I can understand why people are calling you out for calling this ad ‘racist.’ They aren’t using race to discriminate here. They’re using socio-economic status primarily, which I suppose would make this class-ism. But they’re not really discriminating *against* these villagers; what they’re really doing here that is so offensive is completely ignoring cultural sensitivity and portraying these “Whopper Virgins” as some sort of rare species of human, and as backwoods third-world schmucks. “Americans already know that the Whopper is the best. What will ‘these people’ decide?” They will probably decide that both burgers taste like shit. They will probably decide that they need a toilet where they can vomit (oh, but do ‘these people’ know how something as fancy as a toilet works?!).

So, no, NOT racism. But definitely offensive.

I definitely should have been a bit more legato in my tone, but my opinion remains the same. I think you are trying to hard to find racism in things that are obviously relative to one’s culture and environment and you are doing it in a manner that is completely unhelpful to the cause you want us to believe you are fighting for.

For some reason you came to the conclusion that I am “worried about people calling out Burger King on their racist tenancies”. I’m far from worried about them… but rather worried about your ability to verbally express yourself in this blog. I think… again, I think, you are going about it the wrong way and, in doing so, wasting your and your reader’s time.

In response to your jab about me owning up to my own racism, I don’t have anything to ‘own up to’. I have always been very open about the cultural prejudices I, unfortunately, can’t seem to get away from. When I see a black guy wearing what I consider to be thuggish clothes, I assume thug; when I see a white guy wearing camouflage overalls, I automatically assume he is a redneck; when I see two guys walking down the street wearing black suits, a white shirt and a black tie, I think they are Jahovah Witnesses. When I see a Hispanic guy with a shaved head and tattoos from sleeve to sleeve, I assume he is in a gang. In all four of these cases, I would avoid interaction with these people. I don’t know who they really are or where they come from, so they immediately become victims of my cultural prejudice.

I, personally, believe everyone exercises some form of cultural prejudice, but I can’t speak for everyone so I will accept that I have a problem without excuse.

As I stated in my first post, THIS is what we need to work on and fight. I think that in some cases these automatic assumptions are a defensive mechanism ingrained into our society, but even so, it is unacceptable. I should not judge by the outer appearance of an individual, but sometimes I do.

But, whatever, if you don’t find BK tasty, that’s CLEARLy relevant information to this thread. /snark

Oh, and I don’t have to look to terribly hard to find racism, and when I see it, it sure as hell doesn’t make me feel good. But I’m glad your “Oh, I’m so above this racism stuff” indifferent jackassery makes you feel so great you needed to share it.

Meh. Doesn’t matter. Burger King sucks, they always have and they always will.

On a different note, you are probably right about that stuff making them sick; it makes me sick and I live in the states.

Can we please stop frantically searching the planet for ways to create racism just so we can make ourselves feel better by complaining about it? When I see posts like this, I just think, “yeh, yeh. We know; you aren’t racist and you look down on anyone who is.” Phewww, I know that made me feel better.

As far as the language thing goes- I find it pretty silly to argue about the language of the people in the ads unless you actually know something about it.

Yes, those are the only people that we allow to make comments on here and be taken seriously. Now that you’ve outed yourself–shoo!