Supermarket in Kazan lands in hot water after customers discover cutting boards featuring racist images of Obama

A supermarket in Kazan owned by a local politician is at the center of a scandal, after reporters discovered that the store was selling souvenir cutting boards showing Barack Obama's face crudely photoshopped onto a picture of a family of monkeys. After condemnations from the public and inquiries from the news website Kazansky Reporter, the store removed the cutting boards from its shelves.

The item in question featured a calendar and family portrait of a mother, father, and small boy. The parents' heads were replaced with pictures of two monkey heads. The boy's head was also changed to a monkey's head, though the face was edited to show Obama's.

Racist jokes targeting the US president are far from rare in Russia. Last September, the Anti-Monopoly Service fined a water heater company in Samara for erecting a billboard that joked that Obama is "dirty" because he is black. In August 2014, activists broadcast a laser show onto the facade of the former US embassy in Moscow, congratulating Obama on his 53rd birthday with pictures of a banana going in and out of his mouth. That same day, people in Moscow hung a banner across from the US embassy comparing Obama to the Three Wise Monkeys of the Japanese proverb.

William Stevens, the spokesperson for the US embassy in Moscow, denounced the cutting boards in a tweet today, calling them "disgusting":

According to Valentina Moiseyeva, the supermarket's advertising department head, the store removed the cutting boards from its shelves after learning about them from journalists. Moiseyeva says the store is trying to contact its supplier to find out how these items reached its sales floor, explaining that the supermarket did place an order for cutting boards featuring an image of a family of monkeys, but how Barack Obama's face ended up on the products remains a mystery, she says.