Not racist. End of story.

Quote:

Ad was not made for American audiences.

Yes, but everyone, anywhere needs to understand that if something is not meant for them, if it's coming from somewhere else, then they cannot claim it to be offensive in the same way as if it came from their own area.

jordan484 wrote on Jan 8^th, 2010 at 9:12am:


Correct - end of story.

I can't really agree with "end of story", as the future will probably dictate that this is a point close to the beginning of the story.

Australia is now portrayed as one of the most racist nations in the world. Whether or not this is true may be more to do with media hype, subjective opinion and the fact that there is so much expected of us rather than the facts of the matter.

My thoughts when I first viewed the KFC ad was that "this is going to be controversial". I didn't see it as racist, however, it must be plainly obvious that those who created the commercial had an intent to create controversy given that even here in Australia you must be deaf, dumb and blind not to  know that there is a "racist" reference to black people being fond of chicken.
IMO it was a very clever piece of advertising and not just coincidently similar to the recent Hey Hey uproar in the way that it plays on the huge U.S. ignorance market to further the KFC brand name (there it is again) - FOR FREE!
I'm sure that you'll find some similar analogies to these "racism card" tactics in "The art of war".
The pseudo war has been staged between Australian and U.S. citizens to make the advertisers the winner - and win they have.

I can think of plenty of argument on Australia's side to back our claims (or to back the advertisers) that there is nothing racist about the ad.

- The ad depicts people from the Carribbean, and not black Americans
- The cricket crowds over there, and their supporters here actually do jump around like that and it's a big part of what we love about West Indian cricket.
- The commercial was just one in a series about surviving the summer of cricket with the help of KFC.
- The West Indies are touring here this summer
- The people in the ad were having a good time and didn't seem to be offended.
- We don't understand how one race can be seen as being superior to another based on the food that they like to eat -  white Australians like to eat chicken too. White Australians also like curry, garlic and chilli.

- If I'd heard that black Americans like to eat chicken, would it be an insult of a gift to hand them a piece of chicken?

- Would I be offended if I went to America and somebody handed me a can of Fosters just because I'm Australian?

etc.

I can't see it as anything more than being played to earn cheap points for a ridiculous game that you'd be a twit to buy into - as I just have.
Eat more KFC  iiii

There are millions of people around the world, lying awake at night, searching for things to be offended about.

The basic rules, when searching for offence, are:

Tinted people can do no wrong if there are non-tinted people around
Tinted people are more sophisticated than anyone else, no matter what they have through their noses
Women can do no wrong if there are men around
Tinted people/Women are smarter, more sensitive, funnier, ballsier, than the nontinted/men
Non-westerners are in touch with Gaia
Christianity is the worst thing ever



To summarise, paraphrasing Orwell:
White legs - bad
Brown legs - good
Brown poonono - moral triumph!!

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Most Australians have got no idea about American culture or history. And why should they? We are Australians not Americans. The whole White American vs Negros has got nothing to do with Australia.