Why So Many Blacks in Ads?

One morning at breakfast I said to my wife, “Does T.J. Maxx especially cater to blacks?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“Well, they have a big ad in the paper showing two black women.”

“That’s not unusual. Lots of ads do that.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m noticing. Why do you suppose they do that?”

We are often told that America is still a fundamentally racist society. Not all, or even most, Trump voters are racist. But his campaign did push racist buttons, and racial resentments and anxieties did play a big role. A lot of less educated working class whites were voting against minorities – with a feeling they’re getting more than their due (to the detriment of those whites), and that a less white America is a worse America.

Yet since I noticed that T.J. Maxx ad, I’ve made a point of tallying blacks in ads and commercials. And in fact they are way overrepresented, relative to their 13+% population share. I even saw one TV ad with a white couple whose child looked kind of black. Of course, if you show a bunch of folks, you want to include some minorities. But what about ads with only one or two people, like T.J. Maxx’s? Let me offer a theory.

If this were indeed a racist society, where white people basically dislike, resent, and shun blacks, presumably no business would want to feature blacks in its ads. The purpose of advertising is to make a brand attractive. Advertisers must calculate that black faces actually do that.

Of course, the blacks shown in (modern) ads are not disadvantaged stereotypes; far from it, they are instead middle class people, speaking plain middle class English (not ethnic dialect), shown in typical middle class activities.

And while these ads don’t specifically target black customers, they certainly don’t target less educated working class Trumpites. That’s not at all the consumer demographic advertisers want to reach; those people are just disregarded. Instead, for a lot of ads, the target audience is better educated, more affluent and, especially, younger consumers.

(Indeed, the content of some ads today must baffle older Archie Bunker viewers. Some baffle even me.) That yuppie demographic is where the consumer-spending money is. And for them, blackness is actually attractive; connoting coolness, hipness, with-it-ness, knowing what’s going on. Not inferior but superior. And to this demographic, an America fully integrating blacks is a better America. Putting them in ads hence creates a positive buzz.
Yet this is just one more way in which America is dividing into two very different cultures inhabiting the same body politic. How long can this split personality endure?
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