In a country where the majority is Black, you’d expect a more realistic portrayal of Black people. Right? Not in South Africa, no. In SA’s advertising industry the higher the ranks become, the Whiter the executives. This lack of representation allows one dangerous thing to prosper: stereotypes. Stereotypes that display Black people as nothing more than entertainment for other races.
According to TV, Black people dance for every and anything. You’re selling insurance and want it to appeal to the Black market? Put a few Black people dancing in the ad, that should do it! Selling sanitary pads? Same strategy! What exactly are we dancing for? The land the colonizers stole from us and then forced us to work on for next to nothing? The “hush hush” racism Black people in SA face and are told to “get over”? I want answers – just don’t put them in an ad!
It sounds like a baseless rant, I know, but here’s the thing: no matter the age group, Black people are put out as paupers who dance for and celebrate a fifty cent decrease in the price of airtime. Fifty cents. Never will you see a White person doing the same thing and if they are, a Black person is teaching them how to dance. Do we look like choreographers to these White (and sometimes, even other POC) folk? Well, we aren’t.
For a moment let’s forget the whole dancing thing. How about the fact that whenever washing powder is being advertised White women use a washing machine and the Black women use their hands? (Notice how only women are cast in washing powder ads, but that’s for another day.) What, don’t Black people own washing machines? Are we too poor? Or are we just too stupid to know that a washing machine exists? You’d think making us dance around, never using washing machines would be enough but no there’s more.
Apparently, all Black people speak the same. Broken English (also known as “Cut and Paste English”) is English that often isn’t grammatically correct and typically comes with an accent many find funny. The tone is always depicted as comedic and stupid, usually when a character speaks in Broken English whatever they’re saying is purely meant to make you laugh. These companies are making fun of Black people for learning a language (most probably their third or fourth language) and turning it around to make us seem stupid. Even if we did all speak Broken English, we are certainly not stupid.
Even the products we are portrayed to be buying feed the stereotypes. You’re selling Chicken? Put a Black person in that ad! You’re an investment company? Well, er maybe put the Black person in the ad as a construction worker and make their employer a White person? Yes! Like, do they not know that Black people also know what it is to invest? Do they not know that we too can be employers and not employees? Of course they know, they just don’t care to acknowledge it.
Men’s Health International may be the worst transgressor. Every single advert about erectile dysfunction has a Black man in it, never a White man. We all know the stereotype that Black men are “well endowed” which sexualizes Black men so so so much. Further portraying Black men as those who suffer from erectile dysfunction (or anything to do with penises really) further perpetuates that it’s an issue that Black men alone face and further sexalizes them.
There never seems to be any thought put into these pathetic ads other than “So how can we make Black people look stupid today?”. These adverts all have the same outplayed narrative that just bleeds White mediocrity and we are sick of it.
