Racists won’t take a break for Christmas
Over the weekend, UK supermarket, Sainsbury’s unveiled the first of three Christmas ads to promote their festive range. Entitled Gravy Song, it tells a heart-warming story of a grown daughter hoping to get home for Christmas and taste her dad’s best ever gravy. So lovely, right?
Well, Twitter wasn’t having any of it.
What I hadn’t mentioned before was that the family featured in the ad were all black. Since the commercial aired, racists and bigots have come in their droves to slam the video online and register their complaints. Many have tweeted the ad “does not represent” them, whilst others claimed they’ll even be boycotting the supermarket.
Sainsbury’s has been accused of virtue signalling, being overly-PC, and even being divisive for not showing a mixed family.
At the time of posting this bog, the video has already amassed over 2.3million views, almost 13,000 retweets, and more than 4,500 comments. So many of those comments though, are disgusting and sad reminders to us all that the UK absolutely still has a racism problem (to put it mildly).
As @thevoiceofcolour comments in their Instagram post:
“Imagine feeling so entitled that you expect 100% of media outlets to feature someone who looks like you 100% of the time and anything less is an abomination to our society. Just put your KKK hood on and go.”
I think that line really hits the nail on the head. The sheer level of sense of entitlement these racists have is outstanding. They truly think they have been wronged because in one advert, they can’t see anyone who looks like them. How do they think every other person of colour in the UK has felt for the entire history of advertising?
Since the beginning of adland, people of colour have either not been represented at all — despite Britain being one of the most multicultural and diverse places in the world — or have been misrepresented, with gross stereotypes playing out on our screens and in our magazines. These give ‘truth’ to bigoted ideas and further affirm people’s biases.
I work in marketing, and since the Black Lives Matter movement this summer, have seen a definitive shift in attitude in adland towards more diverse representation. Better later than never? But as one colleague put to me today, we will never please everyone in advertising and so we must continue to do what we feel is the right thing.
Ensuring diverse talent is used both in front of and behind the camera in advertising is essential in creating truly representational content. It is not only a good thing that Sainsbury’s are trying to be more inclusive in their advertising, but it is the right thing.
It’s been interesting listening to friends and colleagues discuss the backlash. Many have professed their shock at the online diatribe and were quick to announce their disgust. I don’t blame them — it is disgusting after all. But what was really interesting was noting that the people who expressed their shock, were white people. Sadly, the people of colour didn’t seem surprised. Rather, they were frustrated with the fact this online sentiment was actually not a surprise.
We know racists still exist. We know they come out as keyboard warriors, hiding behind their England flag-littered social handles. And we know they don’t like anything that deviates from their white supremacist ideals.
As it turns out, they won’t even give us a break for Christmas. Racism is an incessant, suffocating presence that tries its hardest to stamp out joy and human decency. The time of year or festive seasons make no difference to this, and so it means we too must not break from our anti-racism work.
I hope we all get to see our loved ones this Christmas and enjoy good food and company and general festivities. I also hope that we all use this time together to reflect on the year we’ve had and what work must still be done.
