Beef Loving Texans

Have you seen the advertisement for Beef Loving Texans?  This ad pops up and plays first when I click on a video I want to watch on CNN or wherever.  I have seen it on TV as well.  It is a wonderful, pastoral scene.  Set on a large ranch, a tall, thin Anglo male in western dress plays with his Anglo boy and girl in a great outdoor expanse with a background of round bales of hay strewn across the field, while the attractive Anglo mother works dutifully at home.  The narration talks about Texas and our values and our history and how much we value eating beef.  The final shot shows the family gathered around the table as the father slices a nice rare brisket.

I thought it was a joke the first time I saw it, and was laughing before it ended.  Only then did I realize this ad was serious.  It is the most gross stereotyping I have seen in a long time and completely oblivious to the current reality of Texas.

These folks are not typical Texans by any stretch of the imagination.  The typical Texan is a Latino who lives in an urban area and rents an apartment.  He or she does not own land, much less a ranch.  Where are the real Texans in this ad?  Where are the Blacks, the urban dwellers, the McDonalds eating Anglos?  No, this is visual painting of the nation’s stereotype of Texas and it is false.

Worse, if the target audience is Anglos and no one else, because of the income disparity in Texas most of those with enough education are vegetarians, not meat eaters.  Is the point here to convert healthy Texans to a food source that will hurt them?  Is the point here to let our majority/minorities know that beef is only for white folks?  That owning land is only for white folks?  That a typical family is a rugged cowboy like husband, attractive rancher mom and 2.0 kids, one a boy and one a girl and only they should eat beef after they have romped unfettered on their family’s huge spread?

I eat beef.  I know it is not good for me, but I eat beef.  Why must the beef industry promote such narrow thinking in an effort to sell their product?  Or, is the ad a subtle ploy by wise thinkers to encourage the dinosaurs among us to eat more beef so that their extinction is accelerated?