In case you don’t watch television—or if you do, but tune out the commercials—you may not have seen Proctor and Gamble’s new ad. It’s titled “The Talk,” and it has ignited a firestorm of racist backlash on social media.
The commercial is part of a larger advertising campaign titled “My Black is Beautiful.”
Writing for Salon, Gabriel Bell said the “moving” ad captures “The Talk” every black parent has with their kids:
Yes, it's a commercial — but damn this journey into the effects of racism is a good one. As they grow up in a nation where almost every system is stacked against them, most black children have had “the talk” with their parents — that moment or series of moments where their mother or father reveals the stakes for African Americans in our country in an attempt to shield them from the effects of institutional racism by explaining and preparing them for it ...
Now, yes, this is an ad — a commercial that, in as much as it is geared to do anything else, is built to stir up goodwill for a multinational, profit-driven conglomerate that has historically been as much a participant in the longstanding practice of championing white beauty over black beauty as any other in the cosmetics field. As many others before it, this campaign seeks to employ progressive thought and the appearance of love and concern for fully capitalist ends. In that, it is an example of the very machine that has historically suppressed blacks, virtue washing itself using their goals and experiences.
But damn if this isn’t a good example of that trend. Coupled with “My Black is Beautiful,” it at the very least offers understanding and the opportunity for black people to say, hey, me too. Hopefully it will get at least a few white people to internalize and appreciate something they rarely get to see and often don’t understand, the human, personal cost of racism that forces parents to sit their kids down and have “the talk.”
You can watch the ad, in its entirety, below.
To be very honest, it’s getting really tiring being told any mention of race, racism, or racial bias is ‘racist.’
So it’s good to see P&G push back against the backlash.
Soap giant Procter & Gamble is standing by a controversial ad "The Talk" that has some whites in a lather and blacks showing clean support.
The ad, uploaded to YouTube last week, shows black mothers throughout the decades discussing racism with their children — and it was seen by some as having an anti-white message.
But the company disagreed with critics this week.
"People were like, 'Thank you for speaking my truth,'" P&G spokesman Damon Jones told Eurweb.com. "But, it has been a past interesting couple of days where we've seen a few people position the ad quite differently and stoke some fires."
Those fires include a critique from the right-leaning National Review, which called the ad "identity-politics pandering."
Why is it not surprising that Buckley’s raft for racists, the National Review, doesn’t approve?
BET’s Renee Samuel notes that “Even mentioning race is the new racism!”
Procter & Gamble is not here for the hurt feelings of conservatives.
Last week, the company starting getting heat from folks complaining their ad campaign “The Talk," via the company’s My Black Is Beautiful initiative, was racist against white people. Discussing the realities of race that Black Americans experience on a daily basis is considered racist? Even mentioning race is the new racism!
P&G is standing by the ad. Damon Jones, P&G’s director of global company communications, beautifully told EURweb.com, “When we launched this video a few weeks ago, the first couple of weeks all we were hearing were very positive messages. People were like, ‘Thank you for speaking my truth.’
The foul and ugly comments and videos that have surfaced surrounding this ad are easy enough to find, so they won’t be posted here.
But this isn’t the first commercial to ignite racist outrage (Cheerios, anyone?), and it won’t be the last.
For example, I was a part of the “Black is Beautiful” movement launched in the ‘60s:
While The Black is Beautiful movement started in the 1960s, this fight for equal rights and a positive perception of the African American body starts much earlier in American history. The reason this moment took form was because the media and society as a whole had a negative perception of the African American body as suitable only for slave status.[6] The Black is Beautiful movement was based around a fight for an equal perception of the black body to help undo all the negative ideas brought about by a history based in white supremacy.
More than 50 years later, these issues are still on the table. I’m headed to the Kinks, Locks, and Twists Conference in Philly next week where these topics will be discussed alongside reproductive and environmental justice.
I was given the talk. My friends give their kids and grandkids the talk. In a world where people spew bile at our graceful and brilliant first lady Michelle Obama and her daughters, who are beautifully black, it is patently clear that it will be a long walk before we leave the talk—and the racism that has necessitated it—behind us.
Join us in walking forward into that future.