There was an article in the Los Angeles Times talking about how difficult it was for companies to market to Muslim customers. Just from the title I thought I had to do with cultural insensitivities to the community or not enough research on the community. No, after reading the article it seems Muslims, on the whole, welcome the attempt by marketers to try and cater to their needs.

The difficulty is with American (read white) shoppers who will organize and protest attempts by businesses to cater to Muslims because of 9/11. Thankfully, the article didn’t just treat this as some surface fact, because in digging deeper into the issue, they showed that marketing to other groups not part of the ‘American way’ can be a slow process not because of the community being catered to but because of the white consumer worried about their ‘tradition’ being overrun by undesirables.

Now I have to admit this isn’t exclusively a white thing. I have been bewildered when going into the grocery store across the street and seeing Spanish more prominent than English, however if the store has Mercado in the name, I think I have to give into the fact it’s going to cater to a Hispanic market. There was a grocery store in San Diego I used to frequent that was an international shop and it was a bilingual establishment, so having different languages and advertisements made sense.

In the article it talked about irate Americans protesting advertisers that catered to blacks, Hispanics and while not mentioned I remember the big debate going on about catering to the homosexual community. What confused me is the same thing that confuses me about the opposition people have for same-sex marriage. Having an advertiser they to do something to cater to another segment of the population aren’t going to affect anyone personally. I remember when I think Carnival Cruises started having Gay cruises and there were religious groups ready to boycott the company. The only problem was the biggest religious groups opposed to it didn’t take cruises. How smart is that? You’re going to protest what another company does but you don’t have a foot into buying their stuff.

While the unwritten information in the article had to do with white people being the angry mob against the Muslim ads, I don’t think it would be too unfair to say Americans in general aren’t happy about change in advertising. I’m not sure why this is other than the reminder that our nation is becoming the thing we talk about but never practice. People may want to come to America to be free, but they don’t want to forget where they came from. They want some acknowledgement of that past. While I have known many people who are proud of being American, and I’m talking about white, black and Hispanic, those same people will also talk proudly of their Mexican, African or European heritage.

I guess it was said best when I was in junior high school and a teacher talked about the melting pot of America. He said there are two ways to think of the pot. Some people think the pot is like a smelting pot. You put the ingredients in; add heat and you get this homogenous mixture like metal. The reality is, as he put it, America is made up of meat, carrots, potatoes and other products. You put that in the pot and you have stew. You can see the individual parts but the end result is a blending of all those separate elements. You can pick up on what they are but it’s a great experience on how they work together.

We are a stew pot and we have to stop thinking like a smelting pot.

 

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The American Stew Pot - January 25, 2010
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