It was interesting reading the responses posted on last week’s article about the racist Chinese laundry-detergent commercial created by Shanghai Leishang Cosmetics for Qiaobi-brand laundry.
With comments ranging from people (well, actually, only, like, two) calling me racist, to nonblack people giving lectures to a majority-black audience about what’s actually racist, to other people making it seem as if it wasn’t the company’s fault for re-creating the commercial because an Italian company did it first, it seemed as though there were people out there who didn’t understand why people were upset.
So for those in the cheap seats with throttled Wi-Fi, let me explain this as simply as possible: There are racist Koreans, Chinese, Asians, East Indians, Japanese and etc.
Now that I got that out of the way, Shanghai Leishang Cosmetics has issued a half-assed apology for its racist commercial.
“We express regret that the ad should have caused a controversy,” a statement issued by the company read. “But we will not shun responsibility for controversial content. We express our apology for the harm caused to the African people because of the spread of the ad and the over-amplification by the media. We sincerely hope the public and the media will not over-read it.”
How classic, “not over-read it.”
But, of course, there will be those people who will be fine with that “apology.” Ironically, they’re probably the same people who forget how the Chinese and people in other parts of Asia celebrate all things white skin and make a killing off of products to get their skin whiter. So whether we’re talking racism, caste systems or intraracism, Asian countries aren’t exempt from any of it.