By adamg on Thu., 8/31/2017 - 9:03 am 
Bos IT Guy was among the people wondering what Samsung was thinking with these ads that went up in South Station yesterday.
Or as Tory Bullock puts it:
When I tell people that everyone thinks if you're black and live in Mattapan, Dorchester, or Roxbury that it's assumed you're a criminal, they never believe me. They look at me like I'm crazy. Then you go to South Station and see a lovely new piece of marketing. Can you hear me now?!
Ed. note: This is probably reason 412 why New York ad firms should really hire a local to review any ads aimed at locals, because any Bostonian would have been able to tell them in 5 seconds this was a bad idea.
UPDATE: Samsung apologizes; ads taken down.
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I'm curious
By adamg
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 11:11am
What exactly would it take to offend you?
And you might want to check up on Tory Bullock, whose comments I pointed to in my original post. Unlike an anonymous person posting a comment on an article, we know what race he is and where he's really coming from.
There is nothing outrageous
By Dotscorp
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 1:15pm
There is nothing outrageous about the ad so therefore, there is no reason to be outraged. Some ad dweeb saw 2 ends of The Red Line and that's all. Had they switched the locations, would you be "outraged"? I'll answer that for you. No you wouldn't. Stop trying to keep black people down. If you were offended, you are overly sensitive, a rascist, or both. What is it? Have you even been to Mattapan? Had you been, you'd know how nice it is and wouldn't be poisoning us with your negative perceptions of the neighborhood and the fine folks who live here. Again, black people don't need you to protect them with your faux liberal outrage over a benign ad on the T.
Shout out to Brother's Deli
By Metoo
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 12:19pm
Shout out to Brother's Deli on Blue Hill Ave! Best breakfast around:)
Looking at the comments here,
By Vicki
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 11:01am
Looking at the comments here, maybe the agency did run it past a local or three, and had the bad luck to ask someone who wasn't offended personally, and someone else who said "they're just oversensitive, we don't need to cater to people's feelings" or "there's no such thing as bad publicity."
They needed someone to tell the copywriter "look, maybe you didn't mean to be racist, but if we run this ad, your intentions won't matter. This ad won't sell the software. At best, it will make them wonder if we're racist. At worst, it will convince them the customer is. Either way, that's not what we get paid for."
Fire the intern.
By jmeltzer
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 11:03am
Fire the intern.
I'm offended!! I'm offended!!
By Beanzzz
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 11:16am
I'm offended!! I'm offended!!
So Fragile
By tmrozzie
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 11:50am
I really need someone to explain to me why people are up in arms about whether someone else with a different life experience than them finds something offensive.
It's a marketing campaign, and a pretty bad one at that. People who have historically and actively experienced institutional racism and personal bigotry have a right to call something out that's wrong. The fact that you don't notice it speaks to your cloistered experience. The fact that you don't care, or worse don't think other people should care, speaks to your willingness to perpetuate the same racism and bigotry.
THIS!!!
By Kate
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 2:35pm
THIS!!!
Not all offense is equal
By Bob Leponge
Fri, 09/01/2017 - 2:46pm
I only get up in arms when someone asserts that they have some sort of inherent right to a world free of things that offend them. Or that it's incumbent upon anyone else to rid the world of things that offend them.
There's a world of difference between, on the one hand, someone who says, "This ad offends me, because it depicts an African American as a shucking, jiving, watermelon-eating idiot." and, on the other, someone who says "That ad offends me because it shows a family owning a dog, and I'm offended by the concept of pet ownership." In both cases, the response ought to be the same: Don't buy the product, complain about the ad, and spread the word to your friends. The difference is that the former is widely offensive to large numbers of people, while the latter is only offensive to a minuscule number of people.
Advertisers don't, in general, want to offend, but every ad out there is going to offend somebody.
If it said Alewife and Quincy no one commenting
By anon
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 12:51pm
would bat an eye, and accuse those who complain of paranoia.
I'm not offended
By StillFromDorchester
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 7:29pm
And I believe 99.9 percent of people who saw that ad weren't either. This is a perfect example of faux outrage. Looking for something to be offended about is a new sport
White people don't experience 24/7/365 racism
By anon
Fri, 09/01/2017 - 9:55am
So it is faux outrage.
Right.
Sure.
Uh huh.
24/7/365?
By StillFromDorchester
Fri, 09/01/2017 - 1:29pm
Really? First of all, you have no idea which race I am and second of all you're over doing it just a little bit. Racism exists but it sure as hell isn't in that advertisement. Samsung sat around thinking of how to slip a little covert racism in an ad trying to sell phones? They looked at a map and saw two ends of a train line...period.
