# 2004 and you still can't get non-white and non-black couples on wedding cards **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 7, 2004, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075 "2004-10-07T19:09:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/21 "2004-10-08T10:47:54Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Well, actually, it would. First off, they would need to hire translators, and they would need to hire people who understand both languages at least passing well or they’ll end up with word salad. > > Second, storage space on those phones isn’t free. I understand that densities are increasing, the cost per kilobyte of storage (RAM, ROM, etc.) is coming down, and so on, but you still need to budget your use of the machine’s resources. And cutting out features (hell, cutting out games) simply to include languages most people don’t speak is not going to play well. > > Third, and this is my weakest argument, you need a pretty good minimum resolution to display Asian languages. You can get by with absolutely shitty pixellation to render English and other European languages, but Japanese and Chinese use some pretty intricate characters that need to be readable even in less-than-optimal conditions. I don’t know how good of a display you can reliably expect these days, but my cell phone’s LCD is pretty blocky. It is your weakest argument. Have you been to Japan lately? I’m guessing not. ---
**Author:** ![Keapon\_Laffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e274bd/32.png) [@Keapon\_Laffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keapon_Laffin)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/22 "2004-10-08T12:26:33Z")
I’m Asian. It probably wouldn’t have mattered to me if the card had 2 Caucasians on it. I guess for me, the lines have been blurred enough that when I look at a card like that, I wouldn’t even have thought about it being a racism thingy. 😉 [slight hijack] Coolest card I ever saw? A white guy was getting married to this Indian girl. So they did the cards in a Chess black-white motif. With the words, “White Knight takes Black Queen” And two little chess pieces inside… [/hijack] 🙂 Totally cool. ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/23 "2004-10-08T12:30:23Z")
When my friend Missy got married, she went looking for a caketopper with a black bride and a white groom. After finding a lot of black couples and white couples, she found a mail-order catalog which would allow one to order mixed race caketoppers. However, the black half of each couple was _black_ (er, really deep brown). Missy is light brown. It is her hair and her features that make one think she is of African-American descent, not her coloring. Finally, a friend of Missy’s bought a white caketopper and painted the bride to match Missy. Off-topic, but as long as I’m talking about Missy, weddings and assumptions about races. . . On the way to the wedding, two other friends and I stopped at a gas station for a drink. While there we saw two young asian men in tuxes. Shortly afterwards, we arrived at the church, and saw that the two guys in tuxes were also there. One of my friends felt bad for making racist assumptions because he had assumed that the asian men were on their way to work for a restaurant rather than assume that they were on their way to the wedding. (Note: friends and I knew Missy well, had met Groom more than once and knew absolutely nothing about his friends and therefore had no reason to recognize them. We were almost all recent college graduates back then, and Missy and Groom did not not attend the same college) ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/24 "2004-10-08T12:37:26Z")
> [@TeaElle](#): > > It’s everywhere – despite the rising Asian and Hispanic populations, despite the steadily rising numbers of interracial marriages across all lines, when you look at couples in advertising (especially dating service advertising) and on cards and just about all media that isn’t specifically geared toward minority or intermarried communities, it’s homogenous white or black couples, period. > > Our black Supreme Court justice is married to a white woman. Our Asian cabinet member is married to a white man. But can we find representations of their relationships in mass media? Nope, not gonna happen. > > Is it that way because it’s easier or because companies are still afraid of offending jackass antimiscegenationists? I’d love to hear a rationale. I don’t think it’s to avoid offending antimiscegenationists. My husband is Chinese and I am white. We were also of different religions when we got married. Every now and them, I would come across books on interracial or interfaith relationships . I found that “interracial” invariably meant black/white and " interfaith" meant Christian/Jewish. I would expect to find wedding cards with a black/white couple long before fnding one with an Asian/ anything else couple. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/25 "2004-10-08T12:38:00Z")
Here we go again… Greeting card stores are businesses and as such must make a profit. If they are public companies, the officers of the company are legally bound to try to make a profit. If there was more money to be made by putting wedding cards with “minority” models on their shelves, they would do so. As others have pointed out here, such cards do exist in certain ethnic neighborhoods. That, of course, is because those stores can make more money doing so. I bet a lot of them don’t have wedding cards with white models on them. Why the fuck should a store, with limited shelf space, make less money just to apprear politically correct? Stupid, naive rant. Haj ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/26 "2004-10-08T12:38:15Z")
