Household Cleaning Products

Boiling hankies on the stove! Ah, memories...

I've been tinkering with this post for a while, but was never quite ready to publish it, for the obvious reason that it offers some thoughts on a subject – the cynical and performative "inclusivity" of advertising media – which is hard to address without coming across as some sort of bigot. "Idiot" I can accept; "bigot" not. I have my pride.

I finally decided not to be such a wimp when a satirical BBC radio show (Dead Ringers, which deploys a roster of talented "voice" actors to impersonate and pillory prominent figures in public life) recently gave a throwaway remark to their appallingly convincing "Nigel Farage", that went something like, "Right, I'm off to count the mixed-race couples in the TV adverts, bye!" Clearly, the writers had made the same disconcerting observation as me, and chosen to disown and exorcise it by giving the line to their vocal sock-puppet.

Now, there are few better ways to trigger suspicion or outright hostility than to start a sentence with the words "I'm not a racist, but...". But it's the simple truth that, like pretty much anyone brought up in an exclusively white, working-class environment between the 1940s and the 1970s, I was instilled with a full suit of venerable prejudices; default settings that I may never entirely reconfigure. Certainly, all the way through school I knew and enjoyed the company of many unthinking and even out-and-out racists, and had no "Black, Asian, and minority ethnic" (BAME) friends at all: not through choice or discrimination, but because there simply weren't any around to be had. True, journalist Gary Younge and F1 crash-dummy Lewis Hamilton were both born in my home town of Stevenage in later years, but their families were still an exception even then, and – who knows? – perhaps their experience of mindless racism might even have been one push factor behind their success in life.

So I accept that, despite my best intentions, I may still have some questionable prejudices. You say you don't? I wonder how true that really is. Most of us do, whatever our ethnicity. Unless you are some kind of saint, daily life is negotiated by easy-to-read, shorthand signifiers, of which skin colour, dress, body language, and speech are the major, broad-brush components. Let's say you're Black or Asian and on your own in an unfamiliar part of town: you're just not going to cross the road to ask directions from a bunch of white boys hanging out on a corner, with or without cropped hair and heavy boots. This is a useful prejudice. They might be gay Christians having an impromptu prayer meeting, but why take the risk? No: racism, properly speaking, is not this sort of everyday caution or even the instinctive mistrust of those who are "other", but the systematic discrimination against and prejudicially negative characterisation of one ethnic "community" by another; usually the majority community, but essentially whichever ethnic group holds the levers of power.

Obviously, the grasp on those levers of power is pretty feeble at the shittier end of the social spectrum; where, say, the indigenous white working class rubs up against large immigrant populations, and is consequently defended all the more fiercely. "White privilege" is a difficult concept to grasp, when you're third-generation unemployed and living in sub-standard accommodation in some town or village long abandoned by industry and conveniently forgotten by politics. By the same token, to maintain the belief that some crop-haired loser's pallor makes him inherently superior to the son of a Punjabi pharmacist – I'm thinking of the sometime head-boy of Winchester College, graduate of Oxford and Stanford universities, who happens to be our former Prime Minister (and is married to the wealthiest woman in Britain, FFS, also Asian) – is delusional. Or "racist", as we rightly say.

OK, at this point I have to step carefully around the "I'm not racist, but..." landmine I have chosen to lay in my own path. Of course, I may already have clumsily stepped right on it: I know that for some high-minded folk, even to address the issue of ethnicity is in itself a form of racism. Races are a construct and therefore don't exist: bingo! Problem solved... Please don't go on about it. But that is wishful thinking of the sort that wants to believe that by closing your eyes a problem has disappeared.

So, here's my first cautious step: According to the 2021 Census, these are the broad-brush figures for ethnicity in England:

"White" ethnic groups: 81.0% (45.8 million)
"Asian, or Asian British" ethnic groups: 9.6% (5.4 million)
"Black, Black British, Caribbean or African": 4.2% (2.4 million)
"Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups": 3.0% (1.7 million)
"Other ethnic groups": 2.2% (1.2 million)

These proportions will be experienced very differently, of course, depending on whether you live in Leicester or Leominster, Hampstead or Hackney. But, in principle, wherever you happen to live, no fair-minded person ought to have a problem with minority communities agitating for cultural space and greater representation, especially where these do not correspond to their presence in the wider community. Nor should they discourage or obstruct the aspirations of members of those minorities, even if this might result in a presence in public life greater than mere proportionality. Sadly, though, fair-mindedness is not an evenly-distributed virtue, and "diversity" interventions and even legislation are therefore a necessary social safety-valve.

