On Thursday night, just moments after 16 year-old Gabby Douglas won the gold medal in the women’s individual all-around event at the 2012 Olympics in London, NBC took a commercial break where they ran an ad for their upcoming show, “Animal Kingdom“. Keep in mind, this is a show NBC has been running ads for during the course of the first week of the Olympics. The ad features a monkey hanging on gymnastics rings.
Immediately after the ad was shown, social networking circles, particularly Twitter, blew up, claiming NBC was racist for showing a gymnastics monkey moments after an African-American girl won a gold medal at the Olympics. Before the break, anchor Bob Costas is talking about how Gabby’s victory could inspire more African-American girls to become interested in gymnastics and then, boom, the ad (which you can watch in the sidebar at left).
Clearly the network wasn’t trying to be insensitive but the Twitter-sphere is letting NBC have it, not just for what is considered a poorly timed racially insensitive placement of an ad, but for the overall coverage of the 2012 Olympics. The hashtag #NBCFail has become pretty popular over the past week.
What are your thoughts? Is NBC racist or was it just a poorly timed ad? Personally it seems more racist to make the connection between a monkey doing gymnastics and Gabby’s impressive win than NBC appears to be for running the ad, which has been running constantly since the games began. Chances are this ad was going to run at that commercial break no matter what Bob Costas was talking about before the break.
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I don’t care what they say I believe it was intentional. That’s just my opinion. But they want to use every and any opportunity to call black people monkeys. Yes they did this on purpose. They can deny it all they want they are racist.
I refuse to believe this could possibly be an accident, unless the people who made this are really that stupid that they’ve never heard of the stereotype before. Even so, that kind of idiocy is inexcusable all it’s own.
Accident or unintentional? I suspect it was neither but I could be incorrect.
To be expected? Yes, always. I’m not surprised neither by this incident nor of the whole concept of choosing “Animal Kingdom” for the tv lineup.
I feel that racists are increasingly becoming somewhat less refined in their behavior, as evidenced by their choice to air a show like “Animal Kingdom” and by their comments on various social media and news website comment sections. This translates into more nonoccurrence of mistreatment towards victims. The question I have is now that this has happened, what can we do as victims to counter this behavior? Should we not watch the Olympics (as I have done). Should we stop watching NBC programming or all network and cable programming (as I have done)?
What is our code or plan for decreasing the intended effect of this behavior? Is there anything we can do?
Reblogged this on diaryofanegress.
I don’t care what they say I believe it was intentional. That’s just my opinion. But they want to use every and any opportunity to call black people monkeys. Yes they did this on purpose. They can deny it all they want they are racist.
I refuse to believe this could possibly be an accident, unless the people who made this are really that stupid that they’ve never heard of the stereotype before. Even so, that kind of idiocy is inexcusable all it’s own.
I didn’t know you got these reports in America. I imagined they would pass-over them.
Accident or unintentional? I suspect it was neither but I could be incorrect.
To be expected? Yes, always. I’m not surprised neither by this incident nor of the whole concept of choosing “Animal Kingdom” for the tv lineup.
I feel that racists are increasingly becoming somewhat less refined in their behavior, as evidenced by their choice to air a show like “Animal Kingdom” and by their comments on various social media and news website comment sections. This translates into more nonoccurrence of mistreatment towards victims. The question I have is now that this has happened, what can we do as victims to counter this behavior? Should we not watch the Olympics (as I have done). Should we stop watching NBC programming or all network and cable programming (as I have done)?
What is our code or plan for decreasing the intended effect of this behavior? Is there anything we can do?
^^Above word posted as nonoccurrence but I meant to say occurrence.