Every black person i have talked to loves chicken , in the same way that all the Indians i know love curry. I don't know any white people that don't like shepherds pie, fact is races are normally geographical and different geographical locations will have different preferred foods due to what grew in that place or what could be stored easily.

if annything this advert is saying White and black people love chicken and that KFC's food brings people together "everyone is happy with kfc" . In fact its the general theme of the adverts in the uk where a husband and wife canot think what to cook but everyone can have something they like with a kfc so it brings the family together.

there is no real way you can if this is racist from the clip alone you would have to know the makers true intentions.

a;;sp young Turks have presumed by default that spreading a stereo type is a universally bad thing. despite the fact that in order to advertise most product you pretty much have to create or perpetuate a stereo type. normaly that stereo typ will just be an amalgimatoin of the products target market. For apple they make out that only trendy graphic designers use apples , gravy companies perpetuate the house wife that cookes for the family.

my piont is if you are going to have a go at them for spreding a stereo typ then you would then have to atack most adverts making it strange to specifcly draw atentoin to this advert.

Americans get offended at anything...that is why they didn't want us to see it. The even MORE funny thing is that people get offended for the people that it is supposed to offend before they even are offended! That is the part I find funny. Experiment with this one, it is fun. More times than not, the party that might be offended by the comment is never the person to express it. And even if they were, a lot of times, its really harmless. We are so into trying not to be offensive, because image in everything, that people actually go out of their way to look for and be offended by things. I think it has gotten to the point of a social game than a real for of caring and sensitivity. Rant over, sorry...whew.

'Throw another shrimp on the barbie'????

1)It's a prawn.
2)Isn't that a kind of a racist remark?

The white man appeasing the black man with fried chicken?
VS
The American man appeasing the Aussie man with 'shrimp'?

Also you Yanks realise the whole 'black man = fried chicken' thing is part of American culture not Australian culture right?

Its not a racist ad you silly Americans. That's your prejudice being pushed onto our Aussie ads.

We got no problem with chicken and black people, jeezus.

Lol, the TYT team are bang on (I'm an Australian) and yeah, American's would probably instantly recognise the stereotype and get offended.

The Australian's that decided to flame them... Jesus, we typically have thicker skins than this even if the claim of racism was aimed at us and not KFC. It's more embarrasing that people got worked up over it than the fact that the ad was released in the first place.

Westy - You're saying that's okay to perpetuate and export stereotypes because that's "good marketing"? O_o?!
How is spreading stereotypes i.e. embellished prejudice a good thing?

GeeSussFreak - Who made you the authority on "who is supposed to be" or "rightly" offended?
I'm bi-racial so (while i'm not up in arms) the ad instantly reminds me of all the annoying moronic fried chicken and watermelon jokes i had to suffer thru and smile off as a child.

Please don't assume racist undertones are "harmless" simply because you personally aren't bothered. -_- ..


Like Asmo says, any american can indentify the awkwardness of one white guy giving fried chicken to wild rowdy black people to shut them up.

KFC knows this and that's why they did everything they could to stop americans from seeing it.. except for not producing or releasing it. (Like KFC doesn't know about the internet)

KFC knowingly chose to depict something that implies racial prejudice and all the things that go with it.

If it had been a group of white fans surrounded by the group of black fans and both laughed and smiled, Westy's claims of interracial chicken enthusiasm would hold water. ...But that's not the case.

KFC could have just as easily focused on the color of the jerseys and team rivalry to imply the awkwardness.

"OH no, we're all yellow shirts in this huge group of red shirts. Let's both enjoy some food! Yay!"

The ad is in poor taste. Plain and simple.

*downunder

Adding video to channels (Downunder) - requested by RedSky.

^ no i Hate advertising in general , As i said at the bottem its just a common ploy for Manny advertizers to use , and so young turks would hsave to call out 90% of adverts rather than just this one , making there specific focus on this one a silly thing to do.

allso i don't see one culture having a specif food preference as a negative strio typ. Its only Racist if the person that says it is a racist for example me saying "Indeans love curry" , is not racist . but if was actually a racist and said "FUCKIN paki curry munchers" then that would be racist If i was not a racist and i said "fukin paki curry munchers" then it would be a parady of racisum. in all examples the food is pretty much irrelevant.

