03.10.2017 03:17 PM

Would you make an ad that disrespects Sikhs?

As I am certain you know, among Sikhs, wearing a Dastaar, or turban, is mandatory for all Amritdhari (or initiated) Sikh men and women. For the Sikhs, the Dastaar is an article of faith that represents honour, self-respect, courage, spirituality, and piety.  It is central to the Skin identity and is to be accorded respect.

By all but the BC NDP’s pals in the BC Federation of Labour, that is.

My Huff Po bit on the BC Dips resulted in a number of emails from a number of folks in God’s Country.  One told me a noteworthy story, with supporting evidence.

“Warren: As I’m sure you’ve heard, BC Fed is running an attack ad campaign on the BC Liberals and Christy Clark.  The first ad they ran showed the Christy Clark cartoon character actually jumping on a Sikh person wearing a turban.  When the Sikh community objected, the BC Fed people quickly deleted the scene.  You should put up the two clips I’m sending you on your blog.  They are incredibly disrespectful to the Sikh faith.”

I agree.  Here’s a bit of the slowed-down “before” ad, which I uploaded to YouTube:


 

And, here’s the “after lots of complaints” ad, with the anti-Sikh crap mysteriously absent:


 

BC Fed/BC NDP: we’re working to make life more culturally insensitive!

4 Comments

  1. Dave says:

    No chance that we can view that as an innocent mistake by somebody who was trying to be inclusive?

    The character is jumping on all of the people, not just the Sikh man.

  2. Gyor says:

    I didn’t know it was mandatory for Sikh women too as I’ve only seen the men wear the turban.

  3. dave constable says:

    Before the previous election in BC, the BC Libs got in a bit of political trouble when info came out that they had a special plan to corral particular ethnic group votes. Their plan made them look disrespectful and manipulative. They won anyway.
    This first vid shows a cartoon of the premier doing the same thing on two cartoon representatives of ethnic groups in our province. You’re right; in the 2nd the head wear is missing. It still carries the message that the BC Libs have no problem manipulating groups because of their ethnicity.
    And, by golly, after 16 years in power, and just two months before the provincial election, the BC Libs have introduced legislation (a day ago, I think) removing from various old acts and regulations unfair references to an ethnic group in our province.

    During the televised Canucks game last night both the BC Government ads and the BC Libs ad was played often. It’s a nice balance: governments ads lauding the BC government, and BC Lib ads attacking the character of the NDP leader. Must be the influence of all those old Conservative PMO and party big shots now working for the BC Libs!
    It’s a good idea to attack these BC Fed ads, because today, the BC Ethics commish office turned the donation and pay back issue to the RCMP. You will certainly want to take attention off that.

  4. Luke says:

    This post was misleading by omitting mention of the inclusiveness of the head stomping. The wording I mean; not the videos, obviously.

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