Saturday, September 02, 2006

Essay 1009


Target depicts a Black female in Paris, yet shows entertainment posters without any references to Josephine Baker?

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For the past few weeks, MultiCultClassics has been paging through general market magazines in search of advertising featuring Black characters. The list included Elle, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, People, Us, Reader’s Digest, TV Guide, Redbook, Woman’s Day, Parents, Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair, Time, Newsweek, Business Week, Forbes and many more.

Excluded were layouts with Black sports figures, celebrities and super models. Additionally, ads depicting group photos including token Black figures were nixed. The goal was to determine the true diversity of the general market adscape.

After poring over scores of publications — and literally thousands of pages of ads and editorial — barely a dozen messages were uncovered.

This week, MultiCultClassics presents the rare findings.

2 comments:

monica said...

i'm saddened to say that this somehow does not surprise me one bit...

on a lark said...

if perchance this was more than just an empty nod to multiculturalism, any black creative working on this project would have known to include at least josephine baker, if not james baldwin, eartha kitt, langston hughes, sally hemmings, richard wright ...should i go on?