It IS that Deep

Written by: Malishka Shaikh-Kannamwar @malishqka

Advertising is becoming increasingly racist. This is not a new revelation, it’s been on the steady rise for a while now, but it has unabashedly bore its teeth recently, with American Eagle and Converse’s ads taking center-stage in pop-culture discourse. So, who's reading too much, and who's reading too little into it?

The Washington Post

Last year, American Eagle made an ad starring Sydney Sweeney with a word play on jeans/genes which was really jarring for most audiences given its Eugenicist references. Genes have long been manipulated by scientific racists to justify racism and slavery, claiming that White/Caucasian genes are scientifically better than those of BIPOC people. They attributed criminality, low intelligence and poverty to people’s genetic makeup rather than recognising them as structural issues and, often, their internalised prejudices. Even though this sentiment was at its peak during Nazi Germany and the apartheid, its prevalence is residual as racists still rely on this as the fundamental truth to support their beliefs, which is why seeing a White, blonde, blue-eyed actress saying she has “good genes” felt deliberate and pointed in the face of racial context. Despite its phonetic similarity, the word does not have enough of a legitimate capacity to serve as a double entendre because of how racially loaded it has historically been. 

Similarly, Converse released a campaign with imagery that concerningly resembled Klu Klux Klan robes and hats, and even implications of lynching. Playing with shadows and shapes can feel creative for a visual campaign, however when multiple of those shapes are reminiscent of a White Supremacist, pretty much terrorist, group, it starts to feel a lot less randomly creative and a lot more deliberate. Michael B. Jordan’s 2026 Vogue spread shows him in on a run-down, tattered couch, in distastefully styled ill-fitting clothes, reminiscent of someone living in poverty against the background of rich florals, big lawns and a huge mansion which doesn’t seem “editorial” as much as it feels microaggressive for an Oscar winner. Moschino’s ad for their banana bag showed a Black man naked apart from yellow underwear as he faces away from the camera while his partner, a fully clothed Latin man, looks to the camera holding the banana bag next to man’s hips. 

• 

  X @cantleavethegc

• 

  Vogue

• 

  BBC

A lot of these controversies get written up as coincidences, giving multinational companies the benefit of doubt, assuming they can make mistakes just like any of us. The issue, however, is that these MNCs aren’t people like you and me. They have several people working in the ideation, review and production stages of their campaigns which suggests that there are multiple people in their teams who have the ability to screen the projects from a variety of points of view. More importantly, we don’t live in a post-race world, and therefore every creative decision made around racialised bodies (which is every body since race has been constructed to discriminate between everyone) should be cross-verified. This means rethinking exoticised and animalised representations of people of colour, as well as depicting White people in specifically supremacist lights.

Ultimately, we can't be certain whether these portrayals are intentional, but most of these MNCs are run by White people with questionable politics (Riccardo Bagolin for Moschino, Chloe Malle and Anna Wintour for Vogue) so it isn't unimaginable. You can’t blindly trust advertisers to present the most sanitised and politically correct ideas to you, because they don’t care about that. Advertising, almost always, equals instigation, and instigation means being talked about by any way possible. This often entails bad publicity, and it seems they're indifferent don’t care even if that is a result of racism. Race-consciousness in a capitalistically-run world is an afterthought. For example, Katseye’s ‘Better in Denim’ ad was seen as a clapback to the American Eagle one due to their racial diversity and lyrics like “it’s better than yours” from Kelis’ Milkshake when both companies have the same shareholders (Vanguard and BlackRock), and, so, the profit is pocketed by the same White men regardless of who the faces of these campaigns are.

• 

  MarketScreener

• 

  MarketScreener

Critics of these ads are often accused of “reading too much” into the messaging, when, for people of colour, these ideas aren't intellectually excavated blame, they are just our reality. The basic disregard for the impact these campaigns have on people of colour is a loud enough message from these companies that they treat us as tools rather than a demographic with desirable enough spending power. They assume baseline trust from their audiences, POC or not, which is given to them because people don’t have the time to be complexly critical of marketing in their daily lives. These brands quite classically take advantage of those lesser aware to sell them things, and even if they aren't able to sell much, they at least become a name someone writes an article about (ha!). Criticality shouldn’t be "deep" though. Being concerned with what you’re consuming shouldn’t be an inconvenience, especially when we are all blindly herded as indiscriminate consumers by those trying to get our hard-earned money.

To denounce pop-culture bait would be ideal, but that isn't realistic so we can, instead, ask for better from these companies while they have our attention. We can ask them to work with BIPOC-run agencies who will always come with a culturally relevant approach, much like our very own Sanxtuary Studios. In an industry flooded with ethnic influences being culturally appropriated and rebranded as White-invented, it is more important than ever to center the communities inspiration is taken from. It’s imperative for brands to be culturally aware, not only as basic regard for marginalised communities, but ultimately, in their interest, also for their profit. To be trusted by your consumer is to understand them, and to understand people, you need to be working with real people and denounce anti-human practices such as outrage publicity and AI that only feed consumer skepticism. Getting more people of colour in these rooms can only make the end result pass with even more flying colours.