Darkie ToothpasteDarkie was the bestselling toothpaste throughout Asia.
Manufactured in Hong Kong and Taiwan by Hawley &
Hazel, part-owned by the Colgate-Palmolive Company,
its leadership was challenged in 1990 not by a new and
improved competitor, but by the Interfaith Center on
Corporate Responsibility, which argued that the
trademark of a grinning black minstrel promoted racial
stereotyping. Spokespersons for Colgate-Palmolive
initially insisted that the product name and design were
not offensive to Asian people. However, the company
ultimately gave in to mounting protest from the West and
ordered Hawley & Hazel to change the image. The
redesign featured a young, well-dressed black man in a
top hat and a new name, Darlie.
An American visiting a Far Eastern metropolis
might well be shocked by the sight of billboards showing
the original smiling, bug-eyed minstrel advertising Darkie
toothpaste. Since the mid- 1960 s Americans have become
sensitive to derogatory stereotypes. Yet these deep-seated
images have been difficult to extinguish even here. Racial
and ethnic stereotypes have no higher purpose than to
simplify, dehumanize, and degrade people, yet many such
stereotypes have been used for mass market product
identification, advertising, and as trade character mascots.
Although the Darkie controversy occurred continents
away, it recalled a period in American history when
stereotypical images of Jews, Irish, Italians, Chinese, and
African and Native Americans were exploited by
manufacturers and merchants to sell products.
From the cigar-store Indian to the Gold Dust Twins (two
comical African pygmies who were trademarks for a leading detergent),
stereotypes have pervaded popular art. The practice has all but ceased, but
vestiges of benign racist trade characters remain, including Aunt Jemima,
the former plantation mammy who over the years has been transformed
into a housewife, and the Cleveland Indians logo, the comic heathen with
the foolish grin.348