A jet safety campaign launched by Australia’s New South Wales Maritime department has hit a sour note with the United Australian Lebanese Movement (UALM) claiming it to be racist. According to reports:
As part of its Multicultural Jet Ski Safety Awareness campaign, the department hired Lebanese comedian Rob Shehadie as its frontman for a series of posters and a YouTube video.
Here is the poster in question:
The 'Offensive' poster from a NSW maritime jet ski safety campaign. (NSW Maritime)
The UALM found offense in the slogans “tell your cousins in the dozens” and “tuk it easy”. I don’t know about you but I find it quite funny. Honestly, Lebanese migration patterns usually focus on keeping close to the extended family and we do like to stress on our letters. Though the perception could be generational:
…young people may find the slogan funny, but older jet skiers do not want to be stereotyped.
What are your thoughts? Is the UALM going overboard with their claims?
it’s not like they didn’t make it obvious enough?
I think it does its job pretty well.
I’m currently in Oz and this got a bit of media coverage, which fizzled out after a day.
My impression is that not many Lebanese were offended by it.
I don’t see why they should be? I like it – its quite memorable and does raise awareness. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with laughing at ourselves; we do it all the time.
But there’s everything wrong with other nationalities laughing at us.
I live in Sydney, and what this does is only confirms the everyday stereotypical attitude that people have towards Lebanese here; the uneducated, fully sick habib, with 100s of cousins, being a menace to society.
This poster is only addressing to a Lebanese audience… a chinese, or vietnamese, or an aussie won’t relate to it. So how can it not be racist or stereotyping…
Hi Simon, my understanding is that this is part of their multicultural campaign and therefore I suspect that they will be releasing a series of these targeting specific groups or nationalities. I believe its essential that a safety campaign reaches the maximum amount of people and an one-size-fits-all campaign would probably fail to achieve that. It is important to note that they used a Lebanese comedian who might have even helped develop the two phrases.