8 Racist Ads You Won't Believe Are From the Last Few Years
In the Golden Age of Advertising, producing commercials was easy. You could pretty much toss in any horrific stereotype you thought would help sell your product, and if any minorities complained, who cares? Minorities aren't the majority, duh.
Of course, in this era of political correctness, those clumsy, cringe-worthy stereotypes are a thing of the past.
Well, almost...
#8.
Pond's White Beauty (2008)
When you watch this schmaltzy ad, you slowly come to the realization that the theme is, "If your epidermis isn't white enough, the man of your dreams will never love you."
Oh, we're not reading too much into it--Pond's White Beauty is an Indian line of skin whitener.
I'm sorry, you're just too brown.
Hey, is that my ex?
Is she still brown?
So, although the ex-boyfriend in the ad eye-fucks the living shit out of his lost love, he just can't get over her icky brownness, even if she's portrayed by former Miss World Priyanka Chopra.
Upon removing my sunglasses, I see that she is still too brown. Gross.
Over the ad's next four installments (yes, it's a five-part skin whitener epic) the girl wins her man back thanks to her brand new pallor. Well, that and his new girlfriend was a total bitch, but it's mostly the melanin thing. We'd like to think the antagonist tries to win him back by whitening her skin even more, and the two women end up bleaching back and forth until they both look like yetis.
The ideal beauty.
#7.
Coloreria Italiana (2006)
Taking the above to the opposite extreme, in the world of Italian laundry products, myths about black men's ravenous libidos are still alive and banging:
The ad opens with a woman doing her laundry. Her scrawny, white husband walks by and tries to seduce her.
"You want-a make-a the sex?"
She rejects him by shoving him into an improbably spacious washer.
After her hubby drowns in detergent, she opens the machine, only to have a buff black man emerge as hip-hop blasts from the heavens.
And lest you think we're stretching things here a bit, here's the sequel.
This time it's the husband who commits violent washing machine homicide...
Oh, how the tables have turned.
...but his scheme to replace his wife with a nice Afro-Italian babe backfires when the same sexy black dude pops up, foreshadowing some non-consensual, man-on-man interracial ramrodding.
Oh how the tables have turned... gay.
Stay classy, Italy!
#6.
Salesgenie.com (2008)
Let's go to America now, where Salesgenie.com is a database marketing service. That ranks just above surgery-grade gynecological equipment on your average TV viewer's list of impulse buys, so Salesgenie clearly needs a whiz-bang ad to draw in new customers.
Their ad starts off well. Animated pandas are trying to sell bamboo furniture. It makes perfectly tenuous sense so far...
...but then Ching-Ching and Ling-Ling start talking like goddamn Fu Manchu and we're left wondering what small-town CEO green-lit this commercial.
Herro prease.
Did we say small-town CEO? Whoops. This ad aired during Super Bowl XLIII. This means a group of high-priced ad execs got together and decided that $2.7 million dollars worth of ad time was best spent on third-rate Charlie Chan impressions.
How Salesgenie apparently views Asia.
Shockingly, some of the 97.5 million people who saw this commercial were offended, and Salesgenie quickly yanked it.
#5.
"Who Hasn't?" (2006)
The 2006 Tennessee Senate race was fought between Republican Bob Corker and Democrat Harold Ford, who was en route to become Tennessee's first black Senator.
Honestly, he looks like kind of a badass.
With Ford ahead by a slim margin, the Republican Party had only one option: produce a thoughtful TV spot that rationally explained why Corker was the better candid- oh, who are we kidding? The RNC punched out an attack ad invoking the boogeyman of miscegenation.
Here we see a white, helium-voiced "Playboy Bunny" insinuate that she had unnatural relations with the black Mr. Ford.
The ad was considered so sleazy that even Bob Corker asked it be pulled off the air as pundits nationwide accused him of race-baiting.
It's worth noting that the whole Playboy bunny thing was a reference to the fact that Ford had attended a 2005 Playboy-sponsored Super Bowl party in Florida. He justified it with a awesomely candid quip: "I like football and I like girls. I have no apologies for that."
This is the least pimpingest picture we could find of Ford.
Tennessee voters were so outraged by the ad campaign that the white Bob Corker shot up several points in the polls and won a narrow victory. At the end of the day, everyone learned a valuable lesson about race-baiting smear tactics: they fucking work.
How about, "Racist journalism you won't believe came from an article about racism in advertising". Apparently it's OK to make racist jokes as long as you're commenting on how racist something is.
ReplyHow is the one about Harold Ford racist? Sure, it's amazingly sleazy and blatant lying, but I don't see a single thing mentioned about his race anywhere in the ad.
ReplyI agree. It seemed incidental that he was black. It was just your typical run-of-the-mill mud slinging that has dominated politics since the dawn of civilization.
Ditto. I don't see the racism. And the "least pimpingest picture" of Ford makes him look like the last person I'd trust with representing my state and its money to the federal gov't. I'm sure it wasn't this single ad that did Ford in, and I would love to see his "non" mud-slinging ads towards Corker. Race-baiting? I think not.
The Italian ad. WTF? Racism and homophobia all in one shot, well done!
ReplyAnd the Tennessee ad, or the fact that the candidate tied to it won, sadly doesn't even surprise me one bit. Keep it classy, politicians and voters.
So that's why Hal from (British drama/sitcom) Being Human hates Kia-Ora.
ReplyTo be honest, I don't think 7 is racist, or at least not how I took it. I took it as her wanting a more attractive man and that she happens to be attracted black men. Kind of like ads or tv shows that show a man ignoring his skinny brunette girlfriend to stare at the hot, big-breasted blonde.
Reply"Colored is better" didn't strike you as racist?
