Cesar Ramos

Professor Harmon

ENG 1020

3 December 2015

The Uprising of Diversity and How it Will Impact America

In the article “Changing Faces” the author focuses on racism.  In the article there was a video of a Cheerios commercial that featured a diverse family.  Revealing diversity is the reason Cheerios had aired the “Gracie” commercial.  The commercial introduces an interracial married couple with their daughter.  The couples are shown as a black father and white mother with a mixed child.  After observing the video, one might predict that Cheerios were trying to hint interracial relationships, show how two different races can live a normal life, and to teach people that mixed children may soon increase in population.

First, Cheerios were hinting off the interracial relationships to.  Some people might not understand this reason is because they believe you can’t advertise a relationship.  What the commercial displays is an interracial married couple with a mixed child.  The commercial shows that it’s okay to have an interracial relationship.  It’s understandable how in the article there were claims about “white genocide” and “DIEversity.”  People giving those responses are showing ignorance because what they don’t know is by having Cheerios advertise interracial relationships it can actually help increase the bond between races.  Different racial families can inherit one’s lifestyle and cultural in order to have a less biased country.  A lot of people looked down upon different race relationships, but with what Cheerios has done by presenting the interracial couple in the commercial relationships won’t have to look down on anymore.  Thus, making it acceptable in the eyes of the people that it’s okay to be in an interracial relationship.  That’s why Cheerios airing the “Gracie” commercial helps advertise the interracial relationships.

Next, Cheerios airing the commercial shows how normal an interracial couple can be.  In the article Funderburg explains, “Whites, on average, have twice the income and six times the wealth of blacks and Hispanics, and young black men are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed.”  If one watches the video, it’s obvious that the interracial family reside in between the middle and high class home.  Now, seeing as to how in the video the house is very clean and intact, it puzzles you on how a black man who has, “two times less the income” and “six times less wealth” and “twice as likely to be unemployed” compared to a white guy is able to afford a house such as the one in the video.  Knowing that a female only makes seventy-eight cents out of every dollar a man makes, it’s obvious that the wife in the video is not a single provider.  Coming up with a conclusion that the father does have a job that pays enough for him to afford a house for his family to live in a happy enviroment.  With the mother working as well it shows how there’s no different in a lifestyle between same a race family or an interracial family.  That’s why showing that commercial helped understand that interracial married families can live a normal life.

Finally, learning about the population and the ethnicity of that population is what the Cheerios commercial also had in store for the public.  With children becoming the faces of the future, some people may not know what those faces are.  Mixed children have been increasing over the years and soon enough there will be a greater amount of them in the United States.  Many mixed children have grown up and actually play for professional athletic teams.  Some of these faces are known as: Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods, Carmelo Anthony, Tony Gonzalez, Jayson Williams, Victor Cruz, Blake Griffin, and Dwayne Johnson all mixed races.  So by understanding that many well-known celebrities and athletes are also of a mixed race, their kind will continuously grow throughout the years.  When you glance at the mixed people picture “The Changing Face of America” by Martin Schoeller you realize how many different mixes there are in the U.S. and how it will always increase in the population.  All those different faces makes it difficult to depict which race is who, but that just teaches on how much of a “melting pot” America is.  That was how the commercial was teaching on the mixed children.

In conclusion, the article signifies racism and diversity by showing the commercial with the interracial family.  The commercial received many negative statements because of how the advertisement shows the approval of interracial relationships, the lifestyle comparison of interracial and same race families, and the future population involving mixed children.  Many other readers would’ve had different reasons for the airing, but to oneself these reasons come across as a better fit.