About those “soda tax” commercials

The “soda tax” (or “soda pop tax” or “sweetened beverage tax”) is scheduled to end with a vote by the Cook County Commissioners tomorrow, though the tax itself will remain in place until December 1st.  Whew — only a month and a half of having my husband do the pop-buying on his way home from work in Lake County.

But I’d been meaning to share an observation, which is admittedly less relevant now, though still worth discussing, because Michael Bloomberg has been spending plenty of his person money on ads to support the tax.

One ad shows a variety of children at risk of obesity and diabetes, being “saved” because of the tax.  Well, actually, the children are notable in being largely black and Hispanic.

A second ad, which I can only find on YouTube in a version with critical commentary, features a black grandmother, who says, “as a mother, and a grandmother, I’m here to protect my children.”

And the most dramatic ad shows a black doctor identified as Dr. Javette Orgain, talking about how the tax will protect our children.  She talks about seeing young children “so obese they can barely walk.”  A headline flashes across the screen, “Soda Companies Step Up Their Marketing to Black and Latino Kids, NPR, 11/20/14”

I don’t doubt that Dr. Orgain is sincere, but, well, I found the marketing in these ads to be, well, racist, or, more precisely, playing to the presumed racism of their audience.  After all, the message in both these ads, and especially the latter one, is that the tax is aimed at stopping black kids from getting fat, and I don’t think that was a coincidence.  The same ad aired on the radio, on “The Mix,” an adult contemporary station that is the station of choice for white Cook County-ites.  The message, it seems to me, is this: “you might think that the tax is a nuisance, and that you’re perfectly capable of making your own decisions about how much and what kinds of pop to drink.  But this isn’t about you, white people, it’s about those stupid black people in the city.  You need to suck it up and pay more in tax in order for us to stop dumb black welfare mothers from feeding their preschoolers pop.”

Now, as it happens, the viewing and listening audience didn’t buy it.  But that didn’t stop Bloomberg from trying.

Image:  from flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/27711525840; CC 2.0 license