In what I can only think of as a highly misplaced sense of charity, Feed A Child SA has made an advertisement that depicts a black boy as a dog in the home of a wealthy white woman. He is petted, fed popcorn and bits of other scraps, even licking her fingers as she prepares something in the kitchen.

In the end, after he kneels before her as she sits on a chair, the ad reads:  “The average domestic dog eats better than millions of children”

Watch:

So why depict the child as dog? If you indeed wanted to show what a dog eats, and that they eat better than many starving children, you could have placed a bowl of food, water, a chew bone – something! anything! and just show that with this same text. It could have been effective. A bouncy, big, tongue-lolling-out dog who obviously lives extremely well and has everything. More than many poor black kids in this country. I see such dogs everywhere in the Western Cape.

They poo all over the sidewalks and their owners wait for the black and Coloured street cleaners to clear this excrement off the sidewalks. This is what they call civilization. It makes me so incensed. I can understand what the ad is saying, because it’s true – I’ve seen the truth of it. Dogs do live pretty well for the most part, while too many children live in dire conditions. I applaud the actual effort to get people to see that, and perhaps do something about it.

But to go this far, to actually put a black child in the place of the dog – does this make you want to give to this particular charity? Does it make people love their dogs any less? How about the child – does it make white people see the little black child as deserving of a good life as well? Does this charity actually think that changing the image of a dog, to one of a little black child – depicting a black child as an animal – will score them points? Do they not actually realize that dehumanizing the black child further, a poor black child at that, is not charitable? There are so many questions.

This ad is so creepily done. It is one of the most vile things I have ever had the misfortune to see, and I hope many people actually complain to the Advertising Standards Authority. Advertising in this country has come a long way from the days of making two separate ads – one with black people, one with white people – for the same product! It is slowly trying to move away from depicting happy dancing darkies in ads for everything from washing powder to cars. If they wanted to go for shock value, they succeeded, but I am not sure it’s going to make people want to “feed the children” any more than they already have. White-run organizations and advertisers constantly miss the mark, and just don’t seem to understand why people get angry. In a country like this, they think it’s progress when they get to speak for communities they simply lack an understanding of, even when their liberal intentions make them think they do. They think they’re being progressive and effective.

But if this is what we call progress in this country, then you can sign me out. I can understand continuing anger over what white advertisers keep getting wrong. As black people, our humanity is not up for debate.

As usual, the ad has its defenders. Another NGO has jumped to the defence of the advertisement. “This is a great advert that highlights what is actually going on. The average dog does eat better than most children in this country,” said Feed SA director Candice Etberg.

“People are ignoring the message here – and it’s that we need to get together and start feeding children.”