The bartender spots the woman from across the beach. She’s beautiful, fair-skinned, and craving a drink. He slides the beer bottle toward her, passing three Black partygoers. The words “Sometimes, Lighter is Better” appear before she picks up the bottle of Heineken and smiles at the bartender. 

Even with the progress we have made in the past decade, racist advertising like this is still approved. Advertising is no stranger to promoting colorism, and although it may not be as overt as the 2018 Heineken ad, its roots still permeate marketing media.

“Where are all the dark-skinned couples?” my dad asked one day as we were watching a Downy Ultra Soft commercial. “Seriously, I swear I can count the number of times I’ve seen a dark-skinned actor in a commercial on one hand.” 

He was right. Sure, companies are bringing in more diverse actors, but the number of dark-skinned actors remains the same — few and far between.

Not only do advertisements rarely focus on dark-skinned actors in general, but even scarcer is the number of dark-skinned couples.

Since my dad mentioned his observation to 15-year-old-me, I have started to pay closer attention to this. Almost every commercial I watch now shows the average white American couple, and then it’s followed by an interracial one. 

Showing interracial couples is an incredible step in advertising and should continue being portrayed, but not at the expense of Black couples. I cannot help but feel like Black love has been strategically phased out of everyday media. 

For a long time, interracial couples have become the new default for diversity in advertising, and much of it is to appease a white audience. As much as some white conservatives may preach that racial representation does not matter, advertisers know the average white American is more likely to buy a product that has a white person attached to it. 

The issue advertisers face with Black couples is that it isolates white audiences on a conscious or subconscious level from wanting to buy the product. 

By displaying an interracial couple, or at the very least a couple of lighter skin tone, companies get the best of both worlds: They show nonwhite and white audiences alike that this product is meant for them. 

This phenomenon needs to stop. Deciding whether or not to air a Black couple should not need to come down to the bottom line. Light-skinned actors are chosen because they have closer proximity to whiteness, a trend dating back to slavery.

Slave owners would show more preference to their lighter-skinned enslaved workers, treating the darker-skinned enslaved workers more harshly. This trend has continued and has proven just how dangerous colorism is.

In 2020, a study from the University of Alabama showed that interracial relationships were actually overrepresented in the media. Furthermore, the abundance of light-skinned to dark-skinned actors in media indicates a lighter-skinned individual is more desirable than a darker-skinned one. 

This notion is further backed up by the “bad is Black” effect, which suggests the association of darker skin with evil characters results in dark-skinned individuals receiving unfair treatment in real life and the media. 

Advertising is supposed to be a reflection of reality, but currently, it is skewing what the average relationship in America looks like.