The Use of Black Models in Advertising

Abstract

In his recent JMR article on the use of blacks in advertising, Kassarjian says that the mass media of communication, and advertising as a subset, reflect the culture and society in which they exist [7, p. 29]. While this is probably true, it is a framework for viewing the question of the utilization of blacks in advertising that seems to be predicated on Kassarjian's ability to assess, at least implicitly, the status of race relations in American society. This seems to be an unnecessarily omniscient position. The extent to which Kassarjian relied on it is revealed in the following excerpt on how frequently black models appear in magazine advertisements [7, p. 30]: