Thank You State Farm, New Balance, and Walt Disney for Caring About OUR Daughters!

A commentator pointed out that we need to thank these powerful advertisers for smacking some sense into the folks over at XXLmag.com who thought it would be cute and funny to refer to the victim of the Dunbar Village gang rape as "some hooker down in Florida." Now when we called and e-mailed XXL and Harris Publications, they scoffed at us, actually, they ignored us completely. I was still in shock that they would stoop so low. I am still coming to terms with the fact that there are powerful media organizations filled with men and women who hate and despise Black women. I know I know. some of you came to that realization years ago, but I, like many African American women always thought in terms of hatred being directed at us in purely racial terms. It is like a new awakening to realize that there are people within my community who hate women and get to further their agenda through mass media and they are getting rich off of their hatred. BECAUSE WE LET THEM

The truth is that a lot of folks are getting away with their hatred of women because they are Black so no one calls them on it.

Now we can also blame advertisers for being lazy with their brand and oversimplifying the African American community by thinking that if they aim at a "Black" publication or TELEVISION NETWORK that they are a) reaching African Americans and b) those media executives aren't doing anything to offend the advertiser's target audience.

Well they are wrong on both accounts. I don't know what malarky some of these "multicultural" ad agencies are selling these huge corporations, but FYI, I think they are wasting alot of their ad dollars and aren't reaching their target audience. I think they are satisfying some sense of guilt about not providing ad dollars to Black media companies, so they open their check books so Black Enterprise can give them a good "diversity" rating, but they don't hold these Black media companies to the same standards when it comes to discrimination, degredation and outright hate speech.

But today all of you who called New Balance, State Farm, and Disney, need to call or write back and thank them for intervening on our behalf. Should they have been more careful in the first place, yes, but unlike our own people who ignored us ( you know I am going to stop using the term "my people"- cause some of these folk ain't!), these advertisers took immediate action and they should be applauded for it. Now not only is the offending column gone but so are the other that did such things as applaud the beating of Black women

The sad truth is that Black women's greatest allies in fighting back in the War on Black Women will not be civil rights organizations or women's groups, or even Black "leaders." It looks like our greatest allies are going to be advertisers so lets try to cultivate good relations with these folk, we don't only want to contact them to complain and we would much rather be able to jot over an FYI e-mail than put them on blast. I don't care how we DEFUND the War on Black Women as long as it gets done.

Those of you who have been with us from the beginning know that we are learning as we go. Some strategies work more effectively than others, but we're 3 and 0 when it comes to contacting advertisers. Every time we do, something happens and it happens FAST.

Tell these folks Thank You and send some snail mail to the CEOs while you are at it.
STOP FUNDING FOOLISHNESS!