Subject: [cwj 151] Jesse Jackson accuses Toyota of racist ads
From: Corporate Watch in Japanese <cwj@corpwatch.org>
Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 12:24:42 -0700
Seq: 151
Thursday 24 May 2001 Jesse Jackson accuses Toyota of racist ads TORRANCE, California (AP): Rev Jesse Jackson threatened a boycott against automaker Toyota on Wednesday, accusing the company of using racist advertising while excluding blacks among its dealers, board of directors, and advertising teams. Jackson was outside of Toyota's headquarters in Torrance to protest what he called a racist ad campaign for the company's RAV4 sport utility vehicle. The ad was placed on free postcards and distributed in nightclubs and coffeehouses. The card, which Toyota discontinued May 14, shows a close-up of a dark-skinned man's mouth with an image of a gold RAV4 on one tooth. "The only thing missing is the watermelon," Jackson said after meeting with Toyota officials. Toyota has defended the ad campaign and said it was aimed at a "young and very trendy audience" with an emerging trend called tooth art. Don Esmond, senior vice president and general manager for the Toyota division of Toyota Motor Sales USA, apologized Wednesday for the postcards. He said that, unlike print and television ads, he didn't see the postcards before they were released. Had he seen the postcards, he wouldn't have approved them. Toyota also said that it ended the postcard campaign out of concerns that it might promote a negative image to some. The company insisted it made the move before it had heard from Rainbow/PUSH. This wasn't the first time Toyota has published offensive ads, said Cosandra Calloway, an outside publicist for Rainbow/PUSH. In 1998, Toyota ran a print ad in Jet magazine with a caption that read "unlike your last boyfriend, the Corolla goes to work every morning." After that ad was pulled, Calloway said, Rainbow/PUSH received assurances from Toyota that such ads wouldn't reappear. "We and the publisher of Jet made an official apology to the magazine's readers and measures were taken to ensure further errors wouldn't occur," Toyota spokeswoman Diana DeJoseph said on Wednesday. Jackson said there were too few black and Hispanic dealers on Toyota lots compared to those of rivals Ford and General Motors. He called for at least part of Toyota's $470 million advertising budget to go to minority-owned advertising firms. Jackson said that he hoped that Toyota would address those issues by June 20 or he would call for a boycott of the company. He added that Rainbow/PUSH would sponsor information pickets of the auto manufacturer in 10 major US cities in the coming weeks. (AP) FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Corporate Watch in Japanese is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. ------------------------------------- Corporate Watch in Japanese Transnational Resource and Action Center (TRAC) P.O. Box 29344 San Francisco, CA 94129 USA Tel: 1-415-561-6472 Fax: 1-415-561-6493 Email: cwj@corpwatch.org URL: http://www.corpwatch-jp.org ------------------------------------- ______________________ The Corporate Watch in Japanese http://www.corpwatch.org/japan (CWJ) mailing list is a moderated email list in English designed to connect activists campaigning against Japanese corporations and investments around the world. * To unsubscribe from the CWJ mailing list, send an email to majordomo@jca.apc.org with text "unsubscribe cwj". To subscribe to the CWJ mailing list, send a message to majordomo@jca.apc.org with the text "subscribe cwj" * The CWJ mailing list is NOT intended for wide distribution. If you would like to post messages from this list somewhere else, we ask that you first contact us at cwj@corpwatch.org ______________________