Quote:
Originally Posted by Rococo
Your argument doesn't even work as a theoretical exercise.
Imagine a world in which 60% of people have purple skin and 40% of people have blue skin. 1/3 of the people with purple skin (i.e., 20% of the total population) are highly prejudiced against people with blue skin. If a person with blue skin advertises a product, this 20% will completely abstain from buying the product. But the other 2/3 of purple skin people (i.e., 40% of the total population) love people with blue skin. Any time a person with blue skin advertises a product, everyone in this 40% will buy the product.
The blue skin people are even more prejudiced. If a purple skin person advertises a product, only one quarter of blue skin people (i.e., 10% of the total population) will buy the product.
And both people with purple skin and people with blue skin love products that are advertised using people of their own skin color. If a purple skin person advertises a product, all purple skin people will buy the product. Ditto for the blue skin people.
In this hypothetical absurd world, advertisers would only use blue skin people to advertise their products. And you would erroneously cite this behavior as evidence of a lack of prejudice against blue-skinned people, when in fact there is a high rate of prejudice in both groups.
This.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PointlessWords
Rap is the most popular music genre
Does that mean racism is gone?
There couldn’t possibly be any other reason for this
Consider if African American porn was the top porn category in the country, does that mean racism against black people is over?
Do you know when racism is over? When people are treated equally and equitably, the same as feminism.
And this.
Now, OP isn't arguing that racism is over, but I think these posts speak to it being rather silly to think the number of minorities in advertising in any way suggests where the US is at in terms of racism. As Rococo has said in the post above and others, advertisers are targeting demographics, not trying to sell the same products/product lines to everyone with a single ad. And as PW is alluding to, the popularity in media/pop culture of a given race, gender, or any other identifiable characteristic is in no way indicative of the level of bigotry against said group.