Burger King is in hot water after airing an advertisement many have called "racist." Fans quickly took issue with the brand's promotional concept for the New Zealand menu's latest menu addition: the Vietnamese Sweet Chili Tendercrisp Burger. In the commercial, westerners are depicted struggling to eat their sandwiches with oversized chopsticks.
The controversy picked up after Twitter user Maria Mo (aka @mariahmocarey) spotted the sponsored content on Instagram and decided to call out Burger King. Alongside a screen recording of the ad, Mo addressed the company's insensitive marketing strategy with a number of sarcastic comments—"CHOPSTICKS R HILARIOUS" and "Orientalism is harmless funnnn," she joked, before tackling the issue in a more serious light. "I'm so sick of racism," she continued. "Your silence is deafening. We [people of color] have said ENOUGH to make our point clear. Where is your apology?"
Mo later opened up the Huffington Post about her disbelief over the incident. "I couldn’t believe such blatantly ignorant ads are still happening in 2019, it honestly took me a second to work out what the heck I was looking at,” she told the outlet. “[People of color] are constantly having to deal with microaggressions as well as outright hatred and it just never ends… And I could not believe that such a concept was approved for such a big, well-known company. It says a lot [about] what kind of demographics they must employ across the board for their ads."
Burger King has continued to face backlash on social media. Here are more reactions:
"The ad in question is insensitive and does not reflect our brand values regarding diversity and inclusion," the company said in a statement to PEOPLE. "We have asked our franchisee in New Zealand to remove the ad immediately."
The commercial was reportedly pulled from TV in March, however, it continued to appear on social media.
