• The Washington Post, Monday, June 11, 2007 10:30 AM

"We love the romantic pretense of a homogenous, melting-pot America," writes Warren Brown. "It makes us feel good, gives us a sense of nobility and brings closure to our well-documented history of discriminating against one another in every way that it is possible for humans to discriminate..."

And one manifestation of this feeling is found in advertising, where many campaigns make sure to put "a woman here, man there, black person there, Asian here, Latino there," etc. But one new approach claims the seemingly inclusive ads are nonsense, and almost as offensive as the old days when all wholesome families were white and all breadwinners men.

"It's what we call Multicultural Marketing 101," says Monique Tapie, communications director for Global Advertising Strategies, a New York-based firm specializing in ethnic marketing and other highly targeted marketing campaigns. "Multicultural 101 assumes that all Asians are alike, that all African Americans are alike, that all Spanish-speaking people are alike, that we are all alike, which means that we're all mainstream," Tapie adds.

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