Following an uproar on our sister sites Gizmodo and Gawker, Intel has apologized for this, uh, “insensitive” ad. Intel says on their blog:
Intel’s intent of our ad titled “Multiply Computing Performance and Maximize the Power of Your Employees” was to convey the performance capabilities of our processors through the visual metaphor of a sprinter. We have used the visual of sprinters in the past successfully.
Unfortunately, our execution did not deliver our intended message and in fact proved to be insensitive and insulting. Upon recognizing this, we attempted to pull the ad from all publications but, unfortunately, we failed on one last media placement.
We are sorry and are working hard to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
Nancy Bhagat Vice President, Director of Integrated Marketing
So they caught the whole “insulting” aspect of this before it ran, but too late to stop it?
At least she didn’t use the phrase, “We are taking this very seriously” in her apology. Consumerist is so sick of that hearing that phrase.
Intel Ad: Stupid? Or Stupid And Racist? [Gawker]
Intel Ad Might be Racist, but Boy Does It Make Me Want a Core 2 Duo [Gizmodo]
Sprinter Ad [Intel Blog]
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“People on the this board should read their marketing history…”
Why not just hand out Lithium? Lithium works faster.
What’s interesting to me is Intel’s claim of “40% more performance for business”. I’d really enjoy debating the racism involved in their competitors’ ads depicting a measly 4.28571 black men.
do people read comments on the 2nd page?
There have been several thoughtful comments by CumaeanSibyl and others, that I agree with.
What’s distressing is the cavalier attitude by other people about the iconography. It’s pretty clear that the reason many people don’t “see” the problem in the add is that we have grown accustomed to seeing images of black men as second tier (to put it mildly).
In most stories, movies, video games, what have you, the white male is the leader. The black man, even if he is depicted positively, is usually just a sidekick. We have come to accept this structure as normal. Obviously there are varying degrees of this structure, from “Steppin’ Fetchit” to Lando Calrissian. It’s not necessarily racist to have a white male lead, and a black man as a supporting character.
Think about the times when those roles are reversed. They’re rare, and usually generate some commentary (“can a black leading man open a movie?”).
While there is in fact a tendency of extremists, on both sides, to react negatively to certain comments (from “you racist!” to “you’re aiding and abetting the enemy!”), this does not mean that every objection is necessarily meritless.
Here, the iconography used is so beyond the pale, that a failure to recognize it or appreciate it once highlighted, indicates a troubling level of conditioning, or acceptance of the “white man first, black man second” iconography.
If someone as über-liberal as me says they don’t think it’s racist, and it isn’t, then how does anybody else? [Except, of course, alarmists and attention hogs. I probably just answerd my own question.] Bottom line: Please don’t blame liberals in general for overreacting to this and sounding the racism alarm, most of us aren’t. Just a few nutjobs.
It is obvious from the copy that the sprinters represent not employees but processors. When is the last time you saw a white processor? GEEZ, PEOPLE.
hahahahahahahahahahaha that’s fucking great!!!! i can’t believe that out of the fifty or so marketing executives surely involved in this project, no one noticed the possible implication of the ad. to busy sending memos about wacky hat fridays i’m guesstimating.
They should have used the fat black woman from here,
[consumerist.com]
She is already in the sprint position! Is that just as racist???
@gibsonic: So the PC police are “perpetuating the divide,” by which I presume you mean the racial divide, because they’re “point[ing] things out all the time that are racist!”
… in other words, objecting to racism perpetuates racism. I’m not buying it.
@Paradise: Nobody’s required to scan media for hidden messages. Some people are just more likely, because of personal experience or cultural background, to see certain subtexts. It’s not fair to reject their observations out of hand because we didn’t see the same thing on first glance.
@LTS!: I did not say that people who say they don’t care about race are liars. I said that people who say they don’t see race are liars. As you said, people see race in the same way they see a shirt color or a hairstyle: it’s a set of visible characteristics that you can’t choose not to observe. How you choose to react is, of course, an individual matter. What I’m saying is that some people are so determined to prove themselves entirely without prejudice that they will claim they “don’t see race,” which is patently absurd. What they mean to say is that they don’t attach any particular significance to race, which is laudable if true, but not at all the same thing as “not seeing.”
With that said, I would point out that there are generally two kinds of people who “make an issue” of race: the people who suffer racial discrimination every day of their lives, and the people who perpetrate that discrimination. The rest of us, if we so choose, can afford not to pay attention.
Where does it end? When can you finally say to yourself, I need to stop worrying about such things. If you are going to continue the fight against prejudice then good luck, Sisyphus.
