The Great Cheerios Debacle of 2013

A recent Cheerios ad has sparked a lot of controversy online. It features a white mom, a black dad, and a biracial little girl. The ad focuses on the girl's loving (albeit, slightly misguided) attempt to keep her father's heart healthy. Adorable, right? Yet the bigoted YouTube comments have gotten so out of hand that Cheerios has had to disable them. Comments like:

“It is not hatred to love your own people. Cultural Marxist views are threatening to destroy ALL distinct peoples through forced assimilation and miscegenation.”

Like the girl in the commercial, my mom is white and my dad is black. This representation of a mixed family is one of the first on television that I could relate to. My parents never really addressed the fact that I was different. It didn’t need to be said.

Growing up in Reston, I was exposed to people from a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. From elementary school to high school, the idea that racial inequalities continued to exist never crossed my mind. Which made it all the more shocking when, on a break from school, I was sent to pick up my younger brother at South Lakes. He could not yet drive, and hated taking the bus. A few miles from the school, I got stuck behind a car going what felt to me like two miles an hour. The bumper of the car was plastered with pretty racist anti-Obama sentiments. I tried to pass the car, and saw a tiny old woman in the driver’s seat. As we got to a red light, the woman rolled down her window, flipped me off and yelled “Stop following me, spook.” I was shocked. First of all, because the term “spook” was hilariously outdated. Was it 1870 all of a sudden? But most importantly, because no one had ever called me out primarily, if not only, for the color of my skin. I laughed it off at first, but it began to concern me.

Because diversity is a part of our everyday lives here, we fail to see the inequalities that persist outside of our community. What do you think?