Shouldn’t racial exclusion be a thing of the past?

"Where black is the color, where none is the number..."
---Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

We can get glimpses of Americana from various sources. Many of the images paint promising portraits of the nation we wish to become, and others paint portraits of the nation we stupidly still are.

Here’s a true story: Almost a decade ago I purchased a new pickup truck, and when I went to take delivery the salesman had my wife and me pose for a photo beside the vehicle. A few weeks later a calendar arrived in the mail with the photo attached. However, on four of the dates in each month on the calendar was a photo depicting a different family enjoying themselves in one of the carmaker’s vintage vehicles. Forty-eight photos in all … and all of them of white families.

I sent the calendar back to the company in Ogden, UT with a note explaining that I found the lack of diversity offensive (I tactfully refrained from saying that I really didn’t want that many white folks in my house at one time). A week later the owner of the marketing company called me, deeply (and I believe sincerely) apologetic. He assured me that it was a dumb oversight, and that he had trashed the remaining stock of non-inclusive calendars (at a cost of $50,000 to his company he stated) and that I would be receiving another calendar as soon as he printed up new — racially inclusive — ones. A month later I received a calendar that contained photos that were more reflective of what America actually looks like: Blacks, Whites, Hispanics and Asians enjoying the company’s vehicles.

Fast-forward to this past long weekend. My wife was thumbing through some of the plethora of high-end catalogs she receives at a greatly increased number in the fall, and commenting on the lack of diversity of the models. While many of the top companies have used models of color for years, other companies continue to send catalogs to minority families with nothing but images of white people in them. She counted 148 all-white photos in one of the glossy publications, which utilized over a dozen male and female models.

Together we went though literally dozens of other catalogs and the results were somewhat amazing: To many catalog retailers black folks don’t exist. Most whites probably don’t take notice, but to many persons of color this lack of inclusion is reprehensible in this day and age … and increasingly we are willing to speak out about it. Hey, we’ve even got a black family in the White House, just in case these marketers haven’t noticed.

This made me wonder out loud if media, via the Internet, was powerful enough to bring some racial parity to these all-white catalogs (or those aggravating commercials for exercise equipment where there is a room full of nothing but whites). What if my wife and I, via email, asked fair-minded people of all races to refuse to purchase items from companies that are still stuck in America’s racial past? Would they do it? Would they forward the email? Would the companies take note of a budding boycott and correct their racially exclusive ways?

Why is this important? Remember the “doll test,” where psychologists showed young black children a white doll and a black doll and asked them which they preferred? They came to the unsettling conclusion that black children, constantly bombarded by a preponderance of white images in media, develop an unhealthy self-image. And children of all colors thumb through these catalogs — that’s why it’s important they become racially diverse and inclusive. Besides, it’s an issue of basic fairness.

Or, if these companies prefer to feature nothing but white folks, they could simply quit sending their racially exclusive catalogs to minority households; that would work for me. But they’re not about to do that because they want our money. That being the case, it’s past time for us black folks to tell them what we want in return for our hard-earned cash: Inclusion. To paraphrase Gandhi, "Be the change [agent] you wish to see in the world."

From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier's From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.frombehindthewall.com.