The competition winners in their costume of blacked up faces, arms and legs, and ‘afro’ wigs. This picture was later removed from Twitter. (R) Wallabies player Radike Samo said he was not offended by the unnamed pair’s ‘tribute’ to his image.
Australian airline Qantas has been forced to issue a grovelling apology after one of its attempts at social media advertising was branded racist.
The airline had offered two tickets to the deciding game of the Bledisloe Cup between Australia and New Zealand national rugby teams in Brisbane on Saturday night.
Set up earlier in the month, the Qantas Twitter giveaway promised two exclusive tickets to the game, at Suncorp Stadium, to the two fans who could best show their support for the Australian team.
The tickets were awarded to two Wallabies fans who dressed up in ‘afro’ wigs, daubed black paint on their faces and wore the Australian rugby green-and-gold uniform.
The pair said they were copying their ‘favourite player’, Fijian-born flanker Wallabies flanker Radike Samo, by blacking up their faces, arms and legs.
Qantas awarded the tickets to the pair, but only if they promised to wear their costume to the game. The airline posted pictures of the two fans on Twitter after the game, saying they had ‘lived up to their promise! Good work’.
In one picture the pair were seen smiling either side of Samo himself.
However, after Twitter uses slammed the ‘blacked up’ pictures as ‘appalling’, the posting it was hastily withdrawn.
It’s not the first time Australia’s dubious sense of humour regarding racism has caused controversy.
In 2009, U.S. singer Harry Connick Jnr was outraged after an Australian TV show he was a guest on featured a comedy skit of singers with ‘blacked up’ faces and wigs mimicking the Jackson Five.
Connick Jnr was acting as a judge on a viewer talent segment of Channel 9 show Hey Hey It’s Saturday when the skit was performed.
Giving the performers – who had done a similar act on the show 20 years earlier – a mark of zero, a visibly shaken Connick Jnr said: ‘If I knew that was going to be part of the show I definitely wouldn’t have done it.’
He later received an on-air apology from the show’s host, Daryl Somers.
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