Richard Houck, "The War Against Whites in Advertising"

The mass-marketing of interracial relationships, particularly white women with black men, has become so ubiquitous and so militant, even the least observant members of our culture have begun to notice. Walking through a mall recently I noticed three large marketing images of couples in three different stores. Two of the three were interracial couples, depicting a white woman and black man; the third couple was white. Perhaps what struck me as most peculiar was the fact that the city where I was shopping, whites make up about 97% of the population, blacks are less than 2%. I wondered if the purpose of “diverse” advertising was to sell more products, or really to indoctrinate, to condition, and signal how “progressive” they are.

Based on small glimpses of culture, one might assume half or more of all relationships involve some sort of race-mixing. If a person who had no information about the US or Europe were to see our television, magazine, billboard, and storefront advertisements, he might assume there were virtually zero normal white men anywhere to be found. The combination of white women with black men is hands down, the most common mixed-race couple depicted in advertising; that combination will be the focus of this essay.

I thought about the probability that two of the three advertisement couples I saw in the mall that afternoon were there by mere coincidence. Between men and women, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and “other,” there are 25 possible combinations of couples. Twenty of which are interracial. Here are the possible interracial combinations.

Mixed-Race Couple Combinations

White women: black man, Asian man, Hispanic man, other man.

White men: black woman, Asian woman, Hispanic woman, other woman.

Black man: Asian woman, Hispanic woman, other woman.

Black woman: Asian man, Hispanic man, other man.

Asian man: Hispanic woman, other woman.

Asian woman: Hispanic man, other man.

Hispanic man: other woman.

Hispanic woman: other man.

If the “diversity” in advertising was truly about appealing to the greatest number of customers or potential customers, showing white women with black men at such a high level, seems to be a very odd strategy. To focus so much on one combination, while ignoring so many others – there simply must be some other goal beyond selling merchandise.

Outcomes

There is a notable and interesting body of research on interracial relationships and marriages, it is not exhaustive by any means, but we can synthesize the available data to form an accurate view of such relationships. Pew Research 2012 conducted a large study of interracial marriage that provides a considerable amount of data. Since 1980, the total percent of interracial marriages has risen from 3.2% to 8.4%. Of new marriages, the rate rose from 6.7% to 15.1%. In 2010 the most common intermarriage was white/Hispanic, at 43.3%, other mixed at 30.4%, white/Asian at 14.4% and white/black, the least common, at 11.9%. Not all interracial relationships, of course, are marriages, but we can use the marriage data to reasonably extrapolate the information to the wider society and relationships….[   ]