Pepsi’s new ad featuring Kendall Jenner, one that basically reenacts Ieshia Evans’ powerful protest depicted above from last summer when she stared down police in Baton Rouge and risked her very life by protesting Alton Sterling’s murder, is some straight up bullshit and needs to be yanked by the company post-haste.
Like many Americans, I am no fan of the Kardashian family. Narcissistic does not come close to describing this intellectually inept clan that somehow gets richer and more famous each year despite having no true marketable talents. Personally, I have been stopped trying to figure out what the media and entertainment industry fascination is with family headliner Kimberly Kardashian West, one who parlayed a wack porno tape with Ray-J into lucre approaching the billions, while Ray-J, the one putting in the work on said video (so I was told), remains on the entertainment B-list and is still most often referred to as R&B singer Brandy Norwood’s little brother.
But in my Jay-Z voice, I do try to avoid knocking the Kardashian hustle because hey, if the majority of America wants to spend time and money patronizing their business enterprises, far be it from me to hate. But when people of color like Alton Sterling, a tall, big black man the same as I, are out here getting blazed to death by trigger happy policemen on a regular basis, I take offense when banal folks like Baby Kardashian Kendall Jenner show a complete lack of respect for the struggle. Hell, even her momma Kris thought the ad to be cute, further proof that insipidness and ignorance start in the home. It also provides further proof that those whites who wanna act black or date/marry black are not automatically endowed with the slightest clues about the angst that ALL black folks, law abiders and lawbreakers alike, feel when police lights start flashing behind us.
My beef also extends to all non people of color who “appropriate” (read—steal) black culture in the form of dress, speech, hairstyles and swag, then put another name on it and get paid royally and heralded as innovators. The Kardashian family did not invent corn-rows any more than Bo Derek did, and the butt implants and collagen lips that are so “chic” among the Kardashians and millions of their young white followers are nothing more than the latest iteration of some white women seeking to look, sound and BE like black women, while at the same time not having to deal with the double-edged sword of racism and sexism and the attendant marginalization that Black women experience.
Thus my beef with Pepsi for this tone-deaf commercial with Kendall Jenner, one that is some straight up bullshit. So, not only am I fixin’ to boycott Pepsi (gonna miss them Sunkist Orange sodas), but I call for a boycott of PepsiCo Holdings and subsidiaries as well. Copy this link and join me in protesting this madness that could have been avoided if Pepsi had even one woke af employee reviewing the ad.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/77476/000119312511040427/dex21.htm
