I had a discussion with a photo buyer in my company's marketing department the other day.
I was trying to get an idea of what age demographic we were shooting for as well as ethnicity wanted/needed. 
I was also looking for guidance of the general 'feel' that we were trying to project.

Here are some of the answers that I received:
* We can use most any ethnicity, but unfortunately was probably can't use African-Americans. (Why not? Did we not just elect Mr.  Obama to the highest office in the land?)
* We target 20 somethings and 40 somethings.
* Sexy/sultry is out, we want approachable/friendly etc. (Duh)
* Conspicuous consumption is out. These days even people that still have $$ are embarrassed to show that they are
  spending a ton. (So what are we going to sell them?)

According to you, YOU asked what they were looking for and presumably wanted a truthful answer. So why did you concoct a bigotry motivation?

Knowing nothing about what company you work for and what their target customer base is, I'd ask the question you ask parenthetically but didn't ask of the decision maker.  Why are African American images not of use?  Do they not test well with your target market?  Is that market predominantly white?  Perhaps white and Southern?  If there's bigotry going on (which is one hell of an assumption given the lack of context provided here), could it not be on the part of the end customer rather than the photo buyer?

Put it another way: You provide a set of statements and a conclusion, but the conclusion has nothing whatsoever to do with the statements.  To answer your question, possibly, but not based on anything presented here.

Most ad demographics tend to look bigoted or sexist in one form or another. Most people who shoot stock understand that there us a target ethnicity, age, sex, intelligence etc. to most ads. How many retirement magazines are sporting ads for G.I. Joe right now, or why would you use a bunch of caucasians in an ad targeting a predominantly black neighbourhood?

So is just the regular every day African American Citizens or Citizens of the world that this bigotry is pointed at by this company right?... BUT you STILL CONTEND that Halle Berry's face can sell just about anything to anyone. I think she (and Obama) cross over all racial divides, but not anyone else right?...OOOKKK!!!

So is just the regular every day African American US Citizens or Citizens of the world that this bigotry is pointed at by this company right?... BUT you're STILL CONTEND that Halle Berry's face can sell just about anything to anyone. I think she (and Obama) cross over all racial divides, but not anyone else right?...OOOKKK!!!

I'm sorry, I do not understand your remark.
I just used a well known and very attractive A/A person as an example. Perhaps I should have invoked Vanessa Williams instead?
Since I was speaking about the luxury goods market, an affluent and attractive person would be appropriate.

On the same subject every photographer has to draw their own philosophical line in the sand they will not cross over in producing images. Some people won't do any stock that endorses smoking, booze or even a different political or religious party. I don't think that makes them wrong for sticking to their beliefs they just draw a different line. I don't shoot fat or vulnerable children shots, just one of my lines in the sand.

Sorry - I can't figure out what this has to do with the topic of this thread.

"I do however see a paucity of African-American faces on the  stock photo sites... at least in the best seller categories."

I'd disagree - I see plenty of African-American faces, including some with a white beard and a red suit!
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&text=%22African+Descent%22+santa

<...
>...
I know there are some real computer geniuses on this site.
If anyone here feels like running a real analysis, I sure many of us would be interested in seeing the results.

That would be hard as the top websites have stopped returning real numbers of data, and a lot would depend on the timescales, how long the image has been online / number of downloads etc:

Istock have 30420 for a generic search of African American 2.5 pages of blue flame images, but we do not know how often the phrase might be searched, but we can get some data from Alamy, they are in the UK but moving into the US market place, I searched on African American, Model Released, Royalty Free and only the Commercial Collection, which narrows the search closer to Istock and the Alamy search returned 49,627.

That does not tell us if any buyers are searching just for African American Images, so I checked Alamy Measures and 'buyer only' search terms containing African American, these were mainly looking for specific attributes like family, Boy, Girl, Couple, Group, smiling, Reading etc:
There were about 120 searches between 11 July 2009 - 9 August 2009 that included African American, search for Indian returned about the same number of people searches, not bad for a mainly UK Company.

Search terms for Caucasian returned only 6 entries for the same period, which shows buyers will filter to find the ethnic content if required for a request, adding African American as a keyword term is worthwhile. 

David         

* We can use most any ethnicity, but unfortunately was probably can't use African-Americans. (Why not? Did we not just elect Mr. 

Only 13% of US citizens are African-Americans, It's very logical to use mostly images of white folks if the image has to appeal to as many people as possible.

Hi All,

 I have found that the African American model is the most accepted in the U.S. market. The Asian and European markets generally do not use African American models or show as high a sales percentage of that ethnicity in their image purchasing, not nearly as high a percentage as U.S. sales. Bigotry is unfortunately, alive all over the world. I bet there is a translation for the word in almost every dialect.

Given that there are very few African 'Americans' living in Europe, it perhaps isn't surprising - or bigotted - that there are fewer sales for that demographic than there are in the States.
I'd imagine that the market for kilted Scotsmen isn't that big west of the Pond, and wouldn't presume to assume that was because of bigotry.

It is all about demographics and income of your audience! Selling Rap music is one audience. Selling recreation vehicles is another audience.  You should learn a little bit more about marketing and advertising.

Jumping to the conclusion of bigotry is an absurd and outrageous statement.

Lets assume for a moment that instead of selling a product, we are selling a service and wish to expand our market?
If you are a world wide organization, would you not want to reach a new demographic? One that you had not targeted before? I suppose I should mention that one of the continents we have offices in is Africa.

Most stock images of African 'Americans' would not relate to the African market. Two recent spells of 6 and 8 hours hanging round Johannesburg airport with the wide variety of personal and business travellers that you would expect, showed that that was true even of the South African business market, which I might have prejudged to be nearest. Not at all.

I think another reason for relatively fewer A/A images may be free model availability.  A LOT of models used in microstock are related to the photographer.  So it may be a case of not as many black stock photographers and white stock photographers bugging their family to pose.

As for why a company may wish to stress white people in their advertising campaigns, that is an entirely different matter.  But I don't think it's as sinister as race bigitry.  They also don't usually feature overweight people, bald people, people with bad complexions, scares, etc.