For some reason the 10 white people in this bar have been watching BET for the last hour

(Martin episodes)

When they have a crowd of girls fawning over him it’s very much 1 darkskin girls, 2 lightskin girls, a white girl and an asian girl

Specifically, a Japanese girl. A reminder that as recently as the 90s they were a bigger part of our impression of “Asian-American”

Then, as recently as the 90s Japan was a bigger part of our impression of Asia

Anyway, the real culture clash comes in the commercials

The showy diversity of some commercials resonates different when they’re set against ones that are just all-black

Such that you start thinking about the mixed ones as the black characters constituting the main through-line and you’re like wait is the emotional payload of this one really a mother’s satisfaction that the white boys want to get close to her daughter

Also saw an anti-diarrheal commercial with, actually, a white lead, but was surprised how startled I was that it directly mentioned “diarrhea”. Then remembered that some of the biggest black representation in 90s commercials was this campaign for… Immodium? Where this black guy was euphemistically talking around like “digestion problems” and then his loud black wife was like “HE’S TALKING ABOUT DIARRHEA”