Burger King accused of racism over chopsticks advert
New Zealands Burger King chain is under fire because of a new advert featuring customers attempting to eat burgers with chopsticks.
The advert is a promotion for the fast food restaurants new Vietnamese sweet chilli chicken sandwich – and it shows customers struggling to eat their meal with giant red chopsticks.
Take your taste buds all the way to Ho Chi Minh City with our Vietnamese Sweet Chili Tendercrisp, part of our Tastes of the World range. Available for a limited time only, read the original caption accompanying the post on Instagram.
The ad has since been removed from social media following complaints of cultural insensitivity, but it resurfaced on Twitter as a woman accused the global brand of making fun of Asians.
This is how Asians eat, she wrote sarcastically in a series of tweets.
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Orientalism is harmless fun… Im so sick of racism. Of any kind. Of the kind that makes fun of different cultures #GiveNothingToRacism.
The video was shared on Twitter on the 4th April and has since been viewed more than 2.7 million times. But there has been a torrent of backlash on Twitter.
One tweeted: This ad is the worst – get your f***ing ad departments s*** together.
Another said: This ad just yelled “ching chong” at me with its eyes pulled up and asked me if I eat dogs.
More: Food
LOL chopsticks amirite? added another. Who the hell came up with this? There are a lot of Asian people in NZ, though they probably arent getting their Vietnamese food from Burger King.
Burger King are yet to respond to our request for comment.
