--- title: Viewpoint: The Cheerios-Ad Uproar Actually Represents Racial Progress description: What’s more all-American than Cheerios? How about a wrenching national conversation on race? In recent days, a new commercial for the iconic cereal has become... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7132011/cheerios-ad-takeaway-race-is-now-too-complex-for-racists/ author: Eric Liu article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-06-04T15:10:55.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T09:16:30.142Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Viewpoint: The Cheerios-Ad Uproar Actually Represents Racial Progress og:description: What’s more all-American than Cheerios? How about a wrenching national conversation on race? In recent days, a new commercial for the iconic cereal has become... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7132011/cheerios-ad-takeaway-race-is-now-too-complex-for-racists/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc5a0f5ba5ee13e6b/698a91589862f57f2889b924/picture-4.png?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 600 og:image:height: 338 og:image:alt: Cheerios Commercial og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Viewpoint: The Cheerios-Ad Uproar Actually Represents Racial Progress twitter:description: What’s more all-American than Cheerios? How about a wrenching national conversation on race? In recent days, a new commercial for the iconic cereal has become... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc5a0f5ba5ee13e6b/698a91589862f57f2889b924/picture-4.png?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) # The Uproar Over the Biracial Cheerios Ad Is Actually Progress > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=55d9a6b4-6e29-420f-bd27-4b1116185976&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) by [Eric Liu](https://time.com/author/eric-liu/) Jun 4, 2013 3:10 PM UTC  Cheerios by [Eric Liu](https://time.com/author/eric-liu/) Jun 4, 2013 3:10 PM UTC What’s more all-American than Cheerios? How about a wrenching national conversation on race? In recent days, a new [commercial](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYofm5d5Xdw) for the iconic cereal has become a [phenomenon](http://www.today.com/news/cheerios-ad-mixed-race-family-draws-racist-responses-6C10169988) — not because it was an especially good ad, but because it featured a black dad, a white mom and their biracial daughter. On the ad’s YouTube page, [anonymous](http://topics.time.com/anonymous/) haters spewed so much bile against the image of mixed-race domesticity that the comments section had to be [disabled](http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/06/03/general-mills-blocks-racist-comments-on-youtube-cheerios-ad/). The racist comments were far outnumbered by expressions of support. The ad, which has been viewed over 1.8 million times, garnered 24,000 thumbs-ups to just over 1,500 thumbs-downs. But the intensity and vitriol of the race baiters got the media’s attention. The subtext of the coverage has been not just outrage but shock: _America is supposed to be past this kind of racism — what just happened?_ (**VIDEO:** [Cheerios Commercial Showing Biracial Family Riles Haters](http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/31/watch-cheerios-commercial-showing-biracial-family-riles-haters/)) There are three lessons to draw from this fevered moment. The first is that this kind of racism is precisely what happens when a society begins moving past this kind of racism. Had it not been for the election to the presidency of a biracial man who chooses to identify as black, the Cheerios ad would likely not have been as fiercely attacked or defended. But we do have such a man in the White House. We do live in a time when whiteness and white maleness in particular no longer confer automatic primacy. To angry whites who resent the multicolored future for leaving them behind, lashing out at a mixed-race kid who likes Cheerios might seem like an act of defiant political incorrectness — but it’s the epitome of powerlessness. The second lesson is that pseudo-controversies often matter not for the “news” or “facts” they purport to convey but for their value as community parables and tales of moral instruction. Why did the media turn this tempest in a cereal bowl into a national phenomenon? Not because every household was already discussing the ad — most of us learned about it only through well-publicized reactions to it — but because this is the kind of thing that (mainly white) news editors and television producers believe that we, as Americans, should collectively disapprove of. And contrived as it all is, this too represents progress. (**MORE:** [In New Job, Italy’s First Black Minister Confronts Culture of Casual Racism](http://world.time.com/2013/05/06/italys-first-black-minister/)) The deepest lesson is that race is getting too complex for racists and more complex than even the well-meaning sometimes realize. _Bi-_racial even seems too simple. Interracial marriages are at an all-time [high](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2012/02/SDT-Intermarriage-II.pdf), and over 9 million people in the 2010 [Census](http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/27/census-more-people-identify-as-mixed-race/) identified as multiracial, a 32% jump. There are words these Americans use for themselves — blasian, hapa, mestizo — yet our public language is clumsy and deficient. My daughter is Chinese-Scotch-Irish-Lithuanian-Jewish. She calls herself Asian, with a touch of irony. Depending on your vantage point, this age of racial flux is either exhilarating or terrifying. The boxes and labels we’ve used to contain race are collapsing. Our inherited and often unspoken notions about the U.S.’s fundamental whiteness, about the alienness of brown and [yellow](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWynJkN5HbQ) skin, about the indelible stigma of blackness — all are falling away, their adherents dying off. To be sure, we are not beyond race in the U.S. A glance at how power flows in any institution still reminds us that race matters, and darkness disadvantages. But kids like my daughter or the one in the Cheerios ad or the millions [celebrating](http://jezebel.com/im-biracial-and-that-cheerios-ad-is-a-big-fucking-dea-510740851) the ad are proof that a more fluid and customizable way of talking about race and cultural identity is going to emerge. Is my daughter Asian or white? Yes. Chinese or Asian? Yes. Lithuanian or Scotch-Irish? Yes. Chinese or Jewish? Yes. American? Yes. Definitely. **MORE:** [ You Can’t Be an Accidental Racist](http://ideas.time.com/2013/04/11/viewpoint-you-cant-be-an-accidental-racist/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7132011/cheerios-ad-takeaway-race-is-now-too-complex-for-racists/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7132011/cheerios-ad-takeaway-race-is-now-too-complex-for-racists/"},"headline":"The Uproar Over the Biracial Cheerios Ad Is Actually Progress","datePublished":"2013-06-04T15:10:55.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T09:16:30.142Z","description":"What’s more all-American than Cheerios? How about a wrenching national conversation on race? 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