Only in the context of a racist remark or when produced with racist intention is the Food or stereo typ then racist.


Obviously racist words are invented by cultures and words and Meems in general will have a statistical probability on weather they were being used for racist intention or not. This will allso depend on who is saying it and where it is coming from.

an example

"Nigro" when used in modern usa by a average white male has a high probablity that it is ment as a racail slure
"Nigro" When used in the 1930s by English people was very unlikely to be a racial slure and commonly to used to describe color of objects

In the end you could never tell from the words images alone 100% if they were Produced with racist intention , you can only take an educated guess off of the information at hand . But you would have to be curfull not to inflict your cultural bias.

I think the notion of racism needs to be brought back to the core.

It's not racist unless it's purposely meant to be offensive to a particular racial background. It's clear that no company, least of all a fast food chicken company, would walk off a cliff willingly like this and put on an intentionally racist ad.

At worst it was produced by a bunch of employees that want to play up on a racial stereotype but was in no way endorsed or acknowledged by KFC. At best, and to me most likely, the ad was produced by an Australian marketing team unaware of the stereotype. Cenk to me seems correct, they're not rowdy, they looked like they were generally having a good time at the game. As for the whole 'awkward situation' phrasing relating to being surrounded by a bunch of black people, well yes it's a fact that even now people from different racial backgrounds tend to have more trouble getting along. There's no harm is stating that evolution has made us innately mistrustful of those that look different to us, there's nothing offensive about admitting that.

Point is, regardless of which it is, it's overblown and diverts attention away from actual examples of racial hate.

Racism can be fun in varouse contexts

Humans like to indulge different aspects of there mentality (its arguably healthy to do so) Evan if its things they would never do in reality for example in district 9 the "fucking prawns" line is quite enjoyable.
bing racist to fictoinal charactors or acting like a nazi german , or going along with the stareo typ that all english people have bad teeth and drink lots of tea , its not realy an issue. allot of times people get over offended.

a prime example is the hard core muslims that go and murder people that take the piss out of allah alot of times some people just need to lighten up.

It always seemed like the black people that reacted to being called a nigger were twats themselves people in gangs or general idoits , all the black people i know would shrug it off in the same way i would if sum one said i had bad English teath.


In the end if sumone is actualy a racist and u ignore it or explain to them why its a stupid positoin thats the best thing you can do , going mental over it is just stupid , the only time racism dersurvs going mental over is when you get people killing eachother or sum one directly insighting violence.



just thought id throw that in lol

Oh shush, give them some watermelon, and they'll mellow out...


too soon?

The ad is obviously racist, playing on the stereotype that black people just LOVE chickin'. I have never met a white person that didn't love chicken. I don't buy that australians (not all) aren't racist, I have heard too many stories from non-whites down there......

I think this is a valiant effort to rationalize something that is cut and dry. KFC did endorse this commercial (obviously, since it's their ad); and the aussie ad team did intentionally use a racist stereotype to sell chicken.

And I disagree that intent is at the core of what makes something racist. The sambo stories are offensive to blacks, but when they were produced, the intent was to entertain whites, not to offend blacks. They didn't care what black thought.

>> ^RedSky:
I think the notion of racism needs to be brought back to the core.
It's not racist unless it's purposely meant to be offensive to a particular racial background. It's clear that no company, least of all a fast food chicken company, would walk off a cliff willingly like this and put on an intentionally racist ad.
At worst it was produced by a bunch of employees that want to play up on a racial stereotype but was in no way endorsed or acknowledged by KFC. At best, and to me most likely, the ad was produced by an Australian marketing team unaware of the stereotype. Cenk to me seems correct, they're not rowdy, they looked like they were generally having a good time at the game. As for the whole 'awkward situation' phrasing relating to being surrounded by a bunch of black people, well yes it's a fact that even now people from different racial backgrounds tend to have more trouble getting along. There's no harm is stating that evolution has made us innately mistrustful of those that look different to us, there's nothing offensive about admitting that.
Point is, regardless of which it is, it's overblown and diverts attention away from actual examples of racial hate.

RedSky - racism doesn't have to be intentional to qualify as racism. Ignorant/inadvertent racism is just as harmful, maybe even more harmful than intentional (hateful) racism. At least with hateful racism it's easy to isolate, identify, and mock/ridicule the racists. When it's ignorant/unintended racism it's tacitly accepted by society, and thus harder to isolate and rectify.

