Liam’s mother said in her interview with
The Sun magazine that she has experienced
racism first hand and so the sentiments
she saw on twitter with everyone trying
to ‘defend’ her from corporate abuse
were false impressions. She would have
probably preferred that someone would
have stood up for her when she was called
a monkey on a cruise ship. Surprisingly, only the black boy got the
spotlight while this should have been
reason for an uproar to end racism and
stereotypes. The Arab boy’s sweater
must have been H&M’s humorous way
of associating Arabs with terrorism or
Asians with eating dogs. However, we
only concentrated on what was clear and
open to the eyes of our mind.
Similarly, the woman in the Dove ad
was contributing towards making black
skinned people understand that they are
also beautiful. The real question then
is, were the social media defendants
pretending to care in these two episodes?
Are these not the same people who would
openly practice racism? A critical analysis of the whole advert
would have probably gotten H&M shut
down across the world. The whole ad
was a ridicule of the existing realities of
our socio-cultural setup. It is however a
depiction of the reality of our present day
culture.
The pre-existing stereotypes around
people of certain races has led us to
become selective in how we would defend
our norms and beliefs. For instance, in
the case of the H&M, there were other
children wearing hoodies; specifically a
colored Arab boy with a sweater written
‘I’m the bomb’ and an Asian boy with a
sweater written ‘Puppy Fever’.
10 MAL22/18 ISSUE
In Kenya today, skin lighting creams
are openly sold in the corner of every
street and on social media. Social media
has created mini goddesses out of some
women who were formerly dark skinned
and have now become light skinned.
These stars have hundreds of thousands
of followers who cheer them on about
their light-skinned beauty. They have even
started selling beauty products which are
high on demand among women wanting
to achieve the same effect.
Yet, when Dove advertised their beauty
cream that would enable women lighten
their skin, even women who would buy
such products were aghast by the ad,
saying they have been offended. The same
thing is happening in today’s society, but
nobody has bothered to comment on it.
In the case of racism and stereotypes, we
are all guilty of being racist or carrying
certain stereotypes. Whenever we think
about things like terrorism, we lean
towards certain people. Drug peddling
is only thought to be done mostly by
people from certain countries. Our
religious, moral and ethical biases shape
our worldview every day but these are
conversations we prefer to have in closed
circles or as monologues.
That is why the world was up in a roar
when H&M and Dove were having open
conversation about existing realities.
Heck, they even went to the extent of
turning these realities into adverts and