"Whiteness" in Arlene Davila's "Culture in the Ad World: Producing the Latin Look"

In Arlene Davila’s, “Culture in the Ad World: Producing the Latin Look,” she explores representations of the Hispanic population by corporate advertisers and attempts to offer an explanation as to why these depictions look the way they do. In particular, Davila describes the typical Latino creative exec and subsequently illustrates how in their attempts to challenge stereotypes of the traditional Hispanic consumer, these so called “creatives,” end up “defending the whiteness, affluence, and marketability of the Hispanic consumer.” These characteristics end up becoming the basis for a new Latino stereotype that is both “whitened” and largely based on the advertising executives own self-image. This repeated allusion to the “whitening” of the prototypical Hispanic consumer in turn made me wonder about Davila’s perception of whiteness and the construction of a white identity by the mass media. Specifically, I thought about the concept of ‘the other,” and the degree to which Caucasian representations in the media are defined in relation to stereotypes and models of otherness. From the point of view of Davila’s essay, it is implicit that mainstream white America serves as the standard for normalcy in the realm of popular representation. Given this perspective, the question then becomes, from where does this representation of whiteness come from and what exactly does it comprise? Specifically, are American immigrants from Ireland or Poland included as part of this depiction? What about homosexuals and Jews? Where exactly does one draw the line in terms of normality? Is simply being white enough? Looking back, this was my problem with Davila’s argument, what I saw as her failure to define “whiteness” in terms of anything other than being a good consumer and being a member of the upper class. While I understand that the point of the focal point of the article was Latino representation in the ad world, her decision to leave the concept of “whiteness” largely unexplored left the essay somewhat deficient.