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Evidence has emerged that the office of Major of London considers a photo (PDF, page 47) depicting a group consisting of: a man, a woman, a boy and a girl, all of whom are of European ancestry, to not "represent real Londoners".
Looking at the ethnic breakdown of the capital of United Kingdom, showing Europeans (still) account for over 50% of the population, it seems premature to declare media depicting them to be unrepresentative.
But even if the natives were succesfully reduced to a minority, one would expect that they should be overrepresented. This would consistent with the mainstram present narrative around representation. That the fractions of ethnic groups in media shouldn't mirror those of the general population, but since people exhibit racial ingroup bias, minorities would be less happy if they didn't see people who look like them.
Defenders of this branding guide have claimed this has nothing to do with race of the people in the image, but I have to wonder if they would thought so, if a photo depicting what appears to be family of four Pakistanis would be caption as "Doesn't represent real Londoners." in a branding guide of a rigth-wing anti-immigration politician.
Especially in light of darwin's description of working enviroment of advertising companies. He claimed that anti-white jokes were common and that even he made them.
This will have been the decision of an agency designer. If someone had said, "what because they're all white?" they'd have said no, because it's a cheesy "too perfect" stock image. Someone senior or the client might have noted the possibility of negative headlines like the ones that have ensued, and then they'd have changed either the picture or the wording of the "don't". (I work in London agencies and know how all these conversations would likely go -- I also know this document won't necessarily have been looked at all that closely by anyone in a position of authority; brand books like this are often makework by agencies to pad their fees and to help brand managers accrue power to themselves. Once you've made something like this, every bit of communication goes through your office to check.)
Now, did the all-whiteness of the image contribute to the sense that this is a clear example of a cheesy "advertising of the past" type image? Very probably. It's what agencies are all keen to avoid.
To me the more interesting thing is that there are journalists scouring every little going-on in public life for evidence of wokeness. Standard culture war stuff I guess but it's a goddamn brand book, one of the least read types of document in the world and not usually a source of scandal!
You're right, but now race flip it. Imagine the shitstorm that would ensue if the mayor's office had a media book saying it would be wrong to have an image with 3 non-white people (not real Londoners!) without at least one white Briton.
Let's say the current scandal is a 2/10. The race-flipped version would be an 8. So is it really accurate to complain about oversensitivity here?
The best way through the culture way is an armed standoff, not one side ceding all ground to the other. We will have fewer cancelings when the right is able to cancel as well. When it's a superweapon that one side can use exclusively, they will use it as much as possible.
The concept of "try to show a realistic mix of ethnicities" just makes sense in mass communications so I'm actually unsure if this would be a much bigger scandal? It depends how it was worded, the nature of the examples etc.
PS Obviously if you used a picture of a black family with the caption "Not real Londoners" that would invite a scandalous interpretation but I don't know how far that takes us? Of course the implications change with a race flip, as black and white are not symmetrical opposites in British society.
I think this proves my point. "Diversity" is a fig leaf for promoting a race-based spoil system that promotes some groups ahead of others.
I don't know why people keep falling for the diversity canard. "But wait, why are white, working class Britons ridiculously underrepresented, I thought you cared about diversity", the naivë conservative whines, not aware that diversity was never the point.
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