>>718650990 (OP)
I can't think of anything more corpo-coded than this shit with natural hair/dreadlocks black women in it, but no black men. It instantly tells me that I'm getting some fucking boardroom's idea of diversity.
I think it started in the 70s when companies started hiring black women as a way to get around Affirmative Action. They were expected to hire certain numbers of black people and a certain number of women, and so they would hire black women, because they were essentially a 2-for-1 deal. This seems to have left corpos with the lasting cultural impression that diversity and inclusion initiatives has something to do with black women, and they're almost always front and center in any big corpo diversity and inclusion program.
However, black MEN are still kind of scary and intimidating, so they're either entirely absent, or they're softened in some way. Like, they might be the nerd, the gay/queer character or a member of some whimsical race, like an elf or a halfling in a fantasy series. This shit isn't being made for black people, after all. It's being made for a certain sect of upper-middle-class white liberals, largely by the same sect of upper-middle-class white liberals all employed within the same corpo-sphere. If it prominently features black men, the product is actually being advertised to black people. If it's just this natural hair/dreadlocks black women meme, it's white lib corpos trying to impress each other and the investors.