So my choices are to either pretend that an injustice doesn’t exist or to engage in a futile, hopeless battle against it while people make fun of me?
Well, that rock’s not going to shove itself.
For those of you saying they don’t see a problem, or that this is somehow a “hidden” — I doubt you’ve ever been discriminated against for race or ethnicity. Believe me when I say that it shocks and angers you, even when you’re somewhat used to it. It’s an even bigger hoot when people accuse you of “making a big deal out of nothing.” This advertisement is ridiculously bad and clearly exhibits racist overtones.
What gets me is white folks are saying “Oh gee I don’t see it” You don’t see it because it doesn’t offend you, but couldn’t you possibly see how it just MIGHT offend a black person? Judging from alot of the responses I guess not. Probably the same white folks who claim there is no racism at their jobs or in their neighborhood. Yeah if it doesn’t affect you it’s certainly NOT there, right?
That someone cannot see the issue with this ad is an issue in and of itself.
This is unbelievably stupid. Racism does exist in the world today, anyone that says that it doesn’t is an idiot. I am someone who has been the victim of racism. But, I really fail to see how this ad is “insensitive” or “insulting.”
Give me a break.
OK Everyone, take a deep breath and repeat after me:
Al Sharpton is not the emperor of black people!
Now, I forwarded this ad to a few of my fellow educated, successful, Black folks and asked “What’s wrong with his picture”, and 20 out of 20 of us agree: YAWN!
The sista has spoken. You can stop arguing now.
Stated baldly, t’s an ad with a smiling white guy in the middle of six bent over black guys. How hard is it to note racial overtones? Given our country’s history, how do people fail to notice the unintended message?
@roche: Yeah! Why the HELL should I care about other peoples’ feelings!
it looks to me like the black guys are trying to tackle the white guy…that’s just me…
@cumaeansibyl:
True to your name you’re playing Cassandra for a lot of ignorant people here. You are a trooper for responding so intelligently and respectfully. Don’t you find it interesting how people feel the need to prove you wrong?
The thin-skinned people who recognize that racism may exist, even in the highly suggestion-saturated medium of advertising may not be colorblind, but those that accuse them of seeing things that aren’t there may simply be like the colorblind-incapable of seeing what’s actually there.
Being politically correct, playing lip service and being inoffensive out of fear and obligation, is as offensive to me as it is to you. There is a difference between being PC and recognizing that though one may not be deliberately racist (e.g. i grew up with kids who sincerely thought that jews grew horns, blacks had an extra bone in their leg, etc.), to remain ignorant or in denial is to allow the perpetuation of racist ideas.
Consider a VW ad with a blond haired and blue-eyed factory manager surrounded by hunched over rabbis assembling cars: “The new Jetta is 100% Kosher.”* If you had no awareness of the holocaust or the use of slave labor in concentration camps, it’d simply be a stupid ad. But i suspect most of you would recognize that it’d be pretty twisted. To the rest of you, ignorance is indeed bliss no?
Now that I have invoked Godwin’s Law, comments are over.
*Note to VW AG: MAKE THIS AD.
I don’t really see the problem either. They took a single runner and duplicated him. It’s not like they purposefully found six black guys.
there are actually two sprinters. look at the shading on the ribcages, the positioning of the small finger, and the shading on the muscles of the upper arm.
Why don’t we just pass a law that says minorities must only be depicted in the media as lawyers and doctors (ala Cosby Show)? Oh, anf they must be good doctors and lawyers – not the evil type.
@A_B: It’s not that I am accustomed to seeing a white in the “dominant” position. It’s that I don’t care who it is in that position. I’m not so ignorant as to say racism does not exist, of course it does. But when you have idiots like Sharpton and Jackson who spout off about racist implications in everything then the message gets lost. I might point out, a few references where the “black man” was not subservient to the “white man”. Star Trek Deep Space 9 (black man runs everything), Bruce Almighty, (hell, God was black!), The Negotiator (black man solves white corruption). There are examples seen everyday where the stereotypes that people worry about are not present. My question is, when is it enough? When will it not matter anymore? If this ad is so horribly racist then what about the people who still believe black people are animals?
@CUMAEANSIBYL: I don’t see “race”. I see a color. With the mixing of color in this world how can anyone be sure what “race” someone is. If you mix black and white, you will get a variation of skin colors, is this person black, are they white? What race are they? That I suppose is up to the individual person to decide.. if there even is such a thing. So what’s the point?
I don’t even know what race is anymore. I’ll believe it to be a color, but we’re all different colors so what difference does it make. One person is lighter another is darker.. so what? Even within the boundaries (if you can define such a thing) of black, white, yellow, red, brown, and so on there are variations of colors. I think the problem is that race gets confused with ethnicity because in many cases they run parallel with each other. ie. black = African-American… well.. does it? I have plenty of black friends who refuse to refer to themselves as African-Americans. As they say, they’ve never even been to Africa. It’s like a white person stating they are Irish-German-Anglo-Franco-Americans. There are a lot of dark skinned people in Haiti, are they all African-Haitians? It’s just patently absurd the terms we use in this country to refer to people.
Certainly there is a history of negative connotation towards the term “black man”. There are people who say, I’m brown, not black. From a technical standpoint I suppose they are correct, but you know it’s like playing the color game in an Eddie Bauer catalog. Look at that red shirt, that’s not red, it’s tomato. Oooookay, whatever.
People are called white, but they are really pink or something else, certainly not white. So what, it’s close enough. Everyone wants to break that association of negativity with “black” but if you keep referring to it then you will carry it along into whatever term you use. Just get over it and move on. Ignore it and it ceases to be an issue. Mind you I mean the issue of “black” as a negative term not racism which will never go away.
If you believe the rock will get somewhere, then by all means keep on pushing, but don’t be surprised when others begin to see your exuberance over moving the rock an inch as nothing monumental, especially when the rock will end up back where it started anyway.
oooh oooh pick me! pick me! Is it my turn again?!
@CumaeanSibyl:
So the PC police are “perpetuating the divide,” by which I presume you mean the racial divide, because they’re “point[ing] things out all the time that are racist!”
… in other words, objecting to racism perpetuates racism. I’m not buying it.
Just because you aren’t buying it, doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth. Examples of this are everywhere.
Michael Vick – how some people are able to make his whole situation about race is beyond me, but yet that is exactly what is happening/happened.
Duke Lacrosse team – completely innocent, the stripper made it all up but yet Sharpton and half the black activist in the country had the Duke players crucified before they ever got a day in court. Wouldn’t you say it was actually NON-racist of them to desire a black stripper at their party in the first place. Sure the guys are all rich white boys, in a racist world, wouldn’t they only want white girls?
The stream of ignorance can flow in both directions. You accuse others of being ignorant or blind to overt or covert racism, but you are easy to show a blind eye when people go around beating the racism war drum and sensationalizing a non-issue to the point where it opens old wounds which is destructive to the cause of racial healing.
Buy it or not, talking about an issue and talking through an issue to resolution are very different things. Sharpton and Co. as much as they wish they were, will never be MLK. They talk to hear themselves speak and for their own gain and popularity. Sharpton is the farthest thing from a Reverend that I’ve ever seen. Maybe he missed that part in his Bible in the beatitudes where it says, “blessed are the peacemakers, for they will inherent the earth” would anyone call Sharpton a peacemaker? honestly?
Just talking about an issue on the internet or CNN doesn’t necessarily help it. Talking through an issue with action steps of healthy change are what makes a difference.
i agree with the comments above about how race is really a nondescript way of classifying people these days in the US. It’s not called the melting pot for nonthing
Gibsonic, I don’t think anyone is denying that ignorance goes both ways and bringing in spurious outside examples of PC idiocy and ignorance does not undermine the assertion that overt/covert/unintentional racism exists, like in this advertisement. As a flipside to your Duke lacrosse/Vick examples (which are arguably more sensationalist media driven than PC thug driven) if race is in the eye of the beholder, why are black felons given harsher sentences than equivalent white felons?
It gives me pause when people are quick to label and dismiss a matter or people, as you do by claiming this case as mere PC sensationalism or lump everyone who disagrees with you as members of the Sharpton camp.
It’s a very simple matter: in a neutral society it is merely a picture, but given the context and history, it causes offense. If someone can’t understand or feels the need to argue that it shouldn’t cause offense–especially to the people who feel it, maybe he or she should evaluate his or her own perspective.
Yes it hurts to be lumped into a group or have things assumed about you, a lot of people have dealt with such feelings all their lives, for matters more important than an ad, and this is why it’s important to draw the line and raise awareness.
It’s very convenient and easy to say that race doesn’t exist, that it’s a human construct and conception, and therefore we should ignore it as though it were a bogeyman. But this bogeyman has very real effects on real people. Ignoring matters will not change things, and for those who are satisfied, why change anything? Some people eat dirt and call it fine, some people complain, and some people complain about the complainers. To the people I lump as the willfully ignorant, taste soil, it’ll only make you wiser.
