Coca-Cola withdraws advertisement that Guyanese would find acceptable

Dec 13, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Guyana is Planet Earth’s most pathetic country. If you happen to see my wife or daughter you can ask them. We were at the breakfast table and I showed them an advertisement in the newspaper (can’t remember if it was the Kaieteur News or Stabroek; I only buy those two papers) calling for applications for cooks, carpenters, supervisors etc., and the featured person in the advertisement was a Whiteman in a three-piece suit.
What an incredibly stupid nation Guyana is. But in the scheme of things, nations are like individuals. You meet bright people, nice people, understanding people and ignorant people.
One can say that the Hindu caste system has won in Guyana. In the Bollywood film industry they take the caste system seriously. Since its birth, the Hindu film industry never had even a light-brown leading actor. Only the thieves, villains and drunkards in Hindi films are dark-skinned.
One of the most ironic jokes since civilization began can be heard at anytime in Europe and the US. When I studied in Canada, my White friends wanted to tan so they could get a brown complexion similar to mine. In India, very light-skinned actors used skin-whitening lotion to get whiter. So white folks want to have a little brownness, but in India light-complexioned people want to get lighter.
I was a guest a few months ago on the morning talk-show, “First Look” on channel 9. I told my host, Handel Duncan, that there are three traits in civilization that will never be lessened or diluted or diminished muchless die, and they will stay with civilization until civilization dies.
The first one is the belief in God. Sigmund Freud says that even if God didn’t exist he would have been invented. Human beings want security, to be loved, to have a protective hand to safeguard them and they find that in a God that created them. Religion then will never die
Secondly, the male species will never be content with sex with one woman only. A man may love a woman in amazing ways but he will be tempted always to have sex outside of monogamy. Thirdly, the people of the world will always make a preference for a lighter-complexioned person.
There are exceptions to number two and three, but the pattern in number two and three will always be predominant in the human race. I believe that is the way of the world. People like Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley, Joan Baez, Walter Rodney, Martin Luther King Jr. and so many like them, will come into the world and influence humans to be better people, but in the final analysis, a man will look for sex with more than one woman, and people will always have a preference for persons who are not dark-skinned or brown-skinned.
On the question of skin colour, the argument that it arose out of the slave trade and colonial domination is utter nonsense. Ancient Hindu texts are punctuated with disdain for things that were black. Long before colonialism took over the Arab world, ancient Arabian society was riveted with contempt for darker humans. It is almost certain that the person the Bible refers to as Jesus was not the white-faced person he is presented to the world as. Colour has a long history in the psyche of the human race. It is part of civilization. It will not go away.
This is not to say that society should throw up its hands in fatalistic acceptance. It was the great Italian 20th century thinker, Antonio Gramsci who wrote that, “The optimism of the will must override the pessimism of the intellect.” Humans must strive to change the negative values that dampen the spirit of civilization. It doesn’t mean we must not strive to be faithful to monogamy. It doesn’t mean we must not fight to end discrimination against black-complexioned people. There is a huge backlash in India against the advertising of skin-lightening cream.
I conclude with a brief description of the caption of this column above.
Last week, Coca-Cola put out an advertisement in Mexico which featured a group of White teenagers drinking Coke in a Mexican village. There was a huge outcry that first started in Mexico then went viral around the world. Coca-Cola apologized then pulled the advertisement.
What an indescribable world we live in. That commercial would not have raised an eyebrow in Guyana, a country where most people are darker than Mexicans. I believe Mexico is a failed state, but when Mexicans can react like that, it shows what a dead, dried up, wasteland, Guyana is.

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Coca-Cola withdraws advertisement that Guyanese would find acceptable

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