Re-normalizing a White America

U.S. Department of Labor:

“The American Dream belongs to the American People."

And who are the American people? Here they are:

This month the U.S. Department of Labor began posting images on its social media accounts promoting Project Firewall. It is President Donald Trump's initiative to put much tighter limits on H-1B visas that allow work permits for foreign workers. Their official ad campaign shows images of American life:

Official Department of Labor Facebook page

Husband, wife, two young children, house, small Protestant church, small downtown, a factory with brown smoke entering blue skies. 

The United States is in backlash mode on diversity and inclusion, away from a 50-year trend that reimagined who was an American. Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians were here, but outside the notion of "regular." In the 1960s they began entering mainstream consciousness as fellow Americans.

The Coca-Cola ad "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony," drew national attention. The first images were of blond White women.

But as the music swelled, the camera showed a wider group of people, some Black, some Hispanic, some Asian. The ad was new at the time. Look at all the different people!

The half century has brought Black, Hispanic, Asian people into advertisements. Diversity and inclusion became mainstream. White boys wore the number 23 basketball jersey -- Michael Jordan's number. Tiger Woods endorsed business consultancies. Kids of South Asian extraction won spelling bees. Kids of Chinese extraction won math contests. Meanwhile, immigrants from Latin America and Asia changed the country's demographics. The United States is 19 percent Hispanic; 12 percent Black; six percent Asian. 

The changes have made some people uncomfortable, Trump among them. Backlash against high immigration numbers has happened repeatedly in American history. Immigration supporters and advocates (like me) had a job to do and we failed at it. Knowing that high levels of immigration create resentment, we had a duty to be certain that immigration looked orderly and that it was framed as patriotic. Instead, Democrats allowed disorder at the Southern border, and diversity was celebrated in progressive circles as rejection of the incumbent culture. "Melting pot" was thought racist. We were tone-deaf to America. Trump took advantage of that.

Critics of these ads liken them to Stalin's or Hitler's propaganda posters. I disagree. The images are not a celebration of Aryan youth or the Soviet proletariat. They are a sentimental return to an imagined 1950s golden age. Postwar American men could work and support a family and buy a home. Wives were homemakers. Non-white people were nearly invisible. The imagery is familiar to me: It reminds me of my Dick and Jane readers in first grade. It was good to be a White boy in the 1950s. I played cowboys and Indians. 

Project Firewall imagery reverses the DEI mindset where any commercial or government image of Americans would have, by design, a careful count of diverse identities. Project Firewall's  reverse branding is an over-reaction. It is an outlier. Weird. Retro in a bad way. And it will get swamped by ads from businesses with diverse customers.

Nike 

Direct to consumer drug ad

Kellogg's

Project Firewall's imagery will likely raise the status of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. She drew favorable attention from Trump for the giant banner of Trump's face on a DOL building. This ad campaign serves her, but not Trump. Project Firewall imagery is an over-reaction. It is an insult to the 40-something percent of Americans who look nothing like the people in the images, and anyone under age 70 who sees those images as ancient history, not reminders. Many people included in images of ethnic diversity voted for Trump because they thought they were part of Trump's America; they were fellow Americans worried about "illegals." "Illegals" were the outsiders, not them.

This imagery is over-reach and hubris. It expresses Trump's can-do rush to reverse anything that seems "woke." It is no-apology Trump. 

America is in backlash against DEI, but it has not gone Nazi. The people who identify with those images of real Americans were a majority of voters in 1950, but not now. This imagery insults the people who were the margin that got Trump elected.

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