Heart Healthy Cheerios not so good for the hearts of racists

So there is this Cheerios ad, with a white mother, a black father and their bi-racial kid. I have a SERIOUS problem with this ad.

Seriously...the cuteness factor in the ad is just too much for my senses. That is just the cutest kid and the cutest little scenario where she tries to protect her daddy's heart with Heart Healthy Cheerios.

I also have a real problem with all the closet and not-so-closet racists who found this ad offensive. I guess it is tolerable when they - those awful people who choose to walk the streets with someone outside of their race - are just in the corner of one's eye. But how DARE the good people at Cheerios put this travesty on national television, where for 30 seconds, one has to be subjected to the flagrant display of interracial unions and the offspring which come from them. Cheerios - that down home all American breakfast cereal should not be associated with this intermingling. But according to one of the posts on the now disabled comments section under the ad on YouTube, it is not about the ad. Of course not! How silly of me.

“Throughout all of human history, race-mixing and multiracial/multicultural societies have never, not even once, occurred ‘naturally’. It has always been the result of conquest, group A being forced by group B. The systematic decline of western economies has lead to lower white birth rates. Massive non-white immigration leads to loss of land, resources and opportunities for whites. Encouraging whites to race-mix leads to loss of white genetics. It’s not about one Cheerios commercial.”

The truth revealed, kids!

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a white Brit who did not believe that racism existed in the UK. He thought black people were too sensitive to what they perceived as racism. I was flummoxed to say the least. But it does exist and when faced with the growing reality that there are those who choose to not let race, sexuality, gender etc be hindrances to the fulfilment of life's happiness, we see the real and ugly side of society that some of us (un)consciously choose to ignore. Speaking as someone who has dated all kinda men, of all shades, shapes, and sizes, these people offend me greatly and sadly, disabling their hateful comments on social media is just a band-aid on an oozing sore.

While I saw a cute cherub of a child, and did not stop to think of her ethnic background, others saw the decay of society, when in fact their own reaction underscores the real decay out there. I wonder if they will stop eating Cheerios as well. Kudos to Cheerios for standing their ground on what is a great heart warming commercial. Kudos to Saatchi and Saatchi for just ramping up the creativity with mega cuteness.

While we are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, I can still take heart that when I cross the street, I can turn all kinds of heads - black heads, Asian heads, white heads - and we can all laugh and smile about it and life goes on. That my own nephew, like so many others in Trinidad and Tobago, is the result of this awesome interracial love fest and is just loved for being cute and mischievous is also pretty award winning.