> Cynical question: Was increasing marketing efforts to black and Hispanic women out of racism or a cold risk calculation in the hope that these women couldn't afford to defend themselves as good as other groups? Will J&J be persecuted for this discrimination?
Corporations of that size aren't usually coordinated that well, in my experience. Most likely, they were just putting marketing money in the demographics they identified in some surveys, and marketing manager responsible for that decision was from completely different department from PR guys handling the health issue.
I don't know if this is true for J&J, but the paint industry is quite large and banked on racism allowing them to get away with harmful lead additives. This kind of cold calculus is hardly out of bounds for US corporations:
The lead industry even sought to place the blame for lead poisoning epidemic on parents and children, claiming that the problem was not with the lead paint but with the "uneducable Negro and Puerto Rican" parents who "failed" to stop children from placing their fingers and toys in their mouths. Children poisoned by lead, the industry claimed, had a disease that led them to suck on "unnatural objects" and thereby get poisoned.
Corporations of that size aren't usually coordinated that well, in my experience. Most likely, they were just putting marketing money in the demographics they identified in some surveys, and marketing manager responsible for that decision was from completely different department from PR guys handling the health issue.