I don't buy the 'Australia doesn't have the same stereotypes of black people that Americans do' line. Aussies consume just as much American media as Canadians do, and all of the stereotypes about black people I encountered came from American media. In general, I have heard that Australia is an exceptionally racist place - I heard this firsthand from Aborigines (and Maori from NZ). I have even even heard it from 'white Aussies' themselves. One Aussie was trying to congratulate me (us? as in Inuit) for having our shit together much more than the good for nothing Aborigines down under. I shit you not.

Wouldn't it have been just as racist if he handed out pizza? I mean, the idea behind the ad is that the white guy is in the middle of a group of black people and feeling 'awkward', and then tries to find inclusion by handing out food.

Is it racist? Short answer: In the US, yes. In Australia, apparently not. Deal.

No, a bunch of executives did. A bunch of executives do not represent a company, the shareholders do. Unless you have evidence that a majority of the shareholders endorsed the commercial then you can assume any more than what I stated.

You also have no evidence they used a racial stereotype intentionally. I had never heard of this stereotype until I came across it on VideoSift.

I'm not aware of your example but what you're describing is racist. If it was designed to entertain white people at the expense of mocking black people as a racial group then it was racist.
>> ^longde:
I think this is a valiant effort to rationalize something that is cut and dry. KFC did endorse this commercial (obviously, since it's their ad); and the aussie ad team did intentionally use a racist stereotype to sell chicken.
And I disagree that intent is at the core of what makes something racist. The sambo stories are offensive to blacks, but when they were produced, the intent was to entertain whites, not to offend blacks. They didn't care what black thought.
>> ^RedSky:
I think the notion of racism needs to be brought back to the core.
It's not racist unless it's purposely meant to be offensive to a particular racial background. It's clear that no company, least of all a fast food chicken company, would walk off a cliff willingly like this and put on an intentionally racist ad.
At worst it was produced by a bunch of employees that want to play up on a racial stereotype but was in no way endorsed or acknowledged by KFC. At best, and to me most likely, the ad was produced by an Australian marketing team unaware of the stereotype. Cenk to me seems correct, they're not rowdy, they looked like they were generally having a good time at the game. As for the whole 'awkward situation' phrasing relating to being surrounded by a bunch of black people, well yes it's a fact that even now people from different racial backgrounds tend to have more trouble getting along. There's no harm is stating that evolution has made us innately mistrustful of those that look different to us, there's nothing offensive about admitting that.
Point is, regardless of which it is, it's overblown and diverts attention away from actual examples of racial hate.



It comes down to how you define it, and yes I agree that ignorance with no hateful or prejudiced intent can be harmful but I wouldn't think of it as racism. The point where you draw the line is definitely fine though. Being wilful ignorance as a form of denying your prejudiced views is not the same as simply being unintentionally offensive. Being culturally acceptable is also of course not a defence either. Jokes about Aborigines are common place around here unfortunately, although I can definitely say I've heard less of them since I left high school.

It also doesn't help that it's virtually impossible to separate the two. We will never really know if the people who made this ad were purely ignorant or racist. Looking from the point of view of a minority I can see that perhaps past experience would gravitate you towards assuming the latter but I think it's an important distinction to make.

>> ^Throbbin:
RedSky - racism doesn't have to be intentional to qualify as racism. Ignorant/inadvertent racism is just as harmful, maybe even more harmful than intentional (hateful) racism. At least with hateful racism it's easy to isolate, identify, and mock/ridicule the racists. When it's ignorant/unintended racism it's tacitly accepted by society, and thus harder to isolate and rectify.
I don't buy the 'Australia doesn't have the same stereotypes of black people that Americans do' line. Aussies consume just as much American media as Canadians do, and all of the stereotypes about black people I encountered came from American media. In general, I have heard that Australia is an exceptionally racist place - I heard this firsthand from Aborigines (and Maori from NZ). I have even even heard it from 'white Aussies' themselves. One Aussie was trying to congratulate me (us? as in Inuit) for having our shit together much more than the good for nothing Aborigines down under. I shit you not.

even if no one's interested: i think it really is offensive, and i am not american.