> [@TeaElle](#): > > Is it that way because it’s easier or because companies are still afraid of offending jackass antimiscegenationists? I’d love to hear a rationale. If a meet a black guy and he starts talking about his wife I automatically assume she to is black. It’s not like inter-racial couples are completely alien to me nor do I have anything against them. It’s just that for the most part married couples, and even dating couples, tend to be the same race. At least in my experience. So you have a group of people who are used to selling a certain product. It’s entirely possible that they may have overlooked the need for marriage cards depicting folks of different color. Heck, come to think of it most of the birthday cards I see have white folk on them to. Marc ---
**Author:** ![UrbanChic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9dc877/32.png) [@UrbanChic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UrbanChic)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/27 "2004-10-08T13:04:23Z")
I finally got over the whole pictures of black/white people on cards issue. Earlier this year, while shopping for father’s day cards, I saw one that featured two pair of feet; one pair was the dad’s and the other was the baby’s. The baby’s feet were _so_ tiny and we have a preemie so it was perfect. Except they were white. I grappled with this for fifteen minutes in the card store. I almost never buy cards with people on them because usually they’re white and if they’re not then the cards with black people usually include some African-esque border or just look hokey. I bought the card – in fact, I meant to start a thread about it in MPSIMS, but I never got around to it. I gave it to my husband and he adored it. He made a joke about my eyesight being so bad that I couldn’t tell the people were white but he absolutely loved it. I still have a rule about not buying cards which feature pictures of people. I shop at nicer card stores (not tacky Hallmark) that tend to feature hand made cards, so it’s not really hard to find cards _sans_ pictures of people. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/28 "2004-10-08T14:10:44Z")
> [@Kat](#): > > How about hair color and eye color? I haven’t seen many blonde blue-eyed Asians. I’ve met a number of Japanese women with blonde hair and blue contacts, but maybe that’s something unique to the college years . . . ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/29 "2004-10-08T14:18:24Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > What kills me is TV. TV shows tend to be all-white, sometimes with a token black person, regardless of where the show is set. And then a hot black person of the opposite sex shows up for a guest appearance, and _surprise_ it’s automatically a love interest storyline for the token black person. ---
**Author:** ![seriousart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@seriousart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/seriousart)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/30 "2004-10-08T14:58:35Z")
Well, let me be the first insider to chime in with more than anyone probably needs to know about the wonderful world of greeting cards… For the last seven years I’ve worked for the biggest, baddest, mother of all greeting card companies as a cartoonist. I can’t say I’m privy to all the marketing strategies, but I know enough to say it comes down to simple marketing. There are only so many cards in any given category in any given store. And the store is naturally going to want to carry the cards most likely to sell. As people have mentioned, it’s hard to satisfy all the mixed race relationships in cards. Consequently, white people are just sort of the default race to put on a card. Marketing has shown that people of other races will by cards with white people on the cover but white people are less likely to buy a card with a non-white person on the front. I guess white folks are just spoiled that way and other races just have systematicly had their expectations lowered, I guess. Another interesting marketing tidbit: black people are more likely to buy cards with a specific black person on the cover, even if it doesn’t look like the sender or the receiver. Unlike white folks, who shy away from specific likenesses on cards. Non-cartoon depictions of white people on cards often tend to be more impressionistic or soft focus because of this. If you look at the Mahogany line, for instance, the cards largely depict, in a fairly realistic manner, very specific black people on the covers. So how do we satisfy the needs of the non- white/ black/ heterosexual market? Talking animals. Or “critters” as they’re known to us, in-house. By putting a cat, rabbit dog, etc on the card, the “sendability” goes way up. There’s a real psychology to all this. When you send a card, it’s sort of representative of yourself. Ideally, it should reflect something you yourself might say. But if you’re a woman and a guy is saying said message on the cover (or vice versa) the consumer won’t buy it. By putting a “critter” on the cover, problem solved. Critters are sort of everymen (or every woman, I guess). Another tried and true technique is using “neuters”. These are little simple characters which neither look like men or women. These are a real bitch to draw. You have no idea how hard it is to draw a simple, appealing, little character that doesn’t have predominate male or female traits. Often these are “race-neutral”, too. Meaning they’ll have a middle of the road skin tone so they could be a light-skinned black, latino, dark skinned white, etc. Other means are just cards that don’t have anyone on them. Instead it’s some artsy-fartsy photo of a cake, sunset, rocking chair- whatever. Hope this helps. I’d be happy to try and field any other questions, if you got em. