As a diversity advocate, I thought the Coca Cola Super Bowl ad called “It’s Beautiful” which portrayed the song America The Beautiful being sung by different cultures in different languages and which also portrayed a same sex couple couple (the first Super Bowl ad to do so according to GLAAD), was ingenious, inclusive and yes, simply beautiful.
Not surprising, my very positive response was not shared by all. According to reliable press, seconds after the ad aired, Twitter was abuzz with tweets that criticized the commercial and Coke for showing different languages. The naysayer’s sentiment: This is America. We speak English in America. Some went as far as to say that they would never buy Coca Cola products again.
Encouragingly, there were also some positive Twitter responses to the ad with tweets like this one:
As a nation, we are at a crossroads about our views of what it means to be an American. Some still think that it means you must assimilate by giving up your native language and culture. Those of us who advocate inclusion believe that it looks more like mutual adaptation. The expectation that the earlier immigrants to this country would prove their patriotism by adopting some pre-conceived model of “American”, has changed. I think Jimmy Carter said it best:
We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.
I think Coca-Cola masterfully captured the beautiful mosaic. And I am hopeful that as more companies like Coca-Cola courageously and boldly take a stand like this, the more the masses will begin to understand that America is beautiful in its array of diversity and that the differences are not something to be arbitrarily changed to fit some pre-conceived notion, but rather they are to be accepted, celebrated and cherished.
