The advert made by Fairy Soap from the 1940’s is very racist. The advert has two little girls, one of them white and one of them black, standing in an unknown place. The black girl has a scruffy dress and short hair, and she doesn’t have any shoes on. The white girl has blonde shiny hair, a cute clean dress and shoes. In the ad the white girl asks the black girl: “Why doesn’t your mama wash you with fairy soap?” The little white girl thinks that the black girl has a dirty body when actually it is only her skin colour. When the advert was published, people thought that these types of adverts were perfectly normal but nowadays many think that these kinds of ads are very racist.
In the 1940’s black children and adults were discriminated publicly. Even the law said that black people have to have their own facilities, for example bathrooms, drinking fountains and restaurants. During the world war II, African Americans, Native Americans and Japanese Americans had to live and work in a certain part of town. In the advert there is symbolism in the little girls’ clothes because the black girl has dirty clothes on and the white girl has clean clothes on. The people who have made this advert perhaps wanted to point out that black people are “dirty inside” or “not as clean” as white people.
This advert is very racist because it points out that black and white people are not equal human beings, when in fact all people are equal to each other. We would not buy Fairy Soap based on this advert.
Julia, Maria, Nina
Internet English 
January 21, 2015 at 1:52 pm
Fluently written with informative topic sentences! You ladies have improved and matured a lot as writers! The only part which I wish you had elaborated a bit was the part about the black girl being “dirty” on the inside. Dirt is often associated with animals and consequently black people (who also had “dirty skin”) were seen as animals or savages with dirty minds and even souls and the desires of a beast. For example, a black man could not even glance at a white woman because people immediately assumed that he wanted to rape her. Animals have primal urges, you see. The racial hierarchy back then in America was extremely unjust, as you point out in your ad analysis. Sadly, it was considered quite normal at the time. The cruel irony of the ad is that the little black girl’s family probably had no money for such luxuries as soap because of the legacy left behind by slavery and oppression.
TAKE HI9 HISTORY IN ENGLISH!
– asks the black girl, “Does your…” (Notice the punctuation!)
– black and white separate = RACIAL SEGREGATION
January 7, 2015 at 2:28 pm
We give you 75/99 points! You have nice background information about the discrimination. We thought that you could have told more about the background of the advert itself. You also repeat ‘The black girl’ and ‘The white girl’ a lot, so maybe you could search for some kind of synonyms for those words. But although well done!
Linda, Ellen and Ninni
January 8, 2015 at 10:32 am
A constructive comment! 🙂