Q. Have you seen that washing detergent commercial out of China, where they stick an African American™ into a washing machine and he comes out Asian. It’s so racist!
A. No it isn’t. Misandrist at a stretch, but little beyond that. Can you point out something specific about it that’s racist?
Q. Well, they’re suggesting that dark skin is dirty, and that a simple washing cycle is all that’s needed to wash it off.
A. That would be the opposite of racist. That would be saying that race is only skin deep, and underneath it we're all the same really.
Even the company that made the commercial has weighed in, stating that they never considered the colour of one's skin to have any effect on a person's value, that the overseas media are being overly sensitive, and they can't see what all the fuss is about. A decade or two ago, this would have been a common sense stance to a 'progressive', but times change, and not discriminating based on race is the new racism.
But if we go with with the ‘black skin is dirty’ angle, I can understand why people might find that offensive—people find literally everything offensive—but that doesn’t mean there’s racism involved. It’s never implied that because of his skin colour he is inferior in some way, just that the literal colour of his skin could be improved upon.
Now keeping that in mind, let's take a step back. Nowhere did it imply that black skin was dirty. You are the one that is saying this. You believe that black people are disgusting and inferior, and you therefore seek out confirmation of this in your day to day life.
Of course, it's also possible that the commercial merely confirmed a perceived impression—that other people find blacks to be inferior, and always have, in all cultures throughout time. By immediately assuming the worst about the Chinese commercial though, you’ve forfeited the right to any kind of charitable interpretation of your stance, you racist!
Furthermore, it's not even that much of an improvement. If blacks have been seen as inferior in all cultures throughout time, then I would like to know how this situation has come to be. Think carefully before you speak.
So returning to the commercial, of course it wasn't suggesting that skin colour could just simply be washed off, because if it was, then it wouldn’t be saying much about the product being advertised. Surely the more likely assertion is that their detergent is so powerfully strong that it can even wash the melanin out of people’s skin.
Hyperbole sells.
Q. But the way the female character looks at him, as if the Asian version is some kind of an improvement. You can admit that’s racist can’t you?
A. Absolutely not. First of all, a fictional character can be racist without any implication of endorsement from the production side. Secondly, having a racial preference in who you find attractive is not racism.
Dictating what kinds of people an individual may and may not find attractive though, is authoritarianism. No wonder the ‘progressives’ want to disarm everybody but the state.
Update: As a curious aside, this commercial was a shot by shot remake of a 1985 Italian commercial which followed the same premise, with one minor caveat. A rather dull and uninteresting Italian man was put in the washing machine, and out popped a dashing and muscular black man, to everybody's delight. Whatever the message was about their detergent has been lost on me, but needless to say, I don't hear any cries of racism over that one. Funny how that works out.
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