Racial Implications of an Advertisment

The other day, as I was trying to find a picture for this assignment, I stumbled across the picture at the top of the "personals" section of a local paper. On the surface, it seemed racially balanced. It certainly wasn't structured to make an outward statement about race. However, just the way it's laid out reflects subtle and probably unconscious judgements of the nature of race, and how it affects us. It has small, individual photos of six people, of varying race and age. The two people farthest to the left are a bit older, perhaps in their forties. I was not sure about one of the pictures: my first opinion was that it was a young Hispanic man, but she is really a partially African female. In short, there was variety here. However, the ad uses race to sell by avoiding the implication of interracial relationships, showing predominantly "white" people, and showing a mix of people from different races.

The ad does not explicitly show an interracial couple, even though people of many races advertise in the personals. The ad seems to avoid pairing people together as couples too much. There aren't any words like "Look what perfect couple found each other!" The people probably are not professional models, either. The implication is that the people shown represent either the people who are advertising or all potential readers of an ad that one might place. Perhaps it is significant that there is a bit of a bias toward men in the ad; they are placed more to the left. A reader will generally see the men first as he scans the ad. This could mean that the service is trying to sell more to women. If so, it is also avoiding the implication that a customer might be placed in a racially inferior dating relationship. It does not show any black men, and it certainly doesn't show a black man with a white woman.

The ad doesn't show an obviously Hindu or Sikh man or woman either, although the indeterminate person could be a never-married Hindi woman. Now, people from India are a minority by far, and the old culture involved prearranged marriages, but there are cities in this country where a good 30-40% of the people are of Indian descent, such as Fremont, California. Many of their young people are making "love marriages", based on the traditional American process of dating. This is a concern to some orthodox Hindu and Punjabi people, but others see it as necessary adaptation to modern society. However, the presence of marriage-symbols from other cultures in this ad would probably confuse readers, and would unconsciously be perceived as a threat to the dating-process that it is trying to sell.

Those races that the ad does depict are semi- "white". For instance, it shows an east-Asian young man; some scholars feel that the population regards Asians as a "model minority". Another young man could be Latino, but Spanish is a European language, and the Spanish culture is quintessentially western. The oldest person in the ad is a white man. The youngest person in an African-American woman, but even she appears to be of a mixed race.

In spite of these distortions of reality that the authors of the ad foist upon us, they clearly made some attempt at portraying diversity. Many organizations attempt to politically benefit themselves by making public their diverse nature, even if they have to hire a few "token" blacks first. The creators of this ad are no exception. The modern American mind probably reacts positively to images of racially diverse groups. I know I have regarded "racism" as evil since I first heard the term. In today's society, it is very unwise for anyone to be openly racist, even with a just cause behind it. However, it is in little things like this ad that we see the carefulness with which one has to act in such a climate. Had the authors more openly portrayed race, they would have offended more people and lost business. Had they shown six white men, the reader would have been bored. In fact, because of statistical chance, a certain number of gatherings in even the most diverse society will be monoracial. For instance, in making random pairs out of a gender-balanced population, one will make half of them same-gender. A class with twenty women and two men might happen once in a while, even though it is not likely.

How many people look at the personal ads and decide not to date because they don't see their race there? Not many. That is what the creators of the ad intended. In a liberal society, people should not be overly concerned about racial differences when they are dating. They should not worry about class differences either. I have heard advice that it is harder for interracial couples to have a successful marriage, because of cultural differences, but the person who issued this hastily remarked that this was the only problem, and that one says a false doctrine by saying that one race or another is inferior. In the end, one could use this ad in racist or race-unifying arguments, in spite of the intentions of the authors. I am simply glad that I don't have to use it to find potential dating contacts. (At any rate, I haven't done so yet.)