Post-Racial Fallacy Killing Black Marketing Niche

Once upon a time advertisers saw the African-American consumer market as a unique audience, one requiring special messaging, perhaps a feel-good slogan or ads splashed with black faces or voices.

There were cool jingles on urban radio stations and major companies put their money behind black-centric ad campaigns in mainstream and traditional African-American print publications.

But today notions of a post-racial society are killing African-American niche industries. As more black folks have gained entry into mainstream society and some believe the lines between race and buying habits are fading, there is, as Zondra Hughes wrote in a recent blog on The Huffington Post, "a retreat from blackness" when it comes to these niche markets.

Casualties of racial progress?

"Nobody wants to talk about race today," leading African-American market researcher Pepper Miller said during a panel discussion at the 40th annual Rainbow Push Convention. "People believe it's forward-thinking to not look at race and to not talk about race. 'So why do we need a Black agency? Why do we need Black media -- because people are people,' is what people say."

Hughes wrote:

Assaults on the Black niche can be found everywhere. For example, why buy that Black women's publication, Essence, to read about Beyoncé, when Beyoncé is on the cover of the mainstream publication, Vogue, as well? Why hire a Black-owned advertising firm to craft a culturally sensitive message for Black teens, when, thanks to popular culture, Black, White, Hispanic and Asian teens hang together, party together and consume the same messages anyway?

This "systematic retreat from Blackness has placed Black-owned advertising agencies and media outlets that create and disseminate cultural-specific messages and entertainment for the Black audience, in peril," Hughes wrote.

Some of it is good old-fashioned racism, the melting pot theory used as an excuse to withhold precious dollars.

There continues to also be a lack of diversity within the advertising and creative industries. Black people just aren't being hired, said Munson Steed, another panelist at the convention.

"When we talk about advertising we should really be talking about jobs," Steed said. "The reality of such discrimination right now is that most advertising agencies don't have a best practice to include your children. So when you look at these big holding companies that are doing the advertising for Delta Airlines, or American Family Insurance, and they don't have African-American agencies, you're literally saying that your child will probably not even get an entry-level job at these corporations."