Fun with Statistics!

I decided to do a little project to entertain myself during commercials tonight, from 8 pm - 11 pm on NBC. Of the 255 people I saw in advertisements, I marked down the apparent racial category of each person and what role they played in the commercial. Since racial representation in TV shows and movies is another study entirely, I ignored the trailers for upcoming shows and films. Here are tonight's results:

179 people were obviously white/Caucasian, which amounts to a little over 70% of the people visible in commercials. This corresponds to the actual representation in the United States according to the 2010 Census, IF you count all people of Hispanic origin as white. I actually could not identify any of the people in these commercials as definitely Hispanic, which raises the question of how people can visually define the Hispanic population at all!

Of the 179 white people, 26 were in positions of power (role models, managers, professionals, etc.) while 15 were in subordinate or demeaning roles (serving another character, comedic relief). The rest seemed neutral to me (customers, people driving cars, suburban families).


I saw 55 people who were clearly black, which made them overrepresented at 22% of the commercial population, when in reality only 13% of 2010 Census respondents identified themselves as black.

3 black actors were portrayed in positions of power, while 6 were in subordinate roles - in one case playing an elf for Santa Claus, and in several instances the scantily-clad dancers for a rap star.


8 people were apparently Asian-Americans, accounting for 3% of the advertisements compared to 5% of the real U.S. population. I saw no actors who could be classified as Pacific Islander, South Asian, or Arab.

Only 1 Asian was shown in position of power (as an inspirational figure), with none being viewed as subordinate.


I could not clearly identify the race of 13 people, placing them in the coveted "racially ambiguous" category that is so good for marketing.


A few other notes on the diversity of these commercials - when the advertiser wanted to portray American suburbia, such as in Denny's "Tour of America" specials or Bob Evans' "Down on the Farm" slogan, almost exclusively white people were chosen to represent the picture-perfect Americans.

Likewise, almost all the people shown driving cars were white. I wonder if marketing experts have shown that people of color buy new cars so rarely as to make it unprofitable to target that demographic?

Nuclear families (mother, father, and usually two children) were generally white as well. The black actors would show up as friends visiting, but rarely as their own family unit.


Stay tuned for later in the week, when I will analyze the commercials played on FOX! (This should be good)