Another cautious step: It is troubling, however, how easily a diversity agenda can mutate into something less benign and quasi-religious, which regards "whiteness" as an essentially sinful condition, in need of continual expiation. Repent, ye colonisers! Cast aside your white privilege! Which is not entirely undeserved in Britain, obviously: those few whose ancestors profited grotesquely from the proceeds of slavery and empire have reason to feel more than a little guilt. [1] But bear in mind that the rest of us, the vast majority, have our own historic grievances with those same people, too. Just one of which is precisely that they persuaded us to believe the mad idea that whiteness – and British whiteness in particular – endows a certain inherent "racial" superiority.

If any of what I have written so far has, in your view, blown up in my face, then you might as well stop reading. It's only going to get worse. Just saying.

It is unfortunate – to put it no stronger – that there are some in positions of influence who see economic advantage in ostensibly appearing to act, unasked, on behalf of ethnic minorities. Such as, for example, the casting and "creative" types – quite likely white, well-paid, and privileged – who are employed within the advertising industry. It can't only be the writers on Dead Ringers and numerate racists who have noticed quite how often the people in advertisements on British TV – whether for banks, deodorants, frozen chips, or whatever else someone wants to sell us – are now being portrayed by ethnic minority actors.

Some nights this can be pretty much every advert in the break, a spectacle guaranteed to bring many simmering white couch potatoes to boiling point. I suppose this might just be a classic example of everyone having had the same bright idea independently, with the unfortunate result of creating five minutes of end-to-end diversity overkill. Or, if you wanted to get a bit woo-woo about it, you could say this is a symbolic expiation of our sins, past and present, enacted on the altars of personal hygiene products and car insurance.

Now, if this were a genuine effort to rebalance representation, to give work to an underemployed cohort of actors, or even just to solicit the business of minority customers then it would be unexceptionable, even praiseworthy. It could also simply be the over-enthusiastic application of the current trend for race-blind casting in film, theatre, and even those popular TV "historical" serial dramas, in which it seems – bizarrely, given current controversies over how the money to build those grand houses was actually made – that a sprinkling of painfully-posh Black aristocrats is now de rigueur. Hey, it could have happened! (um, no it couldn't).

But I'm not buying it, so to speak. Why have advertisers, of all people, latched onto inclusivity (and not just of ethnicity) in such a big way? When so many adverts for banks or brands show us attractive ethnic minority actors pretending to be happy, prosperous staff, customers, and typical consuming families, I think we 100% organic, fair-trade sceptics (new! improved!) are entitled to ask: who, really, is being targeted by these ads?

Could the intention really be to encourage more minority families – 20% of the population at best, quite a few of whom are living in poverty [2] – to take advantage of HSBC's competitive interest rates, to buy a more stylish sofa, or invest in luxury skin-care products? Or perhaps it genuinely troubles the CEOs of these companies that too many of their surveyed customers are ticking the "White British" box? Or might the subversive intention be to "nudge" the attitudes of White British viewers, while at the same time doing the serious business of encouraging them to buy more takeaway meals? Want to show you're not a bigot? Buy our multiculturally-endorsed pizza!

I think the only sensible answer is Yeah, right... to all of the above. [3]

It's surely pretty transparent that what they're really chasing is the custom of young consumers with money to spend and who it is believed (no doubt backed up by intensive focus-group research) will feel attracted to whichever companies or brands can best parade their "woke" credentials, however fake, however inappropriate. See also: green, rainbow, and body-positivity washing. Advertisers are true equal-opportunity opportunists when it comes to exploiting "diversity".