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/31 "2004-10-08T16:05:03Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > What kills me is TV. TV shows tend to be all-white, sometimes with a token black person, regardless of where the show is set. When I see this sort of thing in shows set in San Francisco (my hometown), I just wonder if the casting director knows fuck all about what they’re doing. I mean, it’s not like there aren’t any black people in San Francisco, but there are way, way, way more Asians and Latinos. Also, a quarter of the characters should be gay. Then it would be realistic. There’s a detective show set in Hawaii that has an all-white cast. Freaking HAWAII! ---
**Author:** ![JohnBckWLD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/32 "2004-10-08T16:19:51Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > …That’s 256 different combinations…So, I think it’s simply a matter of cold, hard economics on this one Start factoring in skin tone, eye color, hair color, body type, facial structure, age, religious affiliation and language and you start getting into some serious numbers…like 6.3 billion to the 6.3 billionth power. Maybe that’s why those individual cards kids make with crayons and construction paper are always a special treat. ---
**Author:** ![Largo62](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/45deac/32.png) [@Largo62](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Largo62)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/33 "2004-10-08T17:33:24Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > People is people. No, my friend! Don’t you know . . . _Soylent Green_ is people! 😉 > [@](#): > > Seriously, why can’t you just accept that the card illustrates “a couple”? Two humans. Complaining that they are the wrong sort of humans strikes me as attaching undue importance to race. A personal letter (even typed) would be better still. Unless they are hand-made by the sender, cards are really a lazy way of “expressing yourself.” ---
**Author:** ![TeaElle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8491ac/32.png) [@TeaElle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TeaElle)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/34 "2004-10-08T18:29:54Z")
> [@gobear](#): > > There’s a detective show set in Hawaii that has an all-white cast. Freaking HAWAII! Well, not entirely. There’s the token black guy – from Detroit, of course, because there aren’t any black haole (can a haole be black?) born and bred in Hawaii. And the stereotypical Hawaiian/Pacific Rim guy who looks like a Sumo wrestler and seems to have a problem with contractions (“I cannot” instead of "I can’t) and the stereotypical hottie Asian female who has, of course, hooked up with the… token black guy! And the actor who is hapa who gets to finally play hapa in this role, though they downplay that until… he needs to speak fluent Japanese! (Because so many half-Japanese Americans are dead fluent in the language. :rolleyes:) Unless of course we’re talking about different detective shows set in Hawaii, because I think there are three of them this season. 😉 * * * I’m not so concerned about greeting cards. I’m more concerned about the fact that if you go by the mass media, not only are our romantic relationships almost exclusively racially/religiously homogenous, on the odd occasion when they’re not, it’s still a **huge** issue. (i.e. Fodder for a lengthy plot point in a film or several tedious dramatic episodes or a “very special episode” of television.) And if what we see in visual arts are a reflection of reality, it would seem that our workplaces, the places we go for entertainment and our non-romantic relationships are suprisingly racially homogenous as well. Maybe I’m weird, but the people I know, especially people in that upper-middle class segment of the population that most TV and movie characters seems to fall into, have friends of all ethnicities and backgrounds. We don’t self-segregate, at least not as much as television and movies would make it seem. Do I have weirdly diverse friends? Weirdly open friends, who spend far less time worrying about other people’s skin than the norm? Or are the people in Hollywood and in advertising agencies weirdly undiverse with weirdly undiverse relationships all around them? ---