If a persons take on that ad is a slight to black people who may live in Mattapan, then that is on them not on Samsung. We don't need people crying racism over every little thing when there are real examples of it we can address.
Did the phone ever return?
By u-hub-fan
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 2:36pm
No, it never returned.
It's fate is still unlearned...
It's a Samsung phone.
By jmeltzer
Thu, 08/31/2017 - 4:09pm
It caught fire.
A lot of people don't seem to
By cden4
Fri, 09/01/2017 - 2:09pm
A lot of people don't seem to realize that it's possible to be racist without intending to be racist. One could argue that it's worse to be intentionally racist, but that doesn't make it okay to be unintentionally racist either. When the latter happens, you apologize, learn from your mistake, and try not to do it again.
No it's not
By Bob Leponge
Fri, 09/01/2017 - 2:36pm
No it's not. Racism is a consciously held belief system regarding the superiority or inferiority of one or another race. It's impossible to unintentionally hold a belief system.
I think what you are pointing out is that it is possible to play into or perpetuate a negative racial stereotype without intending to do so, or to use language associated with racism and therefore offensive without intending to offend. For example, I knew someone, quite a bit older than me, who grew up thinking that "Chink" was the surname of the nice family that ran the popular Chinese restaurant in his neighborhood (people around him referred to it as "the chinks' place"). He was completely mortified to find out that it was an offensive slur, and was ashamed to have been using the term all along to refer to that family. To call this guy "racist", or to say that he "had been racist without intending to be so" would be wrong: he did not hold any racist beliefs either before or after learning about the offensiveness of the term.
Conscious?
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 09/01/2017 - 3:12pm
No. Conscious AND unconscious racism are both racism. Intent doesn't matter when racism is so deeply programmed into a society, like it is deeply programmed into ours.
I grew up with a lot of unconscious bullshit running around my head as a result of cultural programming. I have worked to undo the worst of it, but it is still there in my head whether I like it or not. That doesn't excuse perpetuating it - it means that, as a responsible adult, I have work to do.
Bullshit like "conscious" is a huge part of the problem - that nonsense leads people to believe that being called out on their unthinking racism is much worse than the racism itself, because "I never heard of that" or "I don't believe that". It makes racism the problem of the victim, not the perpetrator.
I suppose that the drunk that didn't mean to kill someone should just get a pass? Mmmmkay.
Tripe cop-out, dude. You don't get off from having to do the hard work of watching your own bad self so easily!
Neither conscious nor unconscious
By Bob Leponge
Fri, 09/01/2017 - 4:00pm
The guy in question did not have either a conscious nor an unconscious belief in the inferiority of Chinese people. He didn't have any negative stereotypes about Chinese people. He had no unconscious bullshit running around his head other than a mistaken belief that "chink" was a surname and not a slur.
Not even close, as analogies go. The drunk actually did damage.
I'm fully aware of cultural programming and unconscious racism, and of the need to watch for it in myself. The "alewife / mattapan" ad copy was not an example of that.
systematic racism
By cinnamngrl
Fri, 09/01/2017 - 5:05pm
You can participate in racism without realizing that the that a situation is set up to favor one ethnic group over another. that's the problem with systematic racism, you can't just stop being an asshole, as with regular racism.
As I said, I don't believe this person picked "Mattapan" out of a hat. I haven't seen those other signs. that would be helpful.
Crime is one of the environmental factors that play into systematic racism.
What do you think the chances are...
By Bob Leponge
Fri, 09/01/2017 - 2:39pm
... that anyone in the entire chain of command responsible for this ad, from the person who wrote the text, to the creative director, to the account manager, to the account exec, to the client(Samsung), has any idea what or where Alewife and Mattapan are, or what sort of demographic either represents, or of any stereotypes associated with either of them? I'd be astounded if anybody's knowledge went beyond "opposite ends of the same subway line"
[Of course, a better ad team would have checked as to whether either of these locations have any connotations or associations, but that kind of homework is expensive. It's the kind of oversight that caused Chevrolet to try to market the "Chevy Nova" in Spanish-speaking countries without changing its name.]
Dont read too much into this
By anon
Wed, 09/27/2017 - 9:35am
The point is, if your phone is left on the train, the data will be safe. Are people really so thin skinned that they will freak out if their neighborhood is mentioned as the end stop of a train that it's meant to reflect poorly on the people who live there?
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