I haven’t been watching the news lately but apparently the newest controversial topic in national news has come from this commercial….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYofm5d5Xdw
You may have seen this adorable commercial on T.V, where a mother confirms to her daughter that Cheerios is good for heart health. Later on it is shown that the father wakes up with a pile of Cheerios on his chest, hilariously showing how the child misunderstood the mechanism of Cheerios’s heart-healthy benefits (She probably thought it was through Osmosis!). Now my initial reaction to this commercial was almost completely passive besides a quick laugh, however later on it was indicated to me that this commercial was extremely “controversial”.
Why? Not because Cheerios doesn’t lower bad cholesterol, but because  the family in the commercial is interracial…Yep, that’s right. We have a racism story.
Now the exact story goes that when the Youtube video of the commercial was posted, many YouTubers on the internet littered the video with racist comments against the mixed race family.  At present I cannot tell you what those comments are, because they were disabled  by General Mills (Company that owns Cheerios) stating that they must disable the comments in reply to the ‘incredibly racist nature’ of the comments.
Now I am not going to overemphasize this “controversy”, since lately there have been a lot of debates over this topic, specifically on points of racism. But in the end, those debates are only spouts of ideals against ideals, which all leads to a cycle of conflict and rage, over something not that significant. Hence, it is the same reason why this commercial is such a big deal, because a bunch of people spouted ideals against ideals on a video which lead to a cycle of rage over something not that significant (See the similarity?). So in order to stop this chain reaction, I am going to step in here, and say that this commercial is not that big of a deal because the message of the commercial was not going against the ideal of ethnic supremacy, but it was to sell a healthy cereal… Many people forget that beyond the racism, this video was only portraying a bi-racial family enjoying cereal, there’s no reason to see it otherwise even with the existence of racial comments. Racism is nothing new, and trying to fix the problem by debating with racists on a cereal commercial will not solve the issue itself, but instead put oil in the aforementioned racist fire if you will.
Though to step back a bit, I don’t think that this controversy is all that bad, in fact, I can say that this Cheerios controversy may have brought more benefits than detriments including the incredibly hilarious parody on the issue, by CotillionGirlsComedy.Â
There was also a Kids React video on the “controversy”. Asking the kids why this commercial was so controversial. The kids didn’t get it and were subsequently shocked by the reason. Showing some hope for humanity in the next generation.
There was also a reply back to the Cheerios backlash by the family starred in the commercial where they started the “We are the 15 Percent” movement. The family collected photos of bi-racial families sent to them on the internet to show to the world in purpose of representing the 15 percent of families that are bi-racial.
Finally the sales and stock of General Mills will most likely increase with the controversy because of the non-offensive nature of the issue and the wide media attention on the company.
Now as I have said before I barely consider this controversy to be controversial since there really isn’t that much significance in the ethnic racist side of the debate. It is mostly recognized that racism has become an immoral value in western society, and has become a widespread social stigma. For now let’s just move on to other more pressing issues in the world that need much more consideration than cereal that leads to racism.
A little fun meme to conclude this post:
Thanks for reading!
