Cheerios Ad YouTube: Interracial Family in Commercial Spurs Racist Response

Culture

Cheerio’s new ad is pretty much exactly what you expect out of a cereal commercial: a happy family, a precocious but adorable child, a disclaimer of how healthy the cereal is, and some ensuing hijinks. Oh, and one more thing. The happy family is interracial.

Now, you’re probably thinking:

But apparently, a lot of people do. In fact, the comments section of this ad on YouTube quickly became so profane and racist that Cheerios was forced to disable it to maintain a family-friendly environment. Comments ranged from stereotypes (“Family? More like single parent in the making. Black dad will dip out soon.”) to faux-intellectual (“Cultural Marxist views are threatening to destroy ALL distinct peoples through forced assimilation and miscegenation.”) to white supremacist (“Encouraging whites to race-mix leads to loss of white genetics.”) to homophobic (“Next it will be OK to show a couple of fudge-packers, with their family, that came from a turkey baster.”) to insane (“Why don’t we have interspecies families too, with a dog as the father?”), all the way to the plain old “I’m going to vomit” and internet-standard comparisons to Nazis.

And yet, somehow all I got out of this was, "Awwww."