TD Bank Apologizes After Pushback On ‘Racist’ Advertisement

BOSTON, MA — An advertisement at a TD Bank in Boston stopped several people in their tracks Wednesday. The ad, placed on a window, read, "When you're Downtown, but you're debit card's somewhere in Dorchester." After a social media uproar alleging racism, the bank apologized and took the ad down.

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

The representative from the bank said the ad in the window was the only one of its kind. Reilly Hall said he was headed into the bank when he saw it. He took to Twitter.

His tweet was retweeted 74 times and commented on 53 times as of Thursday morning.

"If you know Boston stereotypes, you know that lost in Dorchester is code for stolen. Which sucks, because to get stolen from Dorchester you need to go through the concepts of low-income and, most importantly, black and brown," said Hay.

"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," he said.

As photos of the ad circulated, some argued it sounded more like they meant to just reference someplace far from downtown Boston, and messed up big time.

Others remember this isn't the first time Boston has seen something like this.

"This is Samsung subway ad all over again. TD needs to take a hard look at inclusion & diversity experience of retail & marketing leadership who signed off on this," tweeted Jason Harburger.

“We’ll keep your work stuff safe if you go to Alewife and your phone goes to Mattapan,” read a Samsung sign put up at South Station in 2017.

Samsung ended up apologizing and taking the banner down.

According to its website, TD Bank does not have a branch location in Dorchester, which several people pointed out.

“This ad is bad enough, but to add insult to injury, TD Bank doesn’t even have a branch in Dorchester, Boston’s largest neighborhood," tweeted the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance.