At the risk of igniting a shit storm, were those Salesgenie ads really that racist? Let’s examine. The ad where the Indian guy is berated by his boss is an illustration of an employee being berated because his sales are down.
We have to imagine that happens quite a lot no matter where in the world people live. We also have to imagine there are quite a few instances in real life where the boss is white and the employee is Indian.
If the tables were turned and an Indian boss was shown berating a white employee for his lack of sales, would the ad still be racist? Or is it racist because the Indian employee has an Indian accent? Maybe it’s racist because the boss is a bloated fat asshole.
Or maybe our culture is hyper-sensitive to depicting any race or culture in any way other than in a bland, soft, Americanized manner. Some Indians have Indian accents. Some bosses are white, fat and imbecilic. Should the representations of these realities be ignored in advertising? Does every ad have to include a white, black, Asian and Hispanic person that’s so “Americanized” you could dump a can of orange paint on them and they’d all be innocuous — devoid of any differences their respective cultures bring to the table?
Let’s examine the Panda ad. We hear Panda bears live in China. We hear there’s a lot of them. We hear the name Ling is quite common. We hear people from China speak English with an accent.
If this ad is racist, aren’t all those American Smokey Bear ads racist? You know, because the bear represents an overweight American with a bellicose, booming voice reminiscent of loud, sports-loving truck driver-types?
Is giving voice to an animal that is common to a country always to be labeled racist? Is depicting Asians as a certain segment of the population who run cleaner (OK, that argument is shot) operated by a non-Asian?
Don’t get us wrong. We’re all for cultural sensitivity and holding high the value of the American melting pot, including its own culture, which attempts to instill acceptance to people of all types no matter what color they are, where they come from or in which God(s) they believe. And that is as it should be.
But what does concern us is the over-sensitive nature that has, over the last 30 years, been bred into us. The political correctness. The self-esteem craze that awards every kid, no matter how many times they lose. (This does nothing to prepare them for the harsh realities of a less-than-kind real world, by the way.) The repression of anything remotely sexual while we gleefully celebrate violence.
We are not advocating the celebration of stereotypes. Not at all. It’s just that there seems to be no humor left. Stereotypes become stereotypes because, like it or not, they are often based on fact. We don’t just make them up. We’re not saying let’s perpetuate them in a bad way. We’re just saying sometimes it’s perfectly fine to call out the resonant differences that have become familiar to us.
After all, the rest of the world is having a heyday labeling all Americans a bunch of war mongering infidels who believe it’s our right to foist our way of life on every country in the world.
OK, I’m ready. Murder me in the comments section now.
