TV ads project racial harmony

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ever see an inner-city schoolyard filled with white, Asian and black teens shooting hoops? Or middle-aged white and Latino men swigging beer and watching the Super Bowl on their black neighbor’s couch? Or Asians and Latinos dancing the night away in a hip-hop club?

All it takes is a television.

Yes, that mesmerizing mass purveyor of aspiration, desire and self-awareness regularly airs commercials these days that show Americans of various races and ethnicities interacting in integrated schools, country clubs, workplaces and homes, bonded by their love of the products they consume.

Think about one of Pepsi’s newest spots, “Refresh Anthem,” which debuted during the Super Bowl. The ad, which features Bob Dylan and hip-hop producer will.i.am, is a collage of images from the ’60s and today that celebrate generations past and present.

Whites and blacks are shown returning from war, surfing, skateboarding, dancing and waving American flags at political rallies, while a boyish Dylan and a present-day will.i.am take turns singing the Dylan classic, “Forever Young,” each in his signature style.

Or, take the latest hit spot from ETRADE, which stars the ETRADE Baby, a 9-month-old white boy, and his newest buddy — a black infant who, from his own highchair, agrees with the wisdom of online investing even in a down economy.

Ads like these are part of a subtle, yet increasingly visible strategy that marketers refer to as “visual diversity” — commercials that enable advertisers to connect with wider audiences while conveying a message that corporate America is not just “in touch,” racially speaking, but inclusive.

For much of the past century, “minorities were either invisible in mainstream media, or handed negative roles that generally had them in a subservient position,” says Jerome Williams, a professor of advertising and African-American studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Today, you’re starting to see a juxtaposition of blacks and whites together, doing the things people do. ... Now, advertisers are not in a position of pushing social justice. But to the extent that they can put whites and blacks together in situations, I think that’s a good thing.”

To advertisers, these “multiculti” ads are simply smart business — a recognition of a new cultural mainstream that prizes diversity, a recognition that we are fast approaching a day when the predominant hue in America will no longer be white.

And yet, some critics wonder if depicting America as a racial nirvana today may have an unintended downside — that of airbrushing out of the public consciousness the economic and social chasms that still separate whites, blacks and Latinos.

Even on Madison Avenue, which is generating the inclusive messages, recent studies find few nonwhites in decision-making and creative positions within the advertising industry itself.

Are multiculti ads, then, an accurate barometer of our racial progress, a showcase of our hopes in that direction — or a reminder of how far we still have to go?

Whites still hold most of the economic clout in the United States — 85.5 percent of the nation’s annual buying power of $10 trillion, according to a 2007 study by the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia.

In recent years, though, marketers have been revising old assumptions and campaigns in anticipation of profound shifts in the nation’s demographics.