In a piece for Clutch magazine, Britni Danielle says that Tyler, the Creator's online commercial — in which a battered white woman has to pick a suspect out of a lineup consisting of black men and a goat — peddles stereotypes that black men have been fighting for years.
Dr. Boyce Watkins called the spot, "arguably the most racist commercial in history," and the Daily Kos criticized it for being, "flagrantly racist."
While I doubt this ad will run on TV, Mountain Dew, and its parent company PepsiCo, should have known better.
First of all, sexual assault and violence against women is not fodder for comedy. Victims of violence don't need an obnoxious talking goat making light of their very real tragedies. Second, despite being helmed by a black man (who has joked and rapped about assaulting women), Mountain Dew's ad executives should have know better than to release a commercial so rife with racist stereotypes that it has already been roundly criticized.
If Mountain Dew set out to create an ad campaign that would piss people off, then they succeeded. But if they want black audiences to start drinking their products, using Tyler the Creator and his brand of overly offensive "comedy" to make light of violence and racism is not the way to do it.
Read Britni Danielle's entire piece at Clutch magazine.
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Britni Danielle is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and novelist. She has covered pop culture, politics and race for outlets such as Essence, Jet and Clutch. Follow her on Twitter.