Advertising as a Tool for Fostering Ethnic Unification: WWII Efforts of the War Advertising Council to Re-Image the American Ethnic “Other”

Abstract: Throughout the history of the United States, immigrant influxes met with negative perceptions, relegating many groups of migrants as inferior “others,” or less-thans, by the dominant culture. The cyclical process of needing laborers, paired with resentment of many of the ethnic groups of people within immigrant labor groups, persisted throughout the history of the United States. Before the United States participated in World War II, non-white Americans were largely marginalized and not considered worthy of American status. As the War progressed and there was a need to unite the internally fractured nation, previously excluded non-white ethnics who did not consistently identify as Americans were encouraged by US government interests to become a part of their adopted nation. Government-initiated advertising campaigns orchestrated by the Office of War Information and the War Advertising Council facilitated increased acceptance of immigrant groups within the dominant culture. Exploring the history, methodology, and techniques employed by the United States Government and the front-runners of the American advertising industry toward producing a new definition of what it meant to be American enables us to understand how they affected attitudes of the dominant culture about who could be an American. This article argues that World War II advertising actively reshaped Americanness by selectively incorporating ethnic difference into a national commercial imaginary. That wartime model of inclusion— grounded in managed assimilation and normative whiteness—established cultural and institutional logics that continue to structure how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are pursued in advertising today. By historicizing these practices, the article shows how contemporary DEI efforts inherit enduring tensions between representation, market rationality, and racial hierarchy. This study delves into social messaging conveyed through visual cultural artifacts, dissecting perceptions surrounding race, ethnicity, and whiteness. It examines how communication theory and practices contribute to constructing an identity of “otherness.” Furthermore, this research delineates the historical evolution and partial deconstruction of negative depictions and stereotypes of ethnic Americans, particularly focusing on visual representations. Through exploring the origins of these attitudes and behaviors, this research illuminates the fluidity of misconceptions, misrepresentations, and long-standing stereotypes of non-Anglo ethnic Americans. Through a variety of advertising examples from the Office of War Information and the War Advertising Council, we propose concerted campaigns, combined with the need for war labor in a time of crisis, served the function of mitigating or reducing long-held misrepresentations and stereotypes of non-Anglo ethnic Americans. We explore how these perceptions have evolved through changing social dynamics, particularly the changing attitudes influenced by organized interventions via advertising.