Chocolerotica

[Disclaimer: Racism’s bad, kids.]

Okay, so you know black people? You know the ones. The ones that are white people, only black. The ones that were brought over to our country to do all the jobs we considered ourselves too good to do after WW2, which we subsequently complained about doing the jobs we don’t want to do, but would equally complain if we were stood at a bus-stop for three years because noone “comes over here and drives our buses”. The ones that have dreams that get them shot. Well, have you ever noticed they are [glances furtively about self]…black? Really? Why? Because, actually, they are not are they. Black people are black in the same way chocolate is black. By which I mean, it isn’t. It’s brown. But brown looks silly on placards. If we saw a bunch of un-thinking drones waving placards about with “Get browns out!” we would assume they were all constipated and were sluggishly pleading for an aid drop of Senokot.

With the exception of a 50 year old Greek owner of a bar I used to frequent, who suggested I came to his R&B nights as they were “good for picking up chocolate girls”, the fact that black people are actually brown doesn’t seem to get much of an airing. This could either be because:

a) Racism tends to concentrate on how ethnic group 1 is causing trouble for ethnic group 2, and even they, in their tiny minds, know it’s ridiculous to suggest they are doing that through skin colour alone.

b) Racists would have to give up chocolate, which would be a terrible shame as that’s probably one of the few pleasures they have left. Well, that and telling other British people to ‘go home’.

That black people are actually brown isn’t lost on children, and the fact that they are often heard to say that their black people have ‘skin like chocolate’ forms the basis for Naomi Campbell’s offence at a recent advertising campaign for Cadbury’s new product. I say “new product”, but it’s still bloody chocolate so there isn’t much that’s ‘new’ (apart from the Kraft logo on the wrapper).

Now personally I consider Naomi Campbell to be truly beautiful. Her lips look like they could suck your bones through your mouth and leave you flapping contentedly in the breeze like satisfied sock. Her legs are so long they may as well finish above her head, and her eyes have a ‘come to bed’ expression that could cause her to wake up next to Christopher Biggins if she wasn’t careful with her feminine voodoo. She is arguably one of the most famous faces in the world, and certainly one of the most successful in the world of slinking about in strange frocks. She does have a habit of getting a bit upset about things though [at this point I have flipped the switch on my ‘understatement’ sign, and it is cheerfully blinking away behind me], and that is exactly what she felt (the ‘offended’ kind of upset this time, rather than the ‘has to give back the blood diamonds’ kind of upset she felt a few weeks ago) when she opened her newspaper and saw the advert for Cadbury’s ‘Bliss’ bar.

The advert in question has an image of the CADBURY’S chocolate on a pillow, with the words ‘Move over Naomi, there’s a new diva in town’. Now personally, if it was me, I would be more offended that the advert was relying on an assumption that I am considered a preening high-maintenance diva rather than be offended by the reason she was offended. At a stretch, possibly, that she could easily be replaced by an inanimate object would be irksome. But no, her reason for distress was that the advert had ‘described [her] as chocolate’. I clearly haven’t read enough into the advert.

Instead of saying ‘famously beautiful Naomi Campbell is a bit of a diva isn’t she, well so is this chocolate bar’ as it appears to be, in it’s dumb chocolate-bars-have-emotions way, it’s apparently saying ‘everything you have previously wanted to do to famously beautiful Naomi Campbell can now be done with this chocolate bar’. Now there are many things I would like to do with Naomi Campbell. Melting her down and using her to coat strawberries is not one of them. They may as well have advertised the bar by declaring that it has a swallowing reflex.

We shall see which ‘option’ she opts for, my guess is a massive payoff but I might be wrong (I won’t be wrong). There are lessons to be learned, and as ever it remains to be seen whether or not they are actually learnt. Sweet and savoury is always a controversial mix. Perhaps Kraft should have stuck to making cheese.