copy of the news article, (b) brief summary of the news article identifying the one specific racial/ethnic group reported about, (c) the specific issue faced by the group reported on in the news article, (d) identify and name a theory from chapter 2 of text that could explain the event, (e) state how the theory explains the event and (f) state two constructive, meaningful, and critical thought provoking questions that remain unanswered (to create on-going course discussion) after student's reading of the news article, to the Discussion Forum.an example :Dove Drops an Ad Accused of RacismBy MAGGIE ASTOROCT. 8, 2017A)https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/business/dove-a...In a Facebook ad for Dove body wash, a black woman removes her brown shirt and — voilà! Underneath is a white woman in a light shirt.The ad, a three-second GIF, featured three women, each removing her shirt to reveal the next.But the transition from the black woman to the white women — compiled into a static collage by a social media user — evoked a long-running racist trope in soap advertising: a “dirty” black person cleansed into whiteness. (Among other examples was an ad by the N. K. Fairbank Company, which was in business from 1875 to 1921, that featured a white child asking a black child, “Why doesn’t your mamma wash you with Fairy soap?”)The outcry to the Dove ad, which was posted last week, was swift, with many social media users wondering how it could have made it through multiple layers of review.On Saturday, Dove — owned by Unilever — apologized, writing on Facebook: “Dove is committed to representing the beauty of diversity. In an image we posted this week, we missed the mark in thoughtfully representing women of color and we deeply regret the offense that it has caused.”Marissa Solan, a spokeswoman for Dove, said on Sunday that the GIF “was intended to convey that Dove Body Wash is for every woman and be a celebration of diversity, but we got it wrong and, as a result, offended many people.”She added that Dove had removed the post and was “re-evaluating our internal processes for creating and reviewing content.” She declined to say how many people reviewed the ad or whether any of them were African-American.Critics were unimpressed by the company’s apology.“What was the mark?” the Facebook user Ariel Macklin wrote in a comment that was liked more than 1,100 times. “I mean anyone with eyes can see how offensive this is. Not one person on your staff objected to this? Wow. Will not be buying your products anymore.”Dove’s ad was not an isolated case by one company, but the latest in a long line of tone-deaf ads by many companies.Intel said its intent “was to convey the performance capabilities of our processors through the visual metaphor of a sprinter,” but acknowledged, “Unfortunately, our execution did not deliver our intended message and in fact proved to be insensitive and insulting.”Dove, May 2011In 2011, Dove was criticized for another ad: this one showing three women standing side by side, each with lighter skin than the woman next to her. Behind them were signs reading “before” and “after”; the “before” sign, positioned behind an African-American woman, showed cracked skin, while the “after” sign, behind a white woman, showed smooth skin.“Visibly more beautiful skin,” the ad read.Edelman, the public relations company representing Dove, said in a statement to Gawker: “All three women are intended to demonstrate the ‘after’ product benefit. We do not condone any activity or imagery that intentionally insults any audience.”The fact that the most recent ad was Dove’s second to cause offense was not lost on social media users.Popchips, May 2012Popchips drew fire in 2012 for an ad in which Ashton Kutcher played several characters — including a Bollywood producer named Raj, complete with brownface and an Indian accent.Popchips initially urged viewers to watch the ad in the humorous “spirit it was intended.” Later, its chief executive, Keith Belling, said in a statement: “Our team worked hard to create a lighthearted parody featuring a variety of characters that was meant to provide a few laughs. We did not intend to offend anyone. I take full responsibility and apologize to anyone we offended.”Qiaobi, May 2016In a 2016 commercial for the Chinese company Qiaobi’s laundry detergent, an Asian woman shoves a detergent pod into a black man’s mouth and puts him in a washing machine, from which he emerges as a light-skinned Asian.A spokeswoman for Qiaobi, Xu Chunyan, was unapologetic. “We did this for some sensational effect,” she said at the time. “If we just show laundry like all the other advertisements, ours will not stand out.”Nivea, April 2017In April, the skin care company Nivea released a deodorant ad that read, “White is purity.” White supremacists on the internet took note, with one 4chan user writing, “Nivea has chosen our side.”A representative of Nivea’s parent company, Beiersdorf, said it had “never intended to hurt anybody or to raise any wrong interpretation.”But, like Dove, Nivea had offended before.Six years earlier, after apologizing for an ad that showed a black man preparing to throw away his old Afro-wearing head behind the words “Re-civilize yourself,” it promised to review “current development and approval processes” in order to “avoid any kind of future misleading interpretations.”B) In this article, Dove is criticized for a GIF they advertised on Facebook that shows a black woman beginning to take off a brown shirt, then, as the black woman proceeds to take off the shirt, she is replaced with a white woman with a light shirt.Although Dove claims its intent was to convey that their body wash is for all women, and “a celebration of diversity,” many social media users were offended by the ad.This has not been the first time that Dove has offended with its ads however.In 2011 Dove had another ad that placed three women side-by-side under a cracked sign that read “before,”and under a smooth sign that read “after.”A black woman was standing underneath the “before,” and a white woman underneath the “after,” which read “visibly more beautiful skin,” implying that white women had more beautiful skin than black women.Dove has not been the only company to put forth culturally offensive ads however.Companies such as Nivea and Popchips have also put forth discriminatory and racists ads.C) The Dove ad clearly conveys racism towards Black women and implies that being black does not equal to beauty, or cleanness.It also brings to light the issue of tone-deafness regarding diversity in companies.D) One theory that can explain this event is Systemic Racism, specifically rationalization of oppression.E) The theory applies in that Dove and other companies mentioned in this article are quick to defend and rationalize the racial oppression their ads convey.Their ads underlyingly convey “the white racial frame’s strong stereotyped beliefs and images perpetuated in the media” (Feagin 51).In this case, the negative image of a black woman, portraying her unclean due to the color of her skin.F) Should social media sites have an assigned cultural diversity competence group who is responsible for approving/disproving ads prior their posting?What consequences do you think should result for companies who clearly are tone-deaf regarding diversity, and advertise ads such as these that are offensive to minority groups?
