White King

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For Lewis Carroll's character from Through the Looking Glass, see White King.

White King is a brand of bleach used in a variety of cleaning applications including washing of clothing and cleaning of mould from bathroom tiles. The product is sold in Australia and can be found in supermarkets including Coles and Safeway.

In 2001, the product became embroiled in controversy when Joshua Mackenzie, then president