If the text was removed I’d have sworn it was for some industrial rubber safety flooring from the 70’s.
If the sprinters were all on one side, facing the same way, without the smug white guy looking like “These are MINE”, nobody would have said a thing.
But as it is, yes, absulutely it would be seen as offensive by many.
Don’t advertisers have focus groups with questions like this before ads go out?
Well, to be fair, they make slaves out of their employees. 
I saw it right away. I’m a white person in Africa so race is a pretty daily issue for me and I’m pretty aware of it.
No, I don’t think IBM is run by a bunch of racists. But someone should have really caught this one.
So we should judge people by race? The ad is offensive only in proportion to how much race matters in how one judges the relationships between people. People who put much stock in what an individual’s race is will be offended. This is progress?
No rational person would assume that those who created the ad intended the meaning was black people bowing in subservience to their white master. So why are we pretending that?
Take it a step further. The implication is that no blacks are persons who are advertisers. No rational person would discount the probability of a black member of the advertising agency creating this ad. Why are we pretending that no black person could possibly have worked on this advertisement project?
Is anyone pretending that? The overwhelming majority of people in this thread have indicated they think the ad’s imagery is unintentional.
But if Intel wanted to create such an ad, it would look kinda like that. Would it not? So how do you distinguish “Oops, miscommunication!” with “BWAHAHAHAHA! The niggers ARE our slaves!”
I know nothing about Intel or who makes up its board rooms, so why should I assume that they aren’t insane enough to create a racist ad? This is a genuine question. Because this is my thinking: no rational person would ever create a racist ad in the first place, yet the history of propaganda still provides us with plenty of examples of this happening. In other words, why should a rational person assume that ads are always made without racist or other -ist intent? Does the fact that it’s a multinational corporation somehow make it more enlightened?
*Note: Before people pile on me, I’m not saying Intel created an intentionally racist ad. But it doesn’t make sense to me to assume that it couldn’t be racist or that one would have to be irrational to assume racist intent. If a message is as blatant as the one in that ad, then wouldn’t it be more rational to be suspicious?
In a word, yes.
Intel was not shown this ad with no other context and then a resounding chorus of “Go with it!” filled the room.
The first step likely involved a member of the ad agency showing them the ad while explaining the context. Intel’s ad people never had any knowledge of the ad without knowing the “real explanation.” So when others see it and say “that could be racist,” the Intel guys only see what they’ve been told is the true meaning.
Of course, what Intel should have noticed is that they’re using runners that are not standing parallel to sell parallel processors. I hope somebody was fired for that mistake. 
One important thing to note is that this is a proposed ad, not a final one. When we (meaning me and my co-workers) propose an ad idea to a client, we don’t hire models and do a full photo shoot, we put together a photoshopped mock-up using stock photos on hand or taken from other advertisements. The purpose of the proposal isn’t to show exactly what the final will look like, it’s to show what the idea behind the ad is. And they look about as professional as this one does (obvious clones, shadows cut off unnaturally, awkward arrangements, etc.).
This is almost definitely why it’s just one sprinter copied into six places (the actual photo shoot would use six real models), and probably why the office layout is the way it is (it was “guy standing in office” shot that was available). Race has nothing to do with it, it’s simply availability and expedience (you spend your time creating ideas and working on final projects, making proposal mock-ups is something for the interns to do in an afternoon).
None of these ad proposals are ever intended to go public, however, so I don’t know why this one was.
Sublight, does it seem to you that if they managed the details differently, this concept would work? It might not be the best campaign for selling computers, I have no idea, but it seems to me that what makes it inappropriate is the immediate visual impact. Not the concept.
Except the Snopes article says it was a final ad that was published in one (unnamed) magazine…
I think that those who think the ad is racist are themselves racist. People of all colours have been slaves; people of all colours have been slaveowners.
The slavery angle is entirely different and justly worthy of contempt.
Just wanted to say that this is my favorite kind of response in threads that delve into this topic. We need a name for it. And perhaps coin a law along the lines of Godwin’s that states that in any thread about racism or race, at least one poster will accuse others of being racist…not because they’ve actually expressed a racist view, mind you, but for the crime of perceiving something as being racist or at least racially insensitive instead of being denser than a box of nails.
Anyone have any ideas on what to call this law?
Why care about the intent if that’s what comes through in the ad? When I look at the thing, I see no evidence one way or the other that the message was intentional. I should hope it’s not intentional, but since there’s no objective indication that it wasn’t, it really doesn’t matter. Somebody screwed up and the ad deserves to be trashed. And for more reasons than race.
I noticed this too. For some reason, the ad just looks old.
It looks like sepia tinting, which was done to old photos to suggest color.
So, what, you think this would be OK?
I’m guessing the final laugh will come when it’s revealed that the stock photo of the runner was taken of a suntanned caucasion athlete. It was obviously taken under low-key lighting, probably to emphasize the musculature, and shadows have been added to the faces (especially those on the right side of ad). As it is, we don’t know what race the athlete is.
Seems only fair to call it “ywtf’s Law,” since you’re the one defining the phenomenon and lamenting its alleged ubiquity.
I find the ad offensive only because it’s misleading. I bought a system with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor expecting it to perform like six powerful, subservient black men, but found it more like a single shiftless, scrawny black teenager who runs off when he’s supposed to be working, plays “dumb” when I give him instructions, and who half the time I’d swear is sabotaging things on purpose…