Question 3

In the Everest College commercial, an African American male is used to promote getting an education from the college and give off the underlying message that other African Americans like himself, from a lower class, need a proper education to succeed. Class and race are both evident in this commercial. The actor is performing extreme Blackness by talking in a "ghetto" tone of voice, using slang words, and dressing in a hood, gangster sort of way. The setting of the video is also very key. The commercial is set in a sketchy parking lot with no one around, in the middle of a run down urban area, portrayed as the ghetto. The advertisement seems cheaply done with poor quality materials, thus insinuating the college is not even that good, so that is why a man like the one in the commercial could get in.
The Ghetto Delta Airlines video is racist and showcases many stereotypes about African Americans. A white man is performing Blackness by the way he talks in the video and presents himself. For example, he uses phrases such as "back at yo crib" and "it don't matter" thus portraying African Americans as less intelligent. Also the same point about dumbness is made when they show Delta's motto on the screen with multiple spelling errors, " We luvz us sum flyin." The white people in the background of this clip are physically and mentally more attractive than the person who is performing Blackness and other African Americans in the video. There is a direct reference to class just by the way the two different races are acting and being portrayed through out the entire video.
Both of the videos construct the African American race to be lazy and not intelligent. They are both reaching out to a black audience, however they go about it two totally different ways; one uses an actual African American man to relate to "his people" and the other uses a white man performing Blackness to contrast the two races. The idea of being "ghetto" is used in both videos to reiterate the idea of their lack of class and education. Racism is definitely more apparent in the Delta Airlines video due to the fact that a white person is blatantly making fun of the African American race. In the college commercial, it is not as obvious because although the man is still an actor, he is still performing an extremity of his race, thus making it seem not as racist.