Cadbury's has produced what may or may not be a sensible advert for its latest bar of chocolate in commercial terms, but they are surely surprised by the reaction to it. Naomi Campbell and others have raised a storm of protest because, they say, it is racist. I am sure that Cadbury’s and their advertising agency didn't intend it, and not everybody sees it that way, but as black activist Lee Jasper said:
"This issue is not just about the insult to Naomi Campbell. It's about how these companies treat black people in general. Part of the problem is that they don't see it as offensive."
People who are unwittingly racist clearly need educating in the errors of their ways. The idea is not new of course. In his great story Rain Somerset Maugham portrays a South Seas missionary Mr Donaldson who has a problem:
"When we went there they had no sense of sin at all," he said. "They broke the commandments one after the other and never knew they were doing wrong. And I think that was the most difficult part of my work, to instill into the natives the sense of sin."
"We had to make sins out of what they thought were natural actions. We had to make it a sin … to expose their bodies, and to dance and not to come to church. I made it a sin for a girl to show her bosom and a sin for a man not to wear trousers."
Mr Donaldson is a self-righteous prat who sets out to redeem a prostitute and change the world,.and in the end … need I go on? I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn’t read it.
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