links for 2011-07-22

By On July 22, 2011 · 9 Comments
  • Summer's Eve Talking-Vagina Ads Aren't Racist, Says Agency | Adweek
    Behold, the corporate "black friend" play. – LDP "For its part, The Richards Group is defending the campaign. Agency founder Stan Richards offers this statement to Adweek: "We have a wonderful client that recognizes no matter what they do, marketing in the feminine hygiene category is going to provoke a reaction. After listening to thousands of women say they want straight-talk and lighthearted communication on a historically-uncomfortable topic, Summer's Eve gave us license to be bold, irreverent and celebratory across a multitude of mediums and to different audiences. We are surprised that some have found the online videos racially stereotypical. We never intended anything other than to make the videos relatable, and our in house multi-cutural experts confirmed the approach."
    (tags: advertising race stereotypes)
  • Mamiverse: New Website Targets Latina Mothers, a Rising Demographic | The Daily Beast
    "Mamiverse wants to be for Latinas what Oprah Winfrey was for African-Americans: a pal, a spiritual adviser, and, more subtly, an image changer. In a period when American-born Latinas have been caught in the national freakout about “border security,” Mamiverse offers them a new spokeswoman. She’s a particular kind of Latina mom—an English-speaking, all-American gal. “The young, acculturated, affluent, online Latina is speaking English, and is imbibing media in English,” says Rene Alegria, the site’s 36-year-old founder and CEO.

    Alegria wants Mom—benevolent and wise, skeptical and demanding—to lead the political conversation. “We’re rebranding our community,” he says."

    (tags: latino latin@s identity branding marketing internet)
  • Letter to Director Morton regarding Secure Communities | New York Immigration Coalition
    "Secure Communities encourages racial profiling and indiscriminately funnels immigrants into an unjust and dysfunctional immigration detention and deportation system. Secure Communities contributed to the record number of detentions and deportations in 2010. Despite ICE’s claim that the program was designed to keep communities safe, Secure Communities has instead served as nothing more than a tool in meeting ICE’s goal of deporting 400,000 immigrants per year, channeling immigrants into deportation proceedings – regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent, how serious their criminal history is, how long ago their criminal charges occurred, what kind of rehabilitation they have demonstrated, or what ties they have to the community."  
    (tags: immigration deportation policy police)
  • Half of US Social Program Recipients Believe They "Have Not Used a Government Social Program" | Boing Boing
    ""Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era," a paper by Cornell's Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions Suzanne Mettler features this remarkable chart showing that about half of American social program beneficiaries believe that they "have not used a government social program." It's the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" phenomena writ large: a society of people who subsist on mutual aid and redistributive policies who've been conned (and conned themselves) into thinking that they are rugged individualists and that everyone else is a parasite."
    (tags: government policy poverty socialjustice)
 
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  • jvansteppes

    The road to hell is paved with “in house multi-cutural experts”.

  • http://molecularshyness.wordpress.com jen*

    They’re SURPRISED people find those commercials racist????  Their “multicultural experts” cosigned this nonsense???

    I got nothing.  My brain fried when I read that.

  • Anonymous

    One wonders what cultures on which they were experts to not consider those ads racist.  Their qualifications as “multicultural experts” were probably obtained through hours of watching Good Times, Madea movies, and Charo clips.  

  • Lyonside

    It’s probably the classic “_I_ Personally wasn’t offended, and since I must speak for all [black/Latina/Asian] women, it must be true.”  Which is the problem with tokenism vs. honest diversity, especially in politics or the workplace or a school environment: one person’s sensitivity filter can be very poorly attuned to the cultures and subcultures to which they happen to belong… especially when they’re in a corporate environment, with likely the majority culture in charge, and their salary is being paid BY THOSE IN THE MAJORITY SUPPORTING THE STATUS-QUO.

  • http://twitter.com/mezz98 gillian rosheuvel

    There’s a lot of fail in those ads. So much that I don’t even know where to begin in critiquing them. 

  • Dark_Moon

    I can totally understand and respect Mamiverse’s commitment to fulflling the needs of  a particular niche/population that is undeserved.  I believe Christiana from Telemundo and her talk show has been copying Oprah for years down to her own magazine in order to stay relevant to a certain upper class Latina while still being non-threatening to working class latinas. However I don’t believe Oprah ever focused on Black women exclusively. Maybe in passing, but her message has always been parsed to accomodate all women.   Her universality is what made her appealing and she  (with the Hermes debacle aside) was able to transcend beyond a Black woman talk show host and became simply Oprah.

  • Dark_Moon

    I can totally understand and respect Mamiverse’s commitment to fulflling the needs of  a particular niche/population that is undeserved.  I believe Christiana from Telemundo and her talk show has been copying Oprah for years down to her own magazine in order to stay relevant to a certain upper class Latina while still being non-threatening to working class latinas. However I don’t believe Oprah ever focused on Black women exclusively. Maybe in passing, but her message has always been parsed to accomodate all women.   Her universality is what made her appealing and she  (with the Hermes debacle aside) was able to transcend beyond a Black woman talk show host and became simply Oprah.

  • http://twitter.com/DYomoah Doreen Yomoah

    I like how the the Richards Group insists the ads are NOT racist, just because they say they aren’t. By that logic, I can punch someone, but it’s not assault, just because I say it’s not.

  • http://twitter.com/DYomoah Doreen Yomoah

    I like how the the Richards Group insists the ads are NOT racist, just because they say they aren’t. By that logic, I can punch someone, but it’s not assault, just because I say it’s not.

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