Ram Superbowl Ad Forgets Who Our Farmers Actually Are
Who are America’s farmers actually? Thanks to Latino Rebels blog for reminding us of one of our favorite memes that more accurately reflects reality.
Seventy-seven percent of farm workers were born in Latin America. But you wouldn’t guess it if you watched the Ram Super Bowl ad that glorifies American farmers as God’s crowning creation.
Last night, the car company ran a two-minute ad which tapped into one of our country’s oldest and most poignant narratives: that of the hard-working, self-sufficient, American yeoman.
Voiced by the late conservative radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, the lengthy ad declares that God created the farmer on his eighth day of work:
“God said, ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.’ So God made a farmer.”
Images of American farmers rolled one after another under Harvey’s narration.
But, wait! For some reason, just about none of those portrayed in the glorification of the American farmer look like the men and women actually doing most of the heavy-lifting on farms across the country.
Because the reality is that a good majority of our hardworking farm workers who wake up before the sun to harvest our wheat and milk our cows are, you guessed it, Hispanic. And what might be even less palatable for those who put the ad together or for those who it targets — a good number of those farm workers are undocumented.
The omission of Latino immigrants in the depiction of farming in America was striking to others too. Our friends at Latino Rebels blog were appalled:
“We are guessing that displaying the REAL FACE of farming in the United States would that have been way too uncomfortable to show? By the way, we know you showed only two Latino faces for a second, but that didn’t cut it, Chrysler,” they wrote.
Did the ad purposely neglect to include Latinos in order to sell cars to a certain demographic? Did the shortage of Hispanic faces stand out to you? Or not?
Check out the entire ad and let us know in the comments below.
(Photo Credit: Latino Rebels Blog)
UPDATE: A previous version of this post quoted Latino Rebels as addressing Dodge in their own blog post. They have since changed their comment to address Chrysler instead, and our story now also reflects this change.
