Ok so this is ad that Nivea put out a couple of months ago that really caused a stir in society. The magazine ad depicts a clean-cut African American male holding the head/mask of a man with afro style hair and a beard and he's about to throw it away into the air. In the corner the tagline of the ad is " Look Like You Give A Damn. Re-civilize Yourself." Wow. Really?! We are supposedly in a "post-racial" age where this type of thing doesn't happen , at least in public, well this ad has definitely brought us back, once again. African Americans have been trying for decades to strive past the stereotypes that have been placed on them and this certainly doesn't help.
Dwyer would say that this is a good example of "us" the whites/ society/ everyone viewing the "other" the foreign. I realize as I type this I subconsciously identify myself as a part of the "other " that is constantly having stereotypes put on them. We're forced to assume 'foreign' views on this ad using the white norms that Dwyer talks about by saying African Americans that have the "natural african" look that is attributed to the "motherland" aren't civilized and apparently don't, excuse my language, give a shit about what they look like or what others have to say about. If that wasn't bad enough, it then shows the clean cut guy as an example of what he should look like in order to fit into a 'white' world. Although, if one steps back and thinks about it, this claim is entirely false.
On the other hand, what would we would think if the man depicted was white? Would the same things be said? In my opinion I don't think so. Advertisements, as horrible as they are half the time, I believe actually depicts what society thinks whether it's said out loud or not which is just unfortunate about how our world thinks till this day....
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