Are These Cupcakes Racist?

When Duncan Hines partnered with film studio Filmaka to release a new ad campaign on YouTube this week for their “Amazing Glazes” frosting line, their aim was to “inspire creativity during the height of baking season” and portray how their icing “makes dessert sing.” The theme of the first video is “Hip Hop Cupcakes,” but rather than striking a chord with urban bakers, the video just seems to be pissing them off. Readers and bloggers have criticized the film’s director, Josh Binder, and the dessert company’s PR department for failing to see how the cupcake characters might be mistaken for performers in blackface. {snip}

Binder’s Duncan Hines commercial shows vanilla cupcakes that–when covered in gooey chocolate frosting–begin to sing. An enraged commenter on the site Racialicious complained: “I am appalled that there seems to be not one single marketing staffer at Duncan Hines/Pinnacle Food Groups with any awareness of the legacy of US minstrelsy and racism that is inextricable from the dark brown, red-lipped, googly eyed characters” depicted in the video. Writes a Womanist Musing blogger: “Do I really need to break down why Blackface cupcakes are racist? I sincerely hope this commercial is fake, because if not, it represents a direct attack on Black people.”

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