Thursday, April 1, 2010

Madison org's ad generates race-based controversy


The Madison School and Community Recreation Program (MSCR) ran an advertisement promoting its summer programming in Isthmus newspaper on March 5. The ad (seen at left) was then posted on Fail Blog for all the world to berate. And joke we did. Comments ranged from the more subtle, "Must be a tanning salon," to the more blunt and outright, "White men can’t jump, so send your basketball playing kid to MSCR and we’ll replace him with a black one."

Jay Leno also did a bit about the ad on The Tonight Show last Monday. See it here. (Skip to 2:00 to see the ad reference)

The advertisement and subsequent commentary generated enough controversy that MSCR decided to run a different ad (the cover of their 2010 summer programming guidebook) in Isthmus this week.

What to make of this ad? When I first saw it, I wasn't offended. I thought, "MSCR makes kids happy." And I believe this is what MSCR intended for readers to think. But lest we forget, America is far from colorblind, and readers injected race faster than you can say Madison School and Community Recreation Program.

My thought on the racialization of this ad is, "Wouldn't it have been worse if the kids were switched?" If the white kid was the happy kid, and the black kid was the pre-MSCR sad face? Switching the kids would tap into a historic fallacy that black=bad, sad, downtrodden and without opportunity, while whiteness=good, happy and upwardly mobile. (Side note: Look up "black" and "white" in the dictionary. A professor had our class do this once, and man was it shocking.)

Say what you will, but I applaud MSCR. Yes, applaud. Their advertisement shows an effort toward diversity in advertising. By including nonwhites who defy stereotypical notions of blacks in America, MSCR helps break down racial barriers and integrate the races. The ad's presence on Fail Blog and The Tonight Show speaks not of MSCR's goals but of society's constant awareness of race. In criticizing MSCR, we are actually making a statement about our own hyper-awareness of color, to the detriment of our society.

Photo Credit: Madison School & Community Recreation

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