Which, I suppose, is fair enough: that's what adverts are for, after all, isn't it? They're in the business of shifting product, and persuading you to change your loyalty from Brand X to Brand Y, not reconfiguring the social architecture. Although it's clear that many advertising "creatives" seem to imagine the latter to be a significant part of their mission. Perhaps they feel a bit of nudging and even some in-your-face finger-wagging will redeem an occupation which amounts to dreaming up ways of drumming up business for the multinationals, supermarkets, and prime brands that can afford their services. Or, more likely, that a clever bit of "white saviour" hand-waving will win them industry awards.

I admit that this may appear to be a trivial thing to be going on about, possibly even a bit Racist-Lite in itself, and hardly worth mentioning in a world on fire; but it is small sparks like this that ignite larger conflagrations. I suppose my concern is that this virtue-signalling pile-on – intended to appeal to customers from a young, free-spending demographic, a generation for whom inclusivity and diversity are watchwords – is actually equally likely to "nudge" the prejudices of another, very different demographic, but in precisely the wrong direction. I mean, of course, those White British couch potatoes who watch considerably more TV than you, I, or those coveted young consumers do, and who may well find themselves irritably totting up the ethnic imbalance in the advert breaks every night.

You may well say that you don't care about such people, their ill-informed opinions, or their poisonous prejudices: let them stew in their own juice. But I suggest that you probably should care, as these are the potential voters for Farage's Reform Party. Let's be honest: party activists will have to hold their noses at election time and go all out for their support, and without them the Labour vote in so-called "Red Wall" seats in particular is going to be a pretty anaemic showing.

I don't want to overstate this, but: wouldn't it be ironic, in a tragic sort of way, if what is essentially just a current "me-too" fashion for the inclusion of all sorts of inclusivity in advertising is actually having a negative impact in the real world? What if it is acting as an unintended stimulus for the politics of prejudice, anger, and resentment, and if it turns out – of all things! – that slick, well-meaning adverts for household-cleaning products have, even if only in a small, subliminal way, helped Reform to win or at the very least to disrupt the voting pattern in crucial seats at the next general election?

A big "what if?", I know, and this may all be utterly wrong-headed, of course; the fevered constructions of some sleep-deprived midsummer nights and too much TV. Besides, going by their current capacity for self-sabotage, it's clear that both Labour and the Tories are quite capable of achieving electoral meltdown without any assistance from the advertising profession. Absolutely nothing could be done about it, anyway. No broadcasting regulations are being broken, or even slightly bent.

Although... Both parties are so spooked by Reform nipping at their heels – and, looking across both the Atlantic and the Channel, it's not hard to see why – that I wouldn't be surprised if proposals for vote-catching legislation to monitor "disproportionate diversity" on TV are already forming in the devious minds of various political-strategy wonks. Taking a lead from Trump's innovative way with nomenclature, they could call it the "I'm Not A Racist, But..." Bill. I am joking, of course, but we'll see, won't we? To politicians, legislation is the tool that comes to hand and so, like the man with a hammer, to them everything looks like a legislatable nail.

Meanwhile, I need to go shopping, and we're running out of kitchen surface spray... Shall I stick with the perfectly OK "own brand" product we've been using, or maybe it's time to try that one with all the TV adverts?  I feel strangely drawn...

In 1962, just one brown face in a sea of pasty white (including mine)...

But things have clearly changed:

"British Formula 1 driver, Lewis Hamilton, surprised children from his former primary school when he unveiled himself as the mystery go-karting driver at a local track. He was joined by BBC Sport Formula 1 co-commentator David Coulthard at Peartree Spring Infant and Junior Schools, for a film as part of the BBC live coverage of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone."

Not sure I'm so keen on the new Star Wars-style school uniform, though...

image: BBC

1. There is currently a classic running feud on the letters page of the TLS about the distinction between South Sea Annuities and South Sea Securities: which of them was or was not linked to profits from slavery, and therefore whether the Church of England should or should not be paying reparations. It seems experts differ...

2. The breakdown of poverty by ethnicity is complex: see the Rowntree Foundation's analysis.

3. Which, for non-native speakers, is ironic double-speak, meaning "Of course not, don't be ridiculous..." You're welcome!