Read a book:
[www.amazon.com]
@zeitguess: They’re not “bowing down” to whitey, they’re track runners ready and in position to start a race. Derpaderrrp.
@frozen_saint:
there isn’t a rolleyes big enough to respond to this diatribe.
This ad points out racism in American culture today. It’s no longer white people saying black people are inferior- that’s no longer socially acceptable. It’s white people complaining black people are too sensitive about racial issues.
The problem was obvious to me when I looked at it.
Are all sprinters bald, or have I missed the joke?
I can see how the tonsorially challenged might object (and I’ve victimized myself with DIY haircuts, and may even attempt to become light headed).
i’m so fucking tired of people telling me to be PC. bullshit. i’ve never been PC and i’m not about to start now (i’m 42). if your feelings have been hurt, tough shit. get thicker skin and move on. that’s life, baby. while i agree some words have negative connotations, the “N” word, etc. i can remember my grandfather use the word “colored” until the day he died 2 years ago. that’s what he was brought up using. he wasn’t being racist, just the term at the time of his upbringing. (funny aside, in my office, someone asked for colored paper for something. someone shouted out, “i think the proper term is now “african-american paper”. the entire office died laughing, yes, including all the black, asians, indians, whites, etc. of which there is no dominate group.
In an effort to avoid any implications of racism, it seems like in every commercial on TV now (in which people of different ethnicities are featured), the boss is always the black guy, and the employees are always the white ones. The white guy is always the one doing something dumb or goofy, and the hip black dude looks at him in disgust. Or in WaMu’s case, all of the bankers are stodgy old white men, while the cool guy who isn’t going to overcharge you and give you ridiculous fees is a black guy. Nobody freaks out when this happens. It is a shame that people even think about race anymore. Myself included.
That said, the sprinters can definitely be perceived as bowing down or being subservient to their white boss, and it could’ve definitely got the same message across in a better manner. Any controversy would’ve been avoided by not going the cheap route and using the same guy for all six sprinters, and throw a couple of white guys in there.
Funny how this slaps some people right in the face as soon as they see it and others don’t notice how it could be offensive until it’s pointed out. I wouldn’t read too much into it though.
@Rectilinear Propagation:
I didn’t realize the sprinters were black. Seriously. On first glance at this ad, I didn’t peg them for race at all. I thought “crappy ad”, to be sure, and the guy up front had an expression on his face that struck me as unnatural, but that’s about the extent of it.
Which isn’t entirely typical for me — I grew up in a tiny little racially-homogeneous community while hearing about racial tensions on the news every night, and so I have some trouble with avoiding undue connotations (which has gotten better over the years, but not as much as I’d like). But when looking at the sprinters, I just thought “atheletes” (wasn’t sure if they were sprinters or swimmers ready to jump off a line — the pose is pretty similar), not “black”.
@LuvJones: I think there’s a problem in your assumption that anything that “MIGHT offend a black person” is automatically offensive. Pretty much anything one can say could conceivably, in some set of circumstances, offend someone somwhere; if we’re all required to only say things that could not possibly offend anyone at all, the world will get mighty quiet. And boring.
For example, my first sentence in this post COULD be construed to mean “racism doesn’t exist and black people are paranoid and hypersensitive.” (That is NOT what I meant, of course.) But because there is the possibility that someone could misinterpret it to mean something other than what I intended, does that mean I shouldn’t say it? Or moreover, that I should be reprimanded somehow for saying it?
When the Supreme Court examines laws that limit speech, they always specify that the prohibited speech (conspiracy, treason, child pornography, solicitation, copyright infringement, etc.) must be VERY clearly defined. If the definition is vague, then there will be a gray area in which people aren’t sure if certain speech is punishable or not, and obviously people will stay out of that gray area, afraid to say things that are actually protected speech. In these cases, the Court says that a vague law will have a “chilling effect” on free speech.
The notion that anything that might possibly be offensive to someone should be taboo would have a MAJOR chilling effect on people’s ability to reasonably discuss issues that sorely need discussing.
@Charles Duffy: I didn’t realize they were black either until I went back for a second look to figure out what was offfensive.
The sad thing is if were a black guy standing there with the sprinters being white nothing would have been said.
It’s not racist at all. Clearly it is implying that your employees will “sprint” through their work. It’s looks nothing like black men bowing down and if you see that then that says more about your mentality.
I personally find it more offensive when people treat blacks as if they’re handicaps. They’re not as strong as white people so we have to treat them nicely and protect them because they’re simply not as strong as white people. That is what a lot of this PC BS sounds like too.
It is totally racist because white people are track stars too.