Dunkin’ Donuts is receiving scrutiny after an ad surfaced on a train in Thailand of a model in blackface, her lips painted bright pink, advertising their “charcoal donut.”  This, of course, is argued by some as reminiscent of the blackface minstrelsy of the 19th and 20th centuries but, for others, it is nothing more than a “marketing strategy.”  In Thailand, however, the use of racial stereotypes is oddly common in the promotion and sell of products.

Additional Resources

Annemarie Bean, Inside the Minstrel Mask: Readings in Nineteenth Century Blackface Minstrelsy

Luis Chude- Sokei, The Last ‘Darky’: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora

Michael Reich, “The Economics of Racism”, 1974.

Eric Lott, Love and Theft: The Racial Unconscious of Blackface Minstrelsy, Representations, No. 39. (Summer, 1992), pp. 23-50.

Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class