On the Racial Subversiveness of Popular Culture
February 10, 2014
IN 2004, the late Sam Francis wrote a column for VDare.com about an especially lewd Monday Night Football ad featuring Nicolette Sheridan. The column is worth revisiting because he makes an important point. Conservative commentators had complained about the sexual innuendo of the ad, but Francis, the former Washington Times columnist who was fired for his writings on race, objected to its racial message as well:
The message of the ad was that white women are eager to have sex with black men, that they should be eager, and that black men should take them up on it.
So far only one voice has mentioned the ad’s racial meaning and denounced its “insensitivity” (to blacks)—that of black Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy.
Blacks are permitted to notice race. Whites aren’t.
But the ad’s message also was that interracial sex is normal and legitimate, a fairly radical concept for both the dominant media as well as its audience.
Nevertheless, for decades, interracial couples of different sexes have been sneaked into advertising, movies and television series, and almost certainly not because of popular demand from either race. The Owens-Sheridan match is only the most notorious to date.
In the minds of those who produced the ad, race is at least as important as the moral and aesthetic norms their ad subverts. Read More »