I don’t think it’s racist. But I do see how the possibility could be raised.
I find it disturbing that the o.p. could find anything like this even vaguely racist.
It makes me wonder what other completely innocuous events in their everyday life they also find racist.
It seems that if people had agreed with him/her there would probably be a thread length rant on the evils of racism, but as people think his/her opinion is absurd we’re getting the "Oh I was only joking, I didn’t mean anything by it " bail out.
There are two sides to racism at least and they are not both white.
Racist? No. Offensive? Only in that those are some ugly jeans.
I LOL’d. 
Has anyone noticed that Mike Rowe generally wears ugly pants? Those beige work pants he usually wears on Dirty Jobs are hideous.
I volunteer to take on the cause and get Mr. Rowe out of those ugly pants!
A little… but his butt is sooooo cute!
(Yes, I am partaking in the sexism… but I don’t even care right now, his butt is so fine.)
Can I help, please?
i’ve watched his dirty jobs show a couple times. he seems like a real “i’m better than you” type of person belittling peoples jobs
I thought it was even an embarrassed, “Oh, my gosh, there’s a random girl commenting on my butt”. He always seems so down-to-earth, not someone who would think he himself was sexy.
Maybe we can take turns? We can go through each pair he has and make sure to get him out of the ugly ones…he can parade around in the nice ones for a bit, but then he’d have to get them off in order to verify the attractiveness of the rest of the pile.
I might bring along extra pants, to make sure the day isn’t over too quickly…
The offensive part is that they are promulgating the idea that it is acceptable for strangers to molest people walking down the street.
Except Mike Rowe.
Can you repeat this? Only more slowly, and in kind of a whisper…
Seriously? I’ve watched the show for years, and I have the exact opposite impression - he’s always surprised at how difficult the job turns out to be, and how skilled the “unskilled workers” really are. I’ve never seen him belittle anyone - occasionally he begs for mercy though.
Blah blah jeans blah blah blah racism blah
Mike Rowe has a girlfriend? 
Considering how invisible Black women are in TV advertising, I would say this spot is anything but racist. Can you imagine it being made this way in 1990? Or even 2000?
He isn’t. He has never belittled people’s jobs, unless you think making jokes about how hard it is for him is belittling it. Rowe’s a stand-up guy.
That’s what I was thinking, too. You might have a leg to stand on, clarkstar, if Mike didn’t get down and dirty in the mud on every episode.
Mmm, Mike, down and dirty in the mud…
Yeah, I think it’s long-term too. 
Hummm, exact same dialog and delivery with a white girl & black man?
Black girl and the white man tugs…
Double reverse:
White girl in jeans, white man tugs…
Black girl in jeans and black man tugs…
Racist? Sexist?
What is racist? A statement or a question can be a two to tango problem depending on delivery and listener.
If a society demeans that an act, a physical act, is racist then the act is racist and not the question of ‘was this the act?’
There are a lot of acts that are not reversible between male & females due to societies agreed rules but even that can be different in different cultures.
No matter what anything else does or does not show/prove/is widely believed, our society here and has decreed by law that there is no difference between humans with different color pigmentation.
So on questionable situations I try to apply the reverse test, then I make up my mind.
I really do not care about other peoples opinions, only their actions*.
- Posting on a message board is about as close to a non action as can be done.
That’s BS and you know it. But thanks for putting words in my mouth I didn’t say. I said upon re-watching it I now see the failed punch-line. I’m not bailing, I just don’t know that I have anymore input. It was an honest question and I now see I was wrong. Sorry if I didn’t turn out to be troll you were hoping for but go on and be disturbed all you want.
I was thinking of that, too. Not so much the race angle, but the gender one. We’d see it a lot differently if a man saw a good looking woman and yanked on her jeans. If we added race in…well, I guess it would get a whole lot messier.
The ad does show that we clearly see a sexual come on from a woman as a whole lot less threatening.