I don’t get “live” TV. I use Hulu+, Netflix, and I watch Elementary on CBS.com. (Don’t judge.) To watch commercials, I actually have to seek them out. I find this ironic, because commercials seem to finally be getting good.
Case in point: Honey Maid’s “Little Brother” commercial. A white family adopts a black kid, and everyone’s okay with that. Hooray! It’s presented as a matter of fact, and no one is the savior. There are no surprises. It’s just a family.
Adoption is not always portrayed well in commercials. Remember that Jane Seymour jewelry commercial with the beaming adoptive parents getting a brand new baby handed to them in an office, à la 1963? Yeah . . . pure blech. It’s nice when adoption is just there, as it was in the Wells Fargo commercial with the two moms learning sign language. Who didn’t like that commercial? I mean, except Bank of America.
It’s also great to be seeing diversity in commercials. Honey Maid has apparently made a series of inclusive commercials. We’re seeing more commercials with children of color who both match and don’t match their apparent parents. We’re seeing more two mom and two dad families, as well as a few single-mom families. I can’t recall seeing a single dad in a commercial though. Hopefully, his time will come.
Another nice thing about this commercial: There are only 61 comments on YouTube about it, and most of them have very little to do with race or adoption. Three years ago, a Cheerio commercial became the center of a firestorm of racist morons threatening to boycott the brand. The YouTube comments section for that ad had to be closed after 1,600 likes and 500 dislikes. The new Honey Maid commercial has been seen more than 25,000 times. There are 235 likes and only 44 dislikes. There are the obligatory racist comments from people who clearly troll the Internet because they have nothing better to do, but there’s no controversy. Oh hey, there’s a black kid in a white family. Oh hey, how ironic that race plays a role in a commercial about crackers. Haha! Yeah, haha!
I guess, sometimes we can all get along. Except the trolls.