Today's story about a local retailer who came under fire for selling what at least one customer found to be a racially insensitive novelty gift - a bottle holder that depicted a Native American in traditional headdress guzzling from, ahem, a wine bottle (at least in the photo) - is certain to stir emotions throughout the community.

The shop's owners quickly sent the gift to the Dumpster after the complaint was filed, gladly taking the small economic hit of a few unsold items in exchange for the grief the item would have cost them on the shelves.

And in the owners' defense, they apparently made the attempt to measure the cultural viability of the gift with Native Americans on staff at the store, who basically said they had no problem with it.

But there were problems with it. The image of an Indian chief guzzling from a liquor bottle is one that was certain to find objectors, especially in a community where Natives are the largest minority.

Sure, there are probably communities in the U.S. that an item such as this may have not have set off any alarm bells or even garnered a second look from passing customers. Rapid City is not one of them.

When it comes to consumerism and racism, we have long had an uneasy relationship with the color of people's skins, cultural stereotypes and promotion in the name of good business.

Some of it only looks bad in retrospect, years after cultural norms have advanced to eradicate some of our previously held prejudices. Others, well, it's hard to believe they were ever considered a good idea.

Sambo's restaurants

I remember as a small child living in Duluth, Minn., going to Sambo's restaurant with my family. It was always a treat, as restaurant dining was largely considered a special occasion way back then.

I can remember the huge murals on the wall at the entry way of a tiger and a small boy, I believe running around a tree. It was based, of course, on the story of Little Black Sambo, and how he tricked a group of tigers into running around the tree, eventually turning them into butter for his pancakes. Or something like that.

Regardless, it wasn't the most racially sensitive story, and though the story (and the restaurant) attempted to update the story to remove many of the stereotypes, both the book and the restaurant disappeared from the cultural landscape.

Now, I don't remember if the little boy was black or an updated version with an eastern Indian boy. What is certain, though, is that even being distantly associated with a story that had been deemed racially insensitive - to the point that the word "sambo" became known as a racial slur - didn't help the restaurant chain's survival.

KFC vs. KGC versus Asian Americans?

You don't have to go that far back to find promotion deemed offensive.

When KFC rolled out its campaign for its new grilled chicken line, the depiction of a couple of Asian Americans.

On the blog 8Asians, blogger John offers up the relatively cogent comment: "Why are the Asian American actors wearing kamikaze headbands with what looks to me to be Japanese martial arts-type wardrobe, and speaking with foreign-sounding accents - while all the other actors and actresses came across as average Americans?"

Now, when I first saw the commercial, I hardly noticed. Of course, I wasn't listening that closely, so they could have been speaking complete jibberish and I wouldn't have heard what they were saying. On second listen, it's not as bad as "Breakfast at Tiffany's," but it isn't good.

And the martial arts garb and headbands? Really?

Rogue Volkswagen ad

Sometimes, a company doesn't have to be the creators of the offensive piece of advertising to catch heat for being racist.

Such is the case of a popular viral ad for the Volkswagen Polo. A short video shows an Arab looking motorist leaving his home in a Volkswagen Polo, driving to a busy restaurant where he pulls out a detonator.

How do I know he's Arab? Well, he's wearing a black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh around his neck, much like the one Yasser Arafat wore. No stereotyping there.

In the ad, the motorist presses down on the detonator and from outside the vehicle, we hear an see a muffled blast that fails to escape the vehicle. The ad ends with "Polo. Small but tough."

Now, the ad wasn't produced by VW but by a pair of British filmmakers who create a lot of quirky commercials who intended the piece not to be public but to show the company its abilities.

The company, in turn, said they considered legal action against them.

Washington Redskins, really?

Want to see a bad Native American stereotype? Look no further than the No. 1 sports team in the nation's capitol.

It's hard to argue that the NFL's Washington Redskins don't have, at best, a dubious nickname. It could mean one (or more) of three things. 1) Native Americans' skin color 2) The warpaint Native Americans used before battle or 3) The bloody practice of scalping.

Needless to say, it is considered offensive by many Native Americans and people of all races.

But when a lawsuit was filed against the team on grounds that it was racially offensive, the court threw out the case because it was not filed in a timely manner. The trademark was issued in 1967; the lawsuit was filed decades later.

Essentially, to retroactively force the team to change mascots this late in the game would create too great an economic hardship. That is, it would cost them too much money to change mascots, regardless if it were racist or not.

Wamu's big, bad bankers

Washingtion Mutual had a long string of commercials with multicultural intimations, many of them humorous in nature. It's not to say they were racist; they simply didn't avoid the issue of race.

However, the company came under heat in 2006 for a series of ads that depicted a group of white bankers alternately as pets, animals and slaves. Well, at least that's the way some people saw it.

In one, a black banker questions a group of 20 white bankers kept in a herded corral about incentives for customers, at which the white bankers scoff at his suggestions. In another, an oversized gerbil feeder is lowered down to the group of white bankers.

Of course, good ol' WaMu went on to become the largest bank failure in American financial history late last year, declaring bankruptcy and being placed into the receivership of the FDIC.

The two aren't really related. It just means that you likely won't be seeing many more of these kind of commercials anymore. At least not from them.