When your casting call includes skin color, people are going to think one of two things: Either you’re filming a sunblock ad or you’re a stone racist.
The New Mexico Tourism Board’s little gaffe (nicely summed up here from local news clips by the sharp folks at Cuentame) pretty much says it: Arizona Cerebral Fever – which renders bureaucrats completely tone-deaf to their own cluelessness about race – is contagious. You catch it from the pendejos next door in the Hate State of Arizona.
What’s priceless is the third-class backpedaling the spokeswoman offers – about how they’re looking for “a wide range of people” and this spot is “the first of many.”
I can’t wait to see whether the upcoming “light-skinned Indians” casting call raises a bigger stink from the New Mexican Sikh community or the Acoma pueblo.