If there’s one thing corporations seem to have nailed down at the moment, it’s the ability to make the perfect knee-jerk reaction to social media outrage.
The latest trend is for corporations to beg for acceptance from the angry woke mob by suddenly deciding that their own logos and brand images are racist simply because they happen to contain black characters or personalities.
The irony here is that their actions would suggest the exact opposite of what they’re trying to promote with these pandering promises to change their brand images.
The latest example is the decades-old brand of rice products known as Uncle Ben’s. Now owned by the Mars company, they announced that they would be changing the branding of Uncle Ben’s rice to reflect their goal of ending racial biases. You can see part of their corporate statement regarding the issue below:
“As a global brand, we know we have a responsibility to take a stand in helping to put an end to racial bias and injustices,”…
So let me get this straight, the Mars food company plans on taking a stand to end racial injustices towards black people by removing all traces of black people from their brands? How exactly does that make sense? Does the Mars company now believe that black people cannot be used to promote products?
All of this sounds EXACTLY like something a clueless, racially insensitive company would do simply to pander to whatever they thought was popular at the time. They would hear about a social justice trend in regards to race, then they would quickly look through their brand portfolio and spot any that happened to have a logo that depicted a black person, then put out a corporate statement saying they plan on changing it without ever stopping to think if it was ever racist in the first place.
It’s such a hilarious knee-jerk reaction that if we were living in normal times, the press would be all over this ill-conceived and pandering move by a giant corporate conglomerate. But instead, since the mainstream media demands complete submission to their woke beliefs, they simply chalk this one up as a success despite it being totally ludicrous and meaningless.
The funniest thing about the Mars company jumping to change the Uncle Ben’s rice logo is that the character is simply an old black man. It’s not a throwback to any particular time or place and he’s not wearing a costume. The character was used because his image suggested an experienced man who produced high quality rice. There is nothing stereotypical about him at all, he’s just an old black guy wearing a suit.
So what exactly is the problem here? The truth is, there is no problem and this whole incident should be exposed for what it is, a huge misstep by the Mars company. They should be ashamed alright, but not for the Uncle Ben’s logo, but for the fact that they’re so clueless they panicked and put out a blanket statement saying they’re going to remove any black characters from their brand portfolios without actually stopping to think if they were racist or not.
How is the Uncle Ben’s logo any different from choosing a black actor to be in a TV commercial? Is simply the fact that they’re black now suddenly problematic? If so, that sounds exactly like the kind of racial insensitivity the woke mob is pretending to be fighting against.
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