When a Heinz advert features racist stereotypes to sell pasta sauce, it’s vital to speak out. So I did | Nels Abbey

It’s Black History Month, one dedicated to reclaiming narratives. It also happens to be a month before the 140th anniversary of the plotting phase of white supremacy’s most enduring set of crimes: the Berlin conference (in which it was decided which European nations, empires or monarchs would get to own which parts of Africa and, effectively, enslave the population). Complementing and continuing the catastrophes that emerged from the industrialised kidnapping and enslavement of Africans in the Americas before it, the Berlin conference unleashed a slew of compounding tragedies, confusions, narratives and stereotypes, which have led us down the years to the stereotype of single parenthood, and notably the “deadbeat father”.Fast-forward to last Friday. Standing on the Victoria line platform of Vauxhall tube station, I noticed an advert for a new “family size” pasta sauce being flogged by Heinz. It is a wedding shot, in which a joyful-looking dark-skinned Black woman in her…