A new Cheerios commercial has received so much racist backlash for featuring an interracial family that the company was forced to shut down the YouTube comments section for the video.
The new commercial makes no real reference to the family’s race at all and simply shows a young mixed girl talking to her mother about whether or not cheerios are healthy for your heart.
Her mother, who is Caucasian, explains that Cheerios are indeed good for your heart and then the camera cuts to an African American man waking up on the couch with Cheerios poured all over him.
As adorable as the commercial may be, it has received tons of unnecessary backlash that serves as an unfortunate reminder that we still have much more work to do when it comes to getting an equal representation of all types of families on TV and living in a world where nobody is judged for the color of their skin.
While the comments section has been taken down now, Adweek claimed that many of the vicious comments made racist references to Nazis and “racial genocide.”
Other comments attacked the African American male in the commercial saying that the woman in the ad is nothing more than a single mom in the making.
“More like single parent in the making,” one man wrote about the commercial. “Black dad will dip out soon.”
Other users said the sight of a biracial couple made them “want to vomit” and they found it “disgusting.”
Of course, portraying more interracial families on TV is a step in the right direction when it comes to getting equality. People who are living in a backwards mindset shouldn’t be able to easily avoid seeing America’s true colors portrayed all throughout the media.
Music, movies, television programs, commercials, books, advertisements, everywhere they look they should be reminded that American is not a country divided by race anymore.
For now, however, with such a low percentage of interracial families being portrayed in the media and an even lower percentage being portrayed in a non-stereotypical fashion it seems like it will be easy for the racist slur slinging YouTube commenter to consider biracial families as taboo.
One Reddit user commented on how long it took for a commercial to come out portraying a biracial family as just any other American family.
“So, about 50 years we’ll see our first commercial with same sex parents… Progress,” the user wrote.
With a mixed family receiving such terrible comments on YouTube it is not telling when companies will feel like they can push out a same sex parents ad without being picketed and boycotted the very next day – but then again should companies be wiling to take that risk anyway for the sake of the bigger picture?
The good news, however, is that for all the negative comments on YouTube there seemed to be two or three more users who appreciated what Cheerios has done.
“Having been mixed in the ‘70s, I’d like to thank everyone at Cheerios for making a commercial with an interracial couple,” one woman posted on Facebook. “Going to buy boxes today! Many thanks for reflecting what my family looked like.”
Another woman wrote, “Just watched your commercial with the biracial family. Beautiful. Thank you so much.”
As for Cheerios, they are extremely proud of the commercial and are not letting the hatred filled comments ruin the message they intended to send out.
“Consumers have responded positively to our new Cheerios ad,” Cheerios Vice President of Marketing Camille Gibson said. “At Cheerios, we know there are many kinds of families and we celebrate them all.”
