ASA raps 'racist' poster for kids' charityKids Company's advert showing black teenagers harassing a white man reinforced negative stereotypes, watchdo

A poster ad for a children's charity that showed two black teenagers harassing a white man reinforced negative stereotypes and was therefore "racist", the advertising watchdog has ruled.

The Advertising Standards Authority also found that another billboard ad for the Kids Company charity that stated "You are right – kids who can kill really are wrong in the head" beneath a picture of four black teenagers was likely to cause offence.

In addition, this ad made misleading claims about a supposed link between emotional development, brain size and violent behaviour, the ASA said.

Both ads were judged to be in breach of the ASA's code on decency, with the one featuring the claims about brain size also falling foul of clauses on truthfulness and substantiation.

The ASA conceded that Kids Company meant to raise awareness about the children it sought to help, but nevertheless ordered the charity not to re-use the ads, two out of five used in a poster campaign.

In its defence, the charity said the campaign as a whole had used a cross-section of local children from different backgrounds in and around Kilburn, north London.

According to Kids Company, the racial mix was representative of the children from the youth clubs in that area, with 80% of the children that came to it for help from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds, a proportion that was again reflected by the ads.

The Outdoor Advertising Association said it had cleared the ads as they contained both black and white children and were spread as evenly as possible across nine different stations.

Kids Company's ads were designed to "confront superficial judgments and prejudices" and challenged the viewer to reject stereotypes, the charity added.

The charity said the ad showing the black teenagers harassing the white man opposed the viewer's presumption – spelled out in the headline "How do you get inside the head of a 16-year-old knife-wielding thug?" – with the charity's point of view, written in italics: "First get inside the head of a 16-year-old bed-wetting boy."

However, the ASA found that this ad "focused on a negative image of black teenagers that was likely to reinforce negative stereotypes and was therefore racist".

The watchdog also said the ad linking violent teenagers to emotional underdevelopment "was likely to cause serious offence because it featured only black teenagers".

Kids Company said two images of the brain it used in this ad – one, larger brain was labelled "normal", while a smaller one was marked "extreme neglect" – had been taken from a US study on child trauma and brain development that demonstrated the effect of sensory deprivation on brain size.

However, the ASA said its interpretation of the study suggested it was referring to factors such as nutrition and children being raised in cages in dark rooms, not just to emotional development.

Moreover, the regulator rejected the idea that there was evidence that brain size had an impact on violent behaviour, as it found the ad had implied.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/26/asa-kids-company