African Americans have been depicted as dirty since the birth of this nation. I specifically remember seeing a horrible advertisement in the late 1800s, in which a white boy asks an African American boy, “Why doesn’t your mamma wash you with Fairy Soap?”. This idea is something that I thought was left in the Jim Crowe era until I saw this ad from Dove.
The idea that African Americans are dirtier just because of the pigment of their skin is an idiotic inference made by somebody who is racist and ignorant.
This ad is unacceptable and is not the first time Dove has constructed a racist ad. This is one of many racist or controversial advertisements that the company Dove has put out.
In this ad, we see an African American woman, with a dark shirt on to the far left. It then slowly pans to the right in which the woman proceeds to take off her shirt and transform into a white woman. In this phase she not only has changed her shirt color, but she is no longer African American. She is now a white woman.
The effect is that “whiter is cleaner”. This message is beyond racist. It not only misses the target of the argument but also makes a genuinely bold, racist comment on the cleanliness of African Americans.
There is no other way to interpret this advertisement other than racist. They have made this African American woman the poster woman for being dirty, just because she is black.
This concept of white skin appearing cleaner is ridiculous.
They are treating the color of somebody’s skin like bed sheets or a piece of white cloth.
“Well, the dirtier your bedsheets are, the darker they will be”
This same argument cannot be made for a human’s skin color, yet Dove attempts to make this argument.
We are assumed to see the African American woman on the left and expected to see her as dirty. We are then meant to see the white woman on the right with red hair and think clean and beautiful.
As for the effectiveness of the ad, the advertisement had the opposite of the intended consequence. Rather than people rallying behind this blatantly racist advertisement and Dove’s sales skyrocketing, the opposite happened.
People organized boycotts against Dove. The company was ‘canceled’; however, they were able to recover.
This advertisement is insensitive and it missed the mark on every level. This is one of the most racist advertisements in the post-Jim Crowe era that I have ever seen.
It’s a shame that Dove has made this same “mistake” on several occasions and continuously fails to learn from it. Since Dove Is such a big, established corporation, its unfortunate they’ll never see any true repercussions to these harmful advertisements.
This is a great analysis, Noah. I can’t believe Dove thought this advertisement would be acceptable, considering the history of racists deeming dark skin as dirty. As a soap company, their job is to make people clean, not white. There is no need to include race in a soap advertisement, and Dove should have avoided it all together.
Such a great post and definitely a great choice for analyzing a terrible ad. I remember seeing this advertisement for the first time and wondering how such a racist idea even got pitched in the first place, let alone created into an ad and distributed. It makes me feel disgusted to know that racist ideas rooted in the Jim Crowe era still manage to exist in big corporations like Dove.
AHHHH this ad is so bad it makes my insides cringe. It reminds me of that washing machine commercial where the black guy gets in the machine and then comes out white. I hate that these ads can seem so harmless too when in reality they’re spreading these harmful perceptions of minority groups. I love that you chose this ad and you did a great job with your analysis!