KFC Ad Considered Racist: Has Black People Chasing Chicken

KFC is in hot water after an allegedly racist ad that ran in Australia. In the ad, a white man is surrounded at a Cricket match by a group of rowdy black people. The actor then holds up a bucket of chicken, which calms the crowd down. The ad obviously does not sit well with African Americans, who consider it to be stereotypical to offer black people chicken as if the meat can control us like a pack of wild animals. I still remember fuming over the ads that had MC Hammer dancing for chicken in the early 1990s.

But perhaps this situation is more complex than that. Rather than judging the ad itself, which KFC promptly removed from the air, lets try to find our teachable moments in all of this.

First of all, we know that Australia has a horrible history of racism. However, this racism is not necessarily reflected in the same symbolic stereotypes that we notice here in the United States. Australian KFC executives could very likely have thought the ad to be relatively benign for legitimate reasons. Australians do not show their racism in the same way as Americans, but the racism does exist.

Second, KFC was correct to move the ad, since it's not good business to be unnecessarily controversial. The mere fact that the ad was offensive to people around the world should have been, and was enough, for KFC to remove it from Australian television. That is good corporate decision-making, since this kind of controversy (justified or not) is never worth the risk - you hear that Tiger Woods?

Third, this ad reflects the need to have true diversity in corporate America. These mistakes occur all the time, and in some cases, they can be far more devastating than the Australian KFC incident. For example, when Costco created black dolls called "Lil Monkey," the nation was in an uproar and the company lost dearly. Even if the company wasn't trying to be offensive, the end result dictated that they were offending millions of people. That is the kind of corporate decision-making that you want to avoid, and having true diversity of background and thought can help avoid such disasters.

At the end of the day, being from Kentucky, I am going to continue eating KFC chicken (yes, I do like chicken, and I am not afraid to admit it). The act of offending a group of people can be forgiven; but it's not caring that you offended someone that becomes the greater crime.