Reading Response #6

Nathan Barbo
Eng 100 A
2/19/10
Reading Response #6
Writer Cynthia Selfe argues in the book she co-wrote, “Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution” that American advertisements did not fairly show all of America. She talks about how the advertisements use only white American men. Selfe says, “if citizens of all kinds are to have access to technology and the opportunities it provides, we do not see such a narrative imagined in the land of difference; if technology is to improve the lives of all Americans regardless of race and class and other differences, are collective ability to envision such a world is not evident in these images.” Basically Selfe is saying that advertisements to not use enough of the racial and class differences to sell their products. I do not disagree that this may have been true back in the time of her grandmother or even when she wrote this book, however I do not believe it is true now. The commercials we see now have people of all different ethnicities and both males and females. One example of this would be the use of athletes to endorse products. Many of these athletes are black men and women. Now this certainly does not address the class issue, but it does show role models of different races being used to sell products. I would even argue that most commercials now have an African American in them. I do not feel that our generation is being raised with such narrow images; we see a much broader scope of race and class being used. I believe now companies are looking more at who they are trying to sell to then just using the traditional white American. If the commercial is directed to women they are using women to sell the product. If it is directed to single parents they use a single mother. The race or class of a person in an advertisement or in a office is not as big a deal to my generation. My generation sees a person selling a product or doing a job, not a certain race.
The countering strategy used in this article is arguing the other side. I tried to show the progress that ads have made in the use of people of different race in class that her article did not point out.