“Why are black people always smiling in commercials, “ a rhetorical question my father use to pose with a tinge of disdain. Advertisement has a deep link with racism, in exploiting what cannot be explicitly said, but is commonly known. In the West ideas such as the noble savage have evolved under the selective pressures of capitalism into a more nuanced form known as commodity racism. The idea that race can be utilized as a means to push products and services through explicit or implicit messages to the consumer on the emphasis of a racial difference. Usually the ploy depicts black people as jovial, fun loving, irrational, limited in emotional range and with abnormal prowess in sexuality and strength. Rarely do we see black people as intelligent, calm, and average, that position is reserved for white privilege. Chocolate, being incredibly imbued with racial undertones, is a perfect marker for commodity racism. European chocolate makers, Marabou, successfully marketed their “Japp” chocolate bar in the mid 90s using stereotypical depictions of a Rastafarian in poorly developed storylines. In Marabou’s commercials, application of commodity racism to market their chocolate bar bolsters the racist sentiment of the ‘magical negro’, in which implicitly white normativity is promoted and explicitly black otherness is magnified.
The juxtaposition of caricatures in the Japp chocolate advert highlights the normativity of the white male. Opening the scene a white overweight male is seen jogging on a winding path along a seaboard. He is of poor physique so he decides to take a break and lean on a sports car due to his apparent back pain. For comical intent and to add a note of absurdity, a black male, capriciously driving a truck in Sweden to reggae like instrumentals, mindlessly stops to help the burdened white male. The black male without any forethought assumes the white male is pushing the car and with one arm the magically strong black male pushes the car of the cliff. The rational and present-minded white male is left stunned to watch the black male drive off only to wonder where such gifts were derived, obviously from the chocolate bar.
Note the subtle message the advertisement seeks to promulgate, that black and white people can cooperate, even with a black male at a presumed position of power. In doing so the marketers advance an agenda of post-racialism while paradoxically inflaming black otherness. The problem with such adverts comes in the inability of a black male to be whole, possessing faculties of the intellectual, the artistic and the physically capable. In this advert the black male is physically strong but mentally absent. These are the conditions of agreement in which the black body must comply in order to be palatable to white audiences. Media scholar Matthew W. Hughey aptly writes “today, media exercises no less an influence in promulgating and protecting de facto racism through the patterned combination of white normativity and antiblack stereotypes” in doings so “these onscreen depictions afford white people centrality, while marginalizing those seemingly progressive black characters” (Hughey 544). It’s easy to see how nefarious a commercial like this can be in Sweden, where the population is nearly homogenous and xenophobic sentiments towards immigrants of African descent across Europe is coalescing. Decidedly Europe has not had a cathartic movement against racism like the civil rights movement in America.
To take an inversion of the advertisement a step further, I decided to overstep the de facto demarcations drawn for black depiction. In this advert we see formally dressed black people seated at a grand table being served by austerely dressed white servants. When it comes to class black people cannot be greater than their white counterparts, especially not on the same screen. If one’s initial feeling is shock and discord, the message has achieved its intent. Rarely can blacks be depicted as having power, free from saving white people or soothing white guilt. There can never be an idea of black normativity that is not meant to specifically advertise to people of color. Even black people themselves cannot imagine this without the inevitable rush of feeling ‘uppity’. Chocolate scholar Emma Robertson remarks “adverts offer us ways of using commodities such as chocolate to say things about ourselves, our families, our social world” (Robertson 19). This hegemonic perception of race as it relates to intelligence and class is so entrenched in both white and black people that we cannot seriously imagine an inverted world without considering it an aberration or a fantasy.
The problem at hand is that commodity racism undermines all endeavors to reimagine the black self as normal and varied. The centrality of whiteness and the marginality of blackness is constantly being reaffirmed and repackaged to sell goods, especially like chocolate. Racism is evolving, becoming more nuanced, more inclusive but paradoxically more marginalizing. Therefore it is important to scrutinize what we see and question the under text of what is being sold.
Reference
Hughey, Matthew W. “Cinethetic Racism: White Redemption and Black Stereotypes in “Magical Negro” Films.” Social Problems (2009): 543-577.
Robertson, Emma. Chocolate, Women and Empire. New York: Manchester University Press, 2009.
Chocolate Class 
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