Sunday, January 08, 2012

Italy's state-owned train firm accused of racism for using Indian family on advert promoting fourth-class seats

We read:
"Italy's national train company has been accused of racism after an advert promoting its new four-class system showed a family of Asian immigrants in the cheapest seats.

Trenitalia's advertising campaign for its high-speed Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) intercity trains spectacularly backfired because white Italians were used for each of the other classes.

The state-owned firm's online brochure was hastily removed and replaced with a more 'politically correct' version following a series of complaints.

Blogger Alessandro Gilioli highlighted what he described as 'xenophobic overtones' of the advert on the website of weekly L'Espresso.

He said: 'If the concept [of social segregation] wasn't clear enough, here is the image chose to publicise the lowest class: an Asian family, presumably immigrants. 'Curiously, all the clients in the Premium and Executive classes are white.

Source

Indians in Italy will almost certainly be recent immigrants and, as such, mostly poor. So what is wrong with depicting the poor as more likely to use the most economical service? Is reality incorrect?

7 comments:

A. Levy said...

Has anyone ever seen the trains in India? Anything at all would be a huge improvement.

"Beware of those who cry racism, for they are the true racists..."

Anonymous said...

Well not sure if the Indian family were the only users of the lowest class, but it would have been easy to show a mixture of types using all the classes of trains on offer.

Bird of Paradise said...

The more you hear of this kind of poppycock the more to want to oppose the NORTH AMERICAN(SOVIET)UNION

Anonymous said...

My favorite comment from the comments section in the story was:

"I remember being told that colour prejudice is just a pigment of the imagination......................but why aren't there any women in business class and why is the waitress a woman? Also why aren't there any Chinese, Afrocaribean, Africans, and gays or transgendered people, Druids, Dwarves or Giants, obese people or anorexics? Why is the business class empty? I could go on.....
- Alyn, Neath, 06/1/2012 15:05"

Go Away Bird said...

Liberals are such a bunch of little sissiepods

Anonymous said...

Obviously advertizers are (and always) target a particular audience for maximum effect and hope not to upset anyone else.

TheOldMan said...

The entire train gets there at the same time. Maybe they didn't want to waste money?