Crecente posted this London Dutch ad for the new white PSP, he preceded his post with the words 'I hate to spur the ire of Florian...' He then insinuated that the image represented an Aryan Ku Klux Klan super model abusing a black woman for not referring to her as 'massa'.

Well, Crecente's right about one thing: I don't think the above image is racist. Here's an image from the same shoot, as viewable on the official Sony Europe site:

I suppose some will claim that this is equally racist, as it features a stereotypical black criminal mugging a poor white woman. I, on the other hand, view this in relation to the resulting outcry and find it absurd that Americans seem to have lost any point of reference in what racism actually is. I simply can not believe that to some people a photograph of two absolutely beautiful women posing as avatars for different PSP models is now equivalent to flaming upside down crosses.

What is racism? Racism is a calculated and rationalized loathing of a person based solely upon the color of their skin. It isn't anthropomorphizing the struggle between two aesthetic choices in a video game console. An advertising technique, I'd point out, you often see in commercials for anything from chocolate ice cream to darker shades of lipstick.

Within context of all the ads, the campaign makes it very clear that white isn't supposed to be superior black, or vice versa. The worst that can be said about the campaign is that it's ill-advised. If it's guilty of anything, it isn't racism, it's insensitivity to the hyperactive political correctness of an American audience it isn't even aimed towards.

Pointing out that a black person is black and a white person is white isn't racism. Juxtaposing artistically the opposing colors of their skin isn't either. There's no shame in pointing out the color of a person: racism isn't making the observation that a person is black, it's making the observation, then hating them for it. Florian Eckhardt

Update: Sony's saying the same thing