**Author:** ![Judith\_Prietht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b19c9b/32.png) [@Judith\_Prietht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Judith_Prietht)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2004, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/35 "2004-10-08T18:58:50Z")
> [@TeaElle](#): > > Well, not entirely. There’s the token black guy – from Detroit, of course, because there aren’t any black haole (can a haole be black?) born and bred in Hawaii. And the stereotypical Hawaiian/Pacific Rim guy who looks like a Sumo wrestler and seems to have a problem with contractions (“I cannot” instead of "I can’t) and the stereotypical hottie Asian female who has, of course, hooked up with the… token black guy! And the actor who is hapa who gets to finally play hapa in this role, though they downplay that until… he needs to speak fluent Japanese! (Because so many half-Japanese Americans are dead fluent in the language. :rolleyes:) > > Unless of course we’re talking about different detective shows set in Hawaii, because I think there are three of them this season. 😉 Also, the chief of the “Honolulu Metro Police” is played by a Japanese man, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2004, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/36 "2004-10-12T15:13:14Z")
For those of you who got mad at me for bringing up such an inconsequential thing (read: \*\*hajario \*\* & **Colophon** ) I wasn’t really that upset over it. I don’t really give a flying rat’s ass Haj, if my rant doesn’t measure up to your oh-so-exacting standards. Take a long walk off a short pier and have a swim. Colophon, it isn’t a big deal… I did go and buy another card in the end. Anyway, for the rest of you, I realize it’s difficult for the card companies to supply every need. I’m pleased to begin with that they have black couples! I was just hoping for a generic Asian couple. See, while I may not be a fluffy romantic, the bride was. In a HUGE way. So I thought I’d try and cater to the bride, it would have made her happy. And it was her day, after all. And for thoise of you who think I should have made a card: unfortunately not feasible. This was a multi-thousand dollar wedding. With lots of people in it who were, quite frankly, snots. We are more or less the poor relations, but that doesn’t mean I wanted everybody sniffing at us and saying we couldn’t even afford a card. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2004, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/37 "2004-10-12T15:36:23Z")
> [@Elenia28](#): > > And for thoise of you who think I should have made a card: unfortunately not feasible. This was a multi-thousand dollar wedding. With lots of people in it who were, quite frankly, snots. We are more or less the poor relations, but that doesn’t mean I wanted everybody sniffing at us and saying we couldn’t even afford a card. I suspect there’s going to be a lot of simulposts on this, but … A hand written note – on either stationery or a ‘blank’ card – ranks about sixteen steps higher than any store-bought card on every etiquette mavens’ scales. Truly. Handmade is better, more personal, more to be treasured than mass produced in just about every category. Think about it: would you rather have fresh made soup or Campbells? Homemade chocolate chip cookies or Oreos? The recipient of a hand written card/letter do NOT think ‘how cheap!’ but rather ‘how special’, because we all know time is more important than money. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2004, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/38 "2004-10-12T16:28:55Z")
> [@Elenia28](#): > > For those of you who got mad at me for bringing up such an inconsequential thing (read: \*\*hajario \*\* & **Colophon** ) I wasn’t really that upset over it. I don’t really give a flying rat’s ass Haj, if my rant doesn’t measure up to your oh-so-exacting standards. Take a long walk off a short pier and have a swim. Colophon, it isn’t a big deal… I did go and buy another card in the end. Fuck off you stupid little piece of fluff. You clearly didn’t even read what I wrote. I said nothing about your complaint being inconsequential nor did I claim that you were in any way emotional over what had occurred. I merely explained why it is entirely reasonable for the store to carry the cards that they do. If you can’t take any sort of critisism, stay out of the Pit and post your stupid drivil in MPSIMS. Haj ---
**Author:** ![lezlers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@lezlers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lezlers)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2004, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/39 "2004-10-12T16:41:36Z")
> [@Kyla](#): > > What kills me is TV. TV shows tend to be all-white, sometimes with a token black person, regardless of where the show is set. When I see this sort of thing in shows set in San Francisco (my hometown), I just wonder if the casting director knows fuck all about what they’re doing. I mean, it’s not like there aren’t any black people in San Francisco, but there are way, way, way more Asians and Latinos. Also, a quarter of the characters should be gay. Then it would be realistic. Oh, man. I feel you on that one. This drives me nuts whenever I watch _Charmed_. Well, it’s one of the reasons, anyway. I wonder if the director has ever actually _been_ to San Francisco. Because outside of the Golden Gate Bridge and occasionally the Bay Bridge, none of their establishing shots comes anywhere _near_ portraying what SF actually looks like, on any given day or night. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075/40 "2004-10-13T15:45:01Z")
All I can say is, the US media must be _way_ behind the UK in this respect. Countless shows here have mixed-race couples, and it is not thought worthy of comment. Back in the 1980s, maybe, but certainly not any more. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2004-and-you-still-cant-get-non-white-and-non-black-couples-on-wedding-cards/268075.md?page=3)