In an advertisement released by Intel Corporation promoting their new Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, a white male is seen surrounded by six African-American men. It appears that he is the boss/director as he is dressed in causal business attire while the Black men are the employees working under his supervision. The six Black men are all in the starting sprint position with their heads facing down, essentially bowing to their white superior standing in the centre. I found this to be reminiscent of when white plantation owners bought, controlled, and owned Black slaves. Although this ad was released in 2007, roughly 150 years after the abolition of slavery in the US, the same persisting racial prejudices are still relevant. This only serves to prove how little our society has changed due the lack of active initiation to dissolve the racism institutionalized in our culture and everyday lives. The phrase “maximize the power of your employees” insinuates that the white male had ownership of his employees and were free to exploit them for his personal gain, further emphasizing the power imbalance. I believe the intended message was to promote the speed of the Intel’s new processors by using the Black male sprinters to represent speed and efficiency due to their reputation of outperforming other athletes; however, the ad only served to promote racism within the workplace and emphasize class disparities between white and Black men.

Not only did this advertisement embodies racist ideals, it also portrays sexist values. Among the seven individuals in this ad, not one of them are female. The male domination of the workforce reinforces patriarchy and gender stereotypes. The ad implies that women do not belong in workplace environments, especially in the technology industry where they only make up 18% of the workforce in BC (https://wearebctech.com/community/women-in-tech/). Since women are not seen in the working, it indirectly implies that they are performing their traditional gender roles of staying at home, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children while their male counterparts are working as the breadwinner of the family.

In my jammed version of this ad, I replaced the slogan and tagline to highlight the superiority that the white males experience in the workforce. I attempted to expose the lack of change in our modern society in regards to racial and gender bias throughout the years of technological advancements. The occupational segregation between racial minorities and women in the tech industry reinforces traditional androcentric and ethnocentric views. This ultimately contributes to the systemically higher unemployment rates, lower pay, and fewer job opportunities these groups face.

Instead of their regular intel logo, I replaced it with the universal ‘okay’ hand sign. Within the past few years, this common gesture acquired a new significance due to online web users on 4chan claiming that the hand sign represented the letters “WP” for white power. Though this started off as a hoax, it gained notoriety within white nationalists when supremacist Brenton Tarrant was photographed flashing this symbol during his courtroom appearance for the murder of 51 people at mosques in New Zealand. This hand sign is still extensively used to serve its traditional purpose; however, its subtle implications of superiority aligns with our current political climate of underlying discrimination and prejudice towards racial minorities.

The shadow behind the white director symbolizes the true power he has over his employees. Though he is generally slim, casually dressed and unassuming, he ultimately controls the fate of his current and prospective employees. Through hiring and training processes, a person in his position establishes the workplace environment and employee morale. He has the power to create an environment of complete subservience, conformity, and inferiority among the staff seen through the Black sprinters ‘bowing’ down while he stands. The shadow emphasizes the workplace hierarchy and racial superiority depicted in the original ad.

The ‘no women allowed’ poster found on the wall of one of the desks shows the absurdity and subtle gender discrimination displayed in this ad. It was intended to make the viewer recognize the bias of certain industries that take away opportunity of work from capable women due to sexist stereotypes and subconscious beliefs of sex differences in intelligence. Women are constantly evaluated on appearances and personality in ways that men are not, amounting to their value as an employee in these misogynist companies/industries.