Racial awareness and Bennetton

Racial awareness happens to everyone. One of the first things that we notice when we meet someone is their race and we use this to judge their personality, who they are as a person and their status. This is a mentality that is deeply rooted in our society and the way we understand race.

United Colors of Benetton illustrate racial awareness well in their advertisements. They are a clothing and textile company founded in 1965 by Luciano, Giuliana, Gilberto and Carlo. Their primary aim for their advertisements is to promote difference and hit audiences with a large dose of reality. Therefore all their advertisements are about worldly issues such as famine, the Gulf War, microcredit and violence, etc. Their advertisements have been criticised by the media and many critics.

This advertisement is the "food for life" campaign where Benetton joined a World Food programme to promote the importance of food.

This is another advertisement that they made:

Benetton shows that they target audiences as a collective with a diverse colour palette. They understand that race is a socially constructed way of differentiating human beings.

It is the hegemonic viewpoint that maintain a popular system of ideas and practices through the infiltration of education, media and religion. Benetton certainly goes against this thus causing controversy.

Being an ethnic minority myself, I am definitely behind Benetton in their controversial advertisements. But it makes me sick to my stomach that people have to go to such lengths just to prove that ethnic people are just as good as white people. It shouldn't be justified. It should just be.