Also, Jewish Mothers Are Not Necessarily Domineering

The New York Times frets about commercials featuring big black broads with attitude. Apparently many overweight African-American women are quite sedate, while some thin ones have been known to raise a ruckus. The Times worries that commercials for Dairy Queen, Universal Studios, and Captain Morgan rum suggest otherwise. Although the spots do not seem to have generated any complaints from viewers, the Times was able to locate half a dozen critics. "Despite the popularity of such characters among blacks," the paper reports, "the use of the image of big black women as the target of so many jokes is troublesome [troubling?] to some marketers and media scholars"—all of whom the Times has rounded up for our convenience. The thrust of the criticism seems to be that it's OK for blacks, but not for whites, to laugh at Big Momma–type characters and to produce commercials featuring them. Conveniently, most of the critics are black advertising executives who sell their expertise in racial sensitivities.