6 September 2020
The South African Communist Party (SACP) calls upon the South African Human Rights Commission to take decisive action against Clicks for the racism that it has spread.
The SACP strongly condemns the recent racist advertisement by Clicks. On Friday 4 September 2020, Clicks published on its website a TRESemme hair product marketing campaign portraying Black natural hair as damaged, frizzy and dry, and White natural hair as fine and normal. The Clicks message in the advert is nothing but racist, in more direct words-the darker the skin the uglier it gets, the lighter the skin the more good-looking it gets!
The Clicks racist advert is not a mere publication of 'insensitive and offensive images', or an 'error of judgment', or an act of some junior employees, as per the claim by Clicks Group CEO Vikesh Ramsunder. It is a direct product of a capitalist industry rooted in the history of White supremacism and economic super-exploitation of the oppressed, with Black women the worst affected as they suffered all forms of oppression-national oppression, gender domination and class-super-exploitation.
The racist attitude spread by Clicks through the advert is an old age racist attitude consistent with the histories of slavery, colonial and apartheid capitalist exploitation. It is also an act of desperation by Clicks to woe more Black women into the deep-rooted stereotype that European hair is more beautiful than indigenous African hair.
The 'beauty industry', in particular, banks on the intensification of racial and gender inequalities and stereotypes. The latest incidence merely marks Clicks being 'caught in the act' rather than a 'slip of the tongue'. The fight against Clicks' racism can never be a principled fight without the intensification of the class, race and gender struggle, led by the working-class.
The multinational corporation Unilever, the owner of TRESemme, is not new to similar racist scandals in the 'beauty industry', and Africans are definitely not their lone target for the spreading of racism for capitalist accumulation.
Unilever has courted controversy in Asia for imposing their skin-lightening products on women. One of the most recent scandals was the pressurising of Cosmopolitan to fire the magazine's Sri-Lankan editor for her refusal to promote skin-lightening creams made by Pond's-also owned by Unilever, which has also posted similar racist adverts in recent years and merely 'apologised', just like Clicks has done.
Clicks' racist advert should not be seen as an isolated incident. Neither should it be seen as an attack on Africans only. It is systematic behaviour, most blatant during the colonialism and apartheid era but repackaged in the democratic dispensation to present the same message as in the colonial past; that White is supreme and glamorous, Black is inferior and dull!
As noted by the SACP 14th National Congress in 2017, the SACP has an enormous responsibility to provide a non-racial and non-sexist value system to challenge the dominant ideas of racism and sexism. The working-class must actively engage in gender struggles and the battle of ideas through the production of alternative gender conscious content to challenge and empower all genders towards gender equality. Such content production must especially focus on mainstream media platforms where ideas of racism, sexism, and classism are most prevalent.
ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY | SACP
EST. 1921 AS THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA | CPSA
Dr Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo
Central Committee Member for Media & Communications
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