CARLTON FLETCHER: Woke ‘color-blind’ ads are little more than pandering

“There’s a man over there. What’s his color? I don’t care. Peace my brother, let us live in peace.”

— Elton John

Some day in the distant future, some group — perhaps scientists, historians or maybe interstellar explorers — will research this modern era and will make an incorrect assumption.

No, future scientists or explorers, let me go ahead and set the record straight: Every couple that existed in 2020s-era America was not a mixed-race couple.

(Side Note: I understand in this hyper-sensitive time that you’re not supposed to talk about anything racial lest you be branded a racist. I’m not one, perhaps the furthest from one you’ll find in these parts, so I won’t spend a lot of time worrying about people who are looking for an excuse — any excuse these days — to point fingers. Let’s just move on.)

I find it humorous — and a little bit disgusting, but we’ll get to that part later — that advertisers in this “woke” (and anyone who is a regular reader of this column knows how I feel about that ridiculous word) age have decided to make every couple in their advertisements symbolize their woke-ness. Thus, the overwhelming majority of commercials are peopled with mixed-race and multicultural families.

What gets me is the way these Madison Avenue types choose to show the blending of American culture. They’ll have the dorkiest-looking — whiter than white, let’s say — guy partnered with a smoking-hot black lady who in real life probably wouldn’t give him the time of day. Or there might be this timid-looking white dude paired up with a militant African-American lady (or, in some cases a person of Hispanic or Asian descent), and they’re engaged in some of the dullest activities available. Nowhere near reality.

Ads also now also feature gay couples (as Seinfeld would say, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”) … in fact the other day I saw an ad that hit the woke America jackpot: a white lesbian couple with two African-American kids.

Look, it’s not offensive in any way that we’re seeing these blended couples and families in advertisements. Heck, such families have long been ostracized in some parts by ignorant, backward-thinking people who see any couple outside their narrow, bigoted perspective as “perverted,” basing that assumption on … well, the fact that they are racists who should be shipped off to separate islands to live with people just like themselves. It’s actually kind of nice to see ads like that that don’t focus on color.

What is offensive, though, is that these advertisers are doing nothing more than pandering. If they thought it would help them sell more of their product, they’d have mass murderers or gopher tortoises or QAnon nut jobs as their spokesmen/women. The fact that companies are trying to fool us into believing they’re putting out their vision of America — all of us living as one people with no concern for such trivial things as skin color or any other such minor difference — is just so much bull. Take it up the food chain of these companies and ask the big wigs what they think of such images. Guarantee it would not be the Kumbaya bull we’re seeing now.

Look, ad agencies, we get it that you think you’re conning us into believing that the racial issues in our country have been solved, as is evidenced by your multicolored family units in all your TV ads. But in a country that has — because of evil politicians and people dumb enough to blindly follow them — been split down the middle around such issues as race, let’s quit blowing smoke up the country’s collective rear.

It’s OK to show a black man and a black woman with black children … a family unit. (In fact, that’s way more woke than your phony mixed-race fantasy.) And it’s OK to show a white couple with white kids. And we’ll give you a break: The overwhelming majority of us don’t really care if there all these blended TV families. Just quit trying to make us think you’re showing them because the company you’re advertising for sees the world that way.

You’re not fooling anyone … and those future scientists and space travelers have now been warned.