Uh oh, you are inconvenienced in some way; perhaps your car is boxed in, or you lose your soccer ball over a fence, or you don't have tickets to a concert. Or maybe something embarrassing has happened to you; you've torn your dress perhaps, or you have a job interview and you get paint on your new suit. Some sort of authority figure stands in your way and/or looks at you judgmentally; a doorman, maybe a butler, or perhaps your parents. You think for a moment, pop a Mento, and suddenly you think of a clever way to "break the rules" and salvage the situation. The authority figure looks at you wide-eyed, then shakes their head in mirth at your plucky hijinks. You hear a disembodied voice. It says, "Mentos, the freshmaker!"
Smile, you're in a typical 90's Mentos commercial![1] Oh, and you're a young, attractive white person. And the authority figure is also white. If you were black, you'd probably have the cops called on you.
Mentos commercials are undeniably fresh and full of life, but are they racist? Some YouTube commenters seem to think so, citing the obvious white privilege and absence of any people of color. The white privilege is undeniable—in most of the commercials, our protagonist "breaks the rules" (either social conventions or sometimes even the law) under the watchful eyes of an authority figure who lets it slide. Were the protagonist a person of color, most of the commercials would end with a "Karen" on the phone to the police.
But is a lack of diversity inherently racist? A friend of mine says no. If anything, racial and especially sexual minorities are overrepresented in today's media as a proportion of the population, he says. I took issue with this, however. It's white heterosexual people who have been overrepresented in the past, I said. Even if the representation of minorities in media is disproportionate today, it's a necessary corrective measure. My friend wasn't convinced.
I've struggled with this, too. On the one hand, I believe strongly that representation matters, especially for young people. And I support so-called "inclusion riders"—provisions of an actor's contract which require a certain amount of diversity in casting and production staff.[2] But is a lack of diversity necessarily racist? Surely, a thoughtless act of omission is not a racist act, is it? Perhaps not, but lily white Mentos commercials are probably the result of a lack of diversity in marketing boardrooms of the 90's. In this sense, the commercials may be indicative of systemic racism in 1990's corporate America. Even today, thirty years later, a mere 12% of chief marketing officers identify as non-white.[3]
Opinion polling suggests that America has similarly mixed feelings about diversity in media, with 56% of adults feeling that Hollywood is sufficiently diverse and 44% who feel it isn't diverse enough, including 65% of liberals like me. (By comparison, 75% of Trump supporters feel that Hollywood is diverse enough as it is.)[4] I think it's important for young people's self-esteem that they not feel left out of popular culture, so I tend to favor more inclusion rather than less.
So where does this leave Mentos commercials? By the standard of their time, they are simply harmless fun. But the "standard of their time" was a lack of awareness of the importance of representation. To return to an earlier question, is this lack of awareness itself racist? I'm inclined to say no, but it can lead to racist outcomes. Mentos commercials may be a benign example (I would call them "problematic," not "racist"), but we all must be aware of our internalized racial biases, and perhaps the marketing executives behind Mentos commercials should have been more circumspect.
But one thing is for certain: fresh goes better!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zivWsrKQSDU
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/05/590867132/whats-an-inclusion-rider-here-s-the-story-behind-frances-mcdormand-s-closing-wor
[3] https://www.marketingcharts.com/business-of-marketing/staffing-111207
[4] https://morningconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/190124_crosstabs_HOLLYWOOD_Adults_v1-1.pdf