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Pepsi's commercial, released in 2017, features celebrity model and Kardashian family member, Kendall Jenner, offering a Pepsi can as a "peace offering" to armed police officers during a protest.

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Full Pepsi Commercial Starring Kendal Jenner

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The ad faced extreme backlash, especially due to its timing. In the midst of Black Lives Matter protests, viewers criticized Pepsi for using a white and privileged super model as a peacemaker between civil rights activists and police.

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“By the nineteenth-century, it was widely taken for granted that the human race was divided into superior whites and inferior others” (Storey 170). Critical race theory dives into conversations of European colonialism and white dominance and superiority over African Americans. Critics of the advertisement argued that having a white, privileged model as the focus of the commercial portrayed an idealization of the "white savior" who commandeered peace between African Americans and police.

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“The work of cultural studies, like that of all reasonable intellectual traditions, is to intellectually, and by example, help to defeat racism, and by so doing, help to bring into being a world in which the term ‘race’ is little more than a long disused historical category, signifying in the contemporary nothing more than the human race” (Storey 179)

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This quote by Storey signifies the purpose of critical race theory and cultural studies in popular culture. However, advertisements like Pepsi's do not truly serve to end racism, but rather serve to further commodify and capitalize on sensitive race issues. The use of civil rights protests to sell a product speak to the lack of understanding and care that was put into the advertisement.

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Critics of the advertisement drew comparisons of Kendall Jenner's display (shown in the previous image) to that of Ieshia Evans in the image above where she is charged by riot police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Storey states: “Working from this perspective, analysis of ‘race’ in popular culture would be the exploration of the different ways in which it has and can be made to signify” (Storey 168). In this case, Pepsi's parallelism was not taken positively, but rather was seen by audience members as a way to signify that Kendall Jenner offering a Pepsi in order to foster peace was similar to the stories of Ieshia Evans and millions of African Americans and the violent treatment they received during their peaceful protests.

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Sean Kent, a stand-up comedian tweeted: "The worst part of the Pepsi commercial is when Kendall decides to protest racism by making a black woman hold her wig."