I don't really see the problem with making fun of stereotypes, but then again, I'm not racist.
ReplyGotta love it when Cracked does its occasional politically correct article, I see male hip hop artists down playing the " hypersexualized black male" myth all the time...
ReplyAh yes. Good to see that you gather your information from hip-hop artists. They would be the best real-world examples of black males.
That last video WILL give me nightmares
ReplyI'll be your dog...
You didn't mention the worst part of the panda ad. At the end, the panda dad asks his panda kids if they want to go see the grizzly bears at the zoo. Since pandas are also bears, does that mean the family is about to go see the slave exhibit?
Replythat intel/microsoft thing is modern racism bs. I mean seriously, i dont see a BLACK man bowing before a WHITE man, i see what i would think is a professional runner...and we all know a black man holds the record. so if it's true a BLACK man is the fastest man, and intel processors are fast, whats the issue? Comcast did the same thing, except running vs a rocket car(speed boost ads). the only racism here is the racist people who call it so. thats like judas being black in 1970s jesus christ super star and then later calling the 2000s one racist cause he is white...
Replyold american(20s n such) ads are so funny, even tho racist lol
what the holy hell are you talking about???
Yeah, 'cause that guy is going to the the hundred meter dash between cubicles.
I totally loved the italian commercials, although it really sucks for that italian man to get a black man out of the washer, when he clearly wanted a black woman. :/ As a lover of Italians, I'd try and fix that. But thank you for pointing out both types of racism: The negative and "positive" stereotypical traits.
ReplyThat's the humour . . .
I'm kinda surprised by the lack of the Groupon ad that ran during the Superbowl about Tibetans.
ReplyI've heard before that some think the new Kia ads are racist too, because they equate black culture to hamsters, IE rodents, and were quite offended by the racism.
ReplyI never got why they were hamsters..It made me sad that they made such cute little fuzzy things kinda scary-giant and anooying
yeah that's just reading too much into it. i've never heard of any reasonable person being offended by them. they're funny to me.
Ah, the lingering aftereffects of British Imperialism...
ReplyAnyway, Im thinking that #4 isn't racist. The badminton one was probably trying to showcase the fast-paced, physical nature of the sport, while trying to appeal to fans of already well-established celebrity athletes, probably not "publicize [any particular] under appreciated athletes."
My probably-typical knowledge of the sport sorta remembers that dominant players tend to come from Asia, so I can see the logic behind the Asian sounding names, and why not have them played by the two best American players? It'd probably be a bit depressing to portray America's hope for a good medal being out-agiled by a couple of musclebound sugarheads.
A more logical ad would've been "random dude has Vitamin Water and strikes out Ortiz, or stiffarms Urlacher," but no one knows anything about badminton or its best athletes, so you do what you can.
Does the commercial make an immediate impact? Yeah. If you then think about it for about 5 seconds, do you realize that it doesn't make a lot of sense and could've been done better? Yeah. Is it racist? No.
Was gonna say #3 was just an unfortunate accident, til I realized it would've been a lot more effective without a schlubby white dude standing in the middle of it. Someone did that on purpose, or an entire ad firm is dumb.
Sorry for my rant, it's been a rough week.
I thought #4 would have made much more sense if the American atheletes were just the ones drinking the vitaminwater to begin with. Then the people that recognised them wouldn't be wondering why they were losing/had "oddly racist" names.
everyone loved the Kia-ora ad. "Too orangey for crows" people went around saying it all the time.
Replyso it's okay to be racist as long as people laugh? good to know.
I don't find it offensive at all. It's the overly-sensitive types that can't look back and laugh/be relieved those stereotypes aren't the way people think anymore that have problems.
did that post
ReplyHow exactly is the skin whitener ad racist? It is made byIndians. It's the same here in Hong Kong and all over Asia: pale skin is a sign of class and beauty and is much desired, just as tanned skin is in the West. It's a caseof wanting what you haven't got, I reckon. The first thing any Chinese person said to me was "Oh, ho leng, very beautiful, white skin" this was when I had just arrived and my skin was chalky and all the Westerners were encouraging me to sunbathe and "get rid of that awful English pallor". It was the same in Thailand and every where. Are ads for self-tanner racist?
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesI don't know what's more upsetting - this comment or how many thumbs up it's received.
JPeaslee: Fiona's saying it's a simple culture difference. It's just like how millions of American women spend ridiculous amounts of money at tanning salons/spray tans and self-tanning lotion.
you are the absolute epitome of why it's racist. and sadly, like the problem itself, you don't even know why.
Pale skin is beautiful. I don't get why that's wrong. What I do get wrong is that an entire person is judged by it. That's not racism. That's just bullshit.
Have you other folks BEEN to India? It's like this. Shut the f**k up. I think it's as ridiculous as tanning booths, but it's a matter of cultural differences not 'racism'. But then that's not nearly as fun to shout at strangers over the net is it...
Classism/Racism/Colorism - all different things which everyone thinks are the same.
ReplyAnd xenophobia, too.
I mean the Italians at least agreed colored was better.
Replyso its only racist when it is against non white people?
this is coming from a non white person
Yes. That is the law, as laid down by Jesus Christ when he was first elected President of The United States.
Alright, the badminton one just really reek of racism. It's not racist to say "China is a place" or have Asian-looking men playing Chinese people. That's the same thing as having Hugh Laurie play an American on house because he's white and so are most Americans. Are they really supposed to be Chinese men named "Bob" and "Howard?" They aren't acting as themselves, obviously.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesPardon: *doesn't reek
Um, I thought they were American- wasn't there USA on the back of their shirts?
They are American. That's why this was classified as racist somehow.