The long march by some ignorant American’s who believe that there is no culture in this world other than their own continues with allegations that an Australian KFC is racist.
The ad shows an Australian fan offering KFC to a crowd of West Indies supporters at a cricket match. The fan states “Need a tip when you’re stuck in an awkward situation?” followed by the fan saying “too easy” as he passes around the chicken.
The ad, part of KFC’s “Cricket Survival Guide” promotional series, was played during the recent Australia vs West Indies test matches. The West Indies are currently touring Australia.
The allegations of racism come from the American idea that black people like fried chicken, therefore a white person offering black people fried chicken is racist. That might be true in the United States, but it’s a concept that is completely foreign to people outside of the United States, let alone people in Australia.
As one comment highlighted on The Huffington Post points out:
This ad was shown during cricket matches between Australia and the West Indies. If England had been playing at the time, the ad would have shown the bloke feeding chicken to the Barmy Army to make them sit down and shut up.
Cultural context though is lost on some grade A idiots, like Jack Sheperd at Buzz Feed or Kiran Aditham at Media Bistro, both of who attack the ad as being racist through their own myopic and ignorant American cultural glasses.
I wonder though whether this idea of black people liking fried chicken says far more about the endemic racism in the United States than it says about this ad. This is a stereotype after all that comes from the United States from Americans, including those who seek to call racism in a light hearted ad made for an Australian audience.
For the record I did a quick straw poll; not one person I asked here in Australia had any idea of the American stereotype of black people and fried chicken. Those that saw the ad thought nothing of it; indeed, the hundreds of thousands of Australian’s who will attend cricket matches this summer (Pakistan is touring along with the West Indies), and the millions more who’ll watch on TV attest that there is no racist overtones in this context at all.
The so-called racist KFC ad as follows:
