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Ah, the yearly tradition of either praising or slamming the Super Bowl commercials is officially in full swing. I was too busy doing things that actually mattered yesterday to bother with the game or the commercials, but all it took was one check of my social media to make me aware of one of the controversies that’s been kicked up by a Super Bowl XLVIII commercial.
Apparently, Coca-Cola has a lot of people up in arms over their offering this year. In their commercial, people of various nationalities sing the national anthem while showing images of a diverse selection of people. The spot ends with the words “America is beautiful” on the screen. Personally, I don’t see the big deal with this advertisement. It’s trying to show and embrace the diversity that our country contains, but there are plenty of negative comments from both sides of the fence.
Religious white zealots are not just upset over the commercial, some have publicly stated that they’re now going to boycott Coke products. A lot of very bigoted people are screaming about this ad, claiming that it’s wrong, and America The Beautiful being sung in a foreign language is blasphemy. They’re forgetting the part where we’re all technically immigrants and that there is no official national language for the United States, but apparently those are just trivial details.
What was surprising was people of other nationalities saying that the commercial was idealistic and stupid. I saw numerous comments by people saying that we’ll never have a united society and there’s always going to be racial fighting and presumed racial superiority. That’s actually really sad. Of course, it’s likely being said by the kind of people who come to America not to be an American, but to live here while acting like they’re still in their home country. Or by people who’ve tried to integrate and been treated like garbage by people who hate anyone who’s not their race.
I think that the Coca-Cola commercial was nice, but not really something to get too excited over. I think any good person wants us all to get along, to become one united people. It won’t happen unless we are willing to let go of racial bias and hate, but it’s certainly something that we should be aiming for. This country has been built on diversity. Either we need to embrace and promote that, or start making this the Dominated States of White Christians. Oh wait, people are already trying to do that.
I wish there was a button I could push that would make every single human being born from this day forward a mixed breed. It would be a whole lot harder to hate each other over race if there was no such thing as a pure blood anymore. However, since I lack that kind of awe-inspiring magical power, I’d settle for people not being assholes to each other anymore over things as trivial as color and birthplace. The simple truth is, if you believe that your race or religion makes you “better” than someone else, that makes you an inferior being. Chew on that one for a while.
UserR
Thing is, Bri, this racial stuff doesn’t just happen in America. Racism isn’t just an American problem, it’s a human problem. But it does seem that it’s more prevalent in America than anywhere else, simply because of the diversity of this country in particular. I agree that Coca Cola was just trying to do something nice, but it seems like that if anyone does anything like that it automatically gets this sort of negative attention.
Briana Blair
I’m unfortunately well aware of the racism that happens elsewhere. No matter where it happens, it’s wrong. It’s idiotic to think that where you’re born or what faith you follow makes you better than someone else. Who you are is what makes you better or worse.
I does seem like people are trained to hate positive thought. Anything that might actually be good, make the world better, let’s attack it and burn it and kill it. People are seriously messed up.