Decoding the Racism in Advertising and Entertainment with Professor Gene Shelton
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2020
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Advertising, marketing, the entertainment industry and even the news media are selling us something. And what they’re selling usually isn’t good for us. Racist imagery like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are only the tip of the iceberg. Professor Gene Shelton reveals the racism behind advertising, and gets real about reclaiming our representation in media. This is a stirring conversation on how we all advance Black liberation when we up our media literacy game! BHY is produced by PushBlack, the nation’s largest non-profit Black media company - hit us up at BlackHistoryYear.com and share this with your people!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | She was a black woman pursuing a dignified life for herself. |
| 0:07.0 | Little did she know, the racist advertising industry would appropriate her very likeness to sanitize slavery and sell syrup and |
| 0:15.9 | pancakes and they did it without a second thought. |
| 0:20.4 | I'm Jay from Push Black and you're listening to Black History Year. |
| 0:26.0 | We'll hear more about the story of Nancy Green in just a minute. |
| 0:30.0 | And in today's episode we'll also be speaking with Eugene Shelton, a professor at Kent State School of Media and Journalism. |
| 0:38.0 | Shelton was an extremely influential publicist with Motown and CBS Records. If I listed all the |
| 0:45.2 | superstars he worked with we'd never get started. The thing about Gene is that he |
| 0:50.5 | had a front row seat to the image-making machine. From marketing to PR and |
| 0:55.8 | advertising he's the perfect person to break down what were being sold |
| 0:59.9 | even when it's hurting us. |
| 1:11.0 | Nancy Green was born enslaved in Kentucky in 1834. She was broke when she showed up for the modeling audition that would change her life. |
| 1:17.6 | R.T. Davis was not broke, however. The entrepreneur had just bought a packaged goods company. |
| 1:24.0 | Sales were lagging though, and he needed to refresh the image to boost sales. |
| 1:29.0 | When Nancy Green showed up for the audition, |
| 1:32.0 | she didn't know her face would launch a million syrup |
| 1:34.8 | bottles and found a billion dollar breakfast food empire, all while propelling a racist |
| 1:40.8 | trope. |
| 1:41.8 | See, the theme of Aunt Jemima was literally inspired by a |
| 1:45.7 | Black-faced menstrual show. You can't get much more obvious than that, but Artie Davis |
| 1:50.9 | didn't care. It was all about attaching a black woman's face |
| 1:54.8 | to their romanticized remembrance of servitude. |
... |
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