KFC Spain decides that racism is a good marketing ploy
- Thread starter Syriel
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I dont know what I'm looking at. Do they have a history of tying black people to chicken or did they just use a superstar that happened to be black, to their product?
User Banned (2 weeks): dismissing concerns surrounding racist stereotypes
Yep, that stereotype is not a thing in Spain. Still, KFC, as an international company based in the US of all places, should know better.
There's plenty of casual and overt racism in Spain, mind you.
I guess the question is, does KFC promote the stereotype that black people like chicken or did they want to do the usual "this famous person like KFC" and that person happened to be black. I don't know who this person is and so I don't know.
That joke is pretty dumb considering everyone likes chicken (well, except vegetarians)
Context from the Thread, if it helps establish why him specifically: Eder Militao commited a penalty for handball, that caused real Madrid to draw and now, the chances for winning La Liga are lower.
Is there any context to the image on the right? Just seems like a shitty meme that wasn’t necessarily made out of spite, I don’t think I have ever seen the racist stereotype of black people loving fried chicken outside of america.
Racism exists everywhere, but this image might have a wildly different meaning in Spain compared to the US and could just have been some Spanish PR person trying to have fun with a currently popular Spanish meme rather than trying to make a racist joke about the race of the person in the image itself.
The white hand does make it pretty bad tho if there isn’t any more context to this.
Racism exists everywhere, but this image might have a wildly different meaning in Spain compared to the US and could just have been some Spanish PR person trying to have fun with a currently popular Spanish meme rather than trying to make a racist joke about the race of the person in the image itself.
The white hand does make it pretty bad tho if there isn’t any more context to this.
I think so.
Their entire Twitter thread is just... awful, it's all really cringy meme stuff.
I think this is just one that, elsehwere, has different conotations.
If the play is he couldn't help himself but reach his hand out for the chicken, then it's worse lmao. We don't live in a world where KFC is in a position to make this joke.
What is this pot? Plenty of American culture gets exported all the time through media. It's why you can see someone in Pakistan walking around wearing a Michael Jordan t shirt
Something can be "from America" but not unique to America.
And yet KFC Spain just posted said racism that “only exists in America”
Lol
When some international KFC marketing has had things similar to this before, I've thought they're banking on the backlash effect about how "[country] doesn't know that stereotype, it's a stereotype that racist Americans made up and they're applying it to what everybody else does". Like, even if people in general in a country don't have a particular exact stereotype in their repertoire of how they express their racism, the people doing the marketing DO know and they're baiting the reaction I put in quotes.
It's not as simple as just black people liking chicken. Here's an NPR article that goes into it a bit more: https://www.npr.org/sections/codesw...e-did-that-fried-chicken-stereotype-come-from
Additionally, fried chicken--dense in calories, high in protein, and cheap--was a staple food of "the poor" (and therefore of many black people) back in civil rights era. It's obviously less so today, but it was considered a low-class food back then.
It's kinda weird how people that are trying to navigate their own lives aren't aware of shit that goes down in every country/region.
Edit: Nobodies saying it doesn't look bad. Reasonable people not in the know are asking questions before grabbing their pitchforks
I think regardless of whether or not this person is famous and that's the message, it's clearly not the message the vast majority of people are going to take from this, especially with zero context or explanation. I can't believe someone okayed this without considering how it'd be perceived.
For the record, I know it's KFC Spain, and Spain may not have the stereotype that all black people love fried chicken, but KFC is a global brand.
For the record, I know it's KFC Spain, and Spain may not have the stereotype that all black people love fried chicken, but KFC is a global brand.
That was what I fucking asked in my post guy. It's very American of us to ASSUME the entire world knows and follows our racial stereotypes.
I have no idea what kind of racist bullshit goes on in Spain, hence the reason I ASKED.
Something similar happened years ago here in Australia with a KFC ad for cricket. At least at the time there was no stereotype of black people liking chicken here, I only knew about it due to the internet.
KFC is a global brand though so you'd thing someone would notice this.
It's not even that they Do know the implications of this. It's their job to know these things and to do the research before pushing something out like this not only internal temperature checks, but you should have someone on the team that can be the "10th Man" and do the work to see if something you're pushing out from a global brand is going to burn anyone. It's not difficult, i've done it multiple times in my job and its a fairly common practice. this is just sloppy ass work from KFC.
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Yeah, this isn't an accident. Not when you're purposefully advertising on the world stage.
It's either negligence (unlikely given the approvals that social has to go through) or intentional racism because they think it'll get eyes on the brand.
The ratio makes it pretty clear.
It's either negligence (unlikely given the approvals that social has to go through) or intentional racism because they think it'll get eyes on the brand.
The ratio makes it pretty clear.
This isn't and will never be an excuse so tired of reading this. Also this isn't something that just pop up this is old school racism.
Do you think there are 0 black Americans in Spain? It’s a global society now. There is no excuse.
So they have a history of showing black people love their chicken?
edit: If they have a history of showing imagery of black people loving chicken, then that's not OK. If they are showing celebrities loving chicken and one of them happensto be a black person in the ads, then youre just taking money out of thier hands.
In America.....(again very fucking high and mighty of us to assume the entire world knows the racial stereotypes of our own country)
Is anyone on the forum from Spain and could fill is in on whether or not this is something they would ever know? I doubt the KFC Spain Twitter account is run up the corporate flag pole every time they post a tweet.
Spain has some super racist shit going on. This is child’s play unfortunately.
You're asking the wrong questions. Is there a history of equating fried foods with the poor/lower class in said country? Are the poor/lower class predominantly minority/black or rather is the majority of the black population in said country within that poor/lower class? I promise this is true in most if not all Western Countries. I won't say so definitively as I've never been to all of them, but I have spent considerable time in Spain over the years.
User banned (1 month): dismissing concerns around racism over multiple posts
Yet it could also literally be some person doing marketing creating this racist image without knowing why it’s racist because it’s not exactly common knowledge everywhere in the world and this forum being very US centric makes the discussion very one sided. I wouldn’t know anything about this stereotype if i wasn’t browsing American centric forums like this one.
Should they take down the image, absolutely, and we should voice our complaints about it, but we should also try to understand how this even happens to begin with before attributing this to an international fast food chain being rotten everywhere just because someone working at their branch in Spain made a shitty meme that happened to involve a black person.
Context matters and we should try to educate people about why something is insensitive and wrong rather than just shout racist at someone who lives in a completely different part of the world that doesn’t have the exactly same cultural baggage as the US.
"Racism only exists in America"Spain has some super racist shit going on. This is child’s play unfortunately.
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