Pardon me if you’ve heard this before, but the Boston Globe is race-baiting again.

Wait….what? Forgetting your debit card in Dorchester is racist now? Is that what I’m supposed to take from this? Or is simply mentioning Dorchester racist? Let’s find out….

TD Bank is apologizing after the company was called out on social media for an advertisement inside a Boston branch that was viewed as racist for the way it referenced Dorchester. The company told Boston.com the advertisement, which read “When you’re Downtown, but your debit card’s somewhere in Dorchester,” was taken down Thursday and was the only such marketing poster. 

“We are sorry that an ad that appeared in one of our stores was insensitive to the Dorchester community,” TD Bank said in a statement. “The ad, which was removed today, does not reflect our core values around diversity and inclusion.”

Reilly Hay shared a photo of the ad on Twitter Wednesday after he spotted it inside the bank’s Back Bay location.

Hey @TDBank_US what's with the racist ad in Boston? If you you're wondering why this is racist, just take a guess. You're probably right. pic.twitter.com/rBr0XtaGLR

— Reilly –Abolish ICE– Hay (@reillyhay) March 20, 2019

“If you’re wondering why this is racist, just take a guess.”

Translation – if you can’t come up with a reason why this harmless sign is racist, just wrap your brain into a pretzel and something will pop out that you can run with.

This individual goes by “Reilly Abolish ICE Hay” on the Twitter machine, and lists his pronouns in case all the whining makes you forget that he has a penis.

Regardless of how small it is.

“If you know Boston stereotypes, you know that lost in Dorchester is code for stolen,” Hay wrote on Twitter. “Which sucks, because to get stolen from Dorchester you need to go through the concepts of low-income and, most importantly, black and brown. This works for the ad because they don’t say that explicitly, they just know that most people socialized in the US will make that leap without even knowing it.”

Except it doesn’t say “lost in Dorchester.” It says your debit card is somewhere in Dorchester, likely because you live in Dorchester since that’s the most populated part of Boston. I have lost my debit card a number of times and am thankful that TD Bank can replace it quite easily. Someone who lives in Dorchester would’ve most likely lost their card somewhere in Dorchester, probably because they dropped it. People can relate to this because certain parts of Dorchester are a long way away from the Back Bay, and it’s much more convenient to just have them print out a new card instead of going back to Dorchester and trying to find it in a sea of filth.

Luckily the African-American community of Dorchester had this white savior who swooped in to defend their honor.

Reilly Hay lives in Somerville, which prices out many people of color, because Reilly Hay is a racist. He’s so racist that he assumes that any reference to Dorchester is a reference to black people, and any reference to black people is a reference to stealing, because racist people like him automatically assume black people are thieves. Stop being racist Reilly!

He explained his reasoning….

Hay, a Somerville resident, said he went to the location to close his account and saw the sign on his way out of the branch.

“I just saw the dog whistle immediately,” he told Boston.com on Thursday before TD Bank released its statement. “I know what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to be really local and really specific — and I just got pissed. I just got mad because I think that when you work in a place of cultural production like an ad company or a marketing shop you have a responsibility to understand the cultural impact [of] what you put out into the world does.”

SJW to English dictionary – dog whistle = something that isn’t racist, but racist people like Reilly Hay perceive to be racist because they’re so racist they can’t even see their own racism.

Just to be clear, not all black people are offended by this, and they certainly don’t need some white boy speaking on their behalf. Because black folk are not a fragile, weak, self-victimizing subset of people who need a white savior to protect them from advertisements at TD Bank.

Ayanna Pressley Jr. was quick to swoop in and try to get some diversity training out of it though…..

Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell, whose district includes Dorchester, said in a statement she was glad to see the company quickly took down the “offensive ad.”

“I’m glad ⁦TD Bank⁩ responded swiftly to remove this offensive ad, which plays into negative stereotypes about Dorchester,” she said. “This is sadly not the first time we’ve seen ads like this appear in Boston, and it makes me wonder how diverse their leadership is and what they’re going to do to change that? This is why I think racial equity training is so important, especially for public servants, but also for corporations, so that we deepen our understanding of the history of racism and how it is perpetuated, address unconscious biases, and learn how to use an equity lens in our work.”

As soon as you see someone calling for “racial equity training,” it’s code for “time to get my friends paid to teach a class that everyone has to take in which white people are lectured about how racist they are.” More commonly known as the racism-industrial complex. You take something harmless like this ad, you pretend that it’s racist, and then you sell the cure for the antidote via “equity training.” It’s how race baiters pay their bills.

The ad doesn’t play into any stereotypes about Dorchester. It’s an ad geared towards people who either live in Dorchester or have recently spent time there, and lost their debit card along the way. But even if it was about being stolen, so what? Crime in Dorchester is much, much higher than it is in the Back Bay. Half the people reading this right now have had someone steal their wallet in Dorchester. Facts are racist now too.

Finally the white savior lectured his fellow white people about how to prove they’re not racist….

According to its website, TD Bank does not have a branch location in Dorchester, which Hay and others on social media pointed out added insult to injury with the advertisement. Overall, Hay said most people who responded to his post appeared to agree with his concern.

“There’s of course some people who wonder how is this racist, who miss the dog whistle, and that’s fine,” he said. “They need to know — it’s just a few people — but they need to know that just not seeing race, not interacting with race, not actively discriminating against someone isn’t what makes you not a racist. It’s working actively to dismantle structural racism is what makes you not a racist. And so that means seeing the subtle forms of racism that permeate our society.”

Simply choosing to NOT be a racist person, doesn’t mean you’re not racist. You have to “actively dismantle structural racism” in order to prove that you’re not a racist. And the only way to do that is to misinterpret a sign at TD Bank and call up the Boston Globe crying about it.

Here’s my question for Reilly Hay – do you feel like you made the world a better place by forcing TD Bank into taking down this sign? Has this fixed racism? Are black people safer now that this sign is gone? Of course not. Because ultimately everything you do is to make YOU feel better about your whiteness. You’ve proven that you’re one of the “good ones” by having a sign taken down, but at the end of the day nothing has changed. So congrats on that!

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