Stop Using President Obama to Sell Stuff!

Note to the international community: Cut it out! Stop using President Obama to sell snacks and services.

First there was Obama chicken fingers from Germany. Now, there's Duet ice cream out of Russia to add to the color obsessed Obama-food pyramid:

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian advertising agency has used an image resembling U.S. President Barack Obama to promote a new vanilla-and-chocolate ice cream, drawing the ire of human rights groups who said the ad was vulgar.

Ice Cream Plant No. 3 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg launched last week a new brand named Duet.

The poster features a computer-generated caricature of a broadly smiling figure resembling Obama standing in front of the [Capitol] with the ice cream in the foreground.

The strapline reads: "It's on everyone's lips -- the Dark is in the White!" Source

"We wanted to make the print amusing and cheerful, just as joyful and pleasant as the process of eating an ice cream," Yevgeny Primachenko, deputy creative director of Voskhod advertisement agency, told Reuters by phone from Yekaterinburg.

"This is just a vanilla ice cream with a chocolate filling," Primachenko said. "We decided: why not use such a great news peg as the election of the first black U.S. president to the White House, while showing no political preferences at the same time?"

Prominent Russian human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov rapped the advertisement as "a vulgar exploitation of some political symbols in pursuit of commercial interests."

He added however: "I do not think the person who created this is necessarily a racist ... But our society is xenophobic all the same."

Russia has a growing problem with violent racist attacks on dark-skinned immigrants. Source

Is this ad racist? Well, I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, you don't see product campaigns anchored on Medvedev's whiteness or any other world leader's skin color. But on the other, savvy entrepreneurs will do anything to grab consumer attention and make a buck. Green is the only color they really see.

But these ads are surely objectifying. And there is clearly a skin-color obsession at play. The Duet ad focuses less on political "change" and more on color. One could capitalize on the new wave in American politics without focusing on our president's blackness. (Save your keystroke. I know he's biracial, but he self-identifies as black so that's what I'm going with.)

UPDATE - 'Wall Street Journal' Online picks up this post.

+ Is Bizarre Russian Obama Ice Cream Ad Racist?
+ Is this ad racist?

Vintage Racist Advertising

Top left LOS ANGELES - DECEMBER 1: Brigitte Nielsen and Flavor Flav present onstage at the VH1 - Big in '04 on December 1, 2004 at the Shrine Auditorium, in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) Top right: 1899 -- Uncle Tom's Cabin: Topsy Illustration --- Image by © CORBIS; Bottom right: 1930s AC spark plugs ad in The Saturday Evening Post -- Photo by The Authentic History Center; Bottom left: This cartoon image provided by the New York Post appeared in the Post's Page Six Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009. The cartoon, which refers to Travis the chimp, who was shot to death by police in Stamford, Conn. on Monday after it mauled a friend of its owner, drew criticism Wednesday on media Web sites and from civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton. (AP Photo/New York Post) ** NO SALES ** Credit: Getty Images / Corbi / Authentic History Center / AP

Getty Images / Corbi / Authentic History Center / AP

Advertisement for an African-American slave sale.

Although the enslavement of mankind in general has been recorded as early as 1200 BC; the first African slaves were reportedly transported to the 'New World' in 1517. This is 76 years after the first black slaves were captured and taken to Portugal.

Bettmann / Corbis

African American Stereotypes: Products and Advertising c.1880s Tin of Nigger Hair Tobacco

For decades this product was sold in stores as chewing tobacco or for smoking. It was advertised as 'pure, unadulterated, fine old burley leaf.'

Photo Source: The Authentic History Center

The Authentic History Center

1888 -- Seal of North Carolina Tobacco - The Darktown Bowling Club Poster -- Image by © Swim Ink 2, LLC/CORBIS Seal of North Carolina Tobacco - The Darktown Bowling Club Poster

Swim Ink 2, LLC / Corbis

ca. 1890 -- Zoulou Powder Poster (French advertisement)

Because offensive advertising was permeated throughout the world for many years, (and still is, as you will see in a few upcoming slides) it should come as no surprise that in more modern times 'racism has become the scourge of European soccer stadiums.'

Swim Ink 2, LLC / Corbis

ca. 1899 --- Uncle Tom's Cabin: Topsy Illustration --- Image by © CORBIS Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Topsy was a stereotypical pickaninny character in the book, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' Uncle Tom was a slave in the book. The term 'Uncle Tom' is recognized to be offensive and a derogatory name for a black man who is abjectly servile and deferential to whites.

Corbis

ca. 1899 --- George Thatcher's Greatest Minstrels Poster --- Image by © CORBIS George Thatcher's Greatest Minstrels Poster

Early definition of minstrel: a medieval poet and musician who sang or recited while accompanying himself on a stringed instrument, either as a member of a noble household or as an itinerant troubadour.

The black-face minstrel act was a very popular form of entertainment in 19th-century America. White audiences were receptive to the portrayals of Blacks as singing, dancing, grinning fools. T.D. 'Daddy' Rice, the original Jim Crow, became rich and famous because of his skills as a minstrel. Interestingly though, when he died in New York on September 19, 1860, he was broke.

Corbis

African American Stereotypes: Products and Advertising 1899 Durkee's Salad Dressing advertisement, Harpers Magazine

Notice the broken English purportedly spoken by black Americans, 'We're gwine ter live high ter-night ...'

Photo Source: The Authentic History Centerr

The Authentic History Center

Advertisement for Clarence Brooks and Co.'s Fine Coach Varnishes uses racist stereotypes to depict a group of African-American adults and children as they cheer and watch two shirtless boxers, one of whom appears unconscious, accompanied by the text "the Championship Fight, Sullivan Wins," late 1800s. The Sullivan in the text is a reference to boxer John L. Sullivan, who fought bare-knuckled in several famous bouts.

Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images

Advertisement for the St. Louis Beef Canning Company features an illustration of a stereotyped African-American character sitting on a can of beef, accompanied by phonetically rendered, stereotypical dialect-style text that reads: 'No Sah! dont jine no Exodus so as dis Beef lasts,' late 1800s.

Showing blacks to massacre the English language, further perpetuated the false idea that African Americans were somehow unable to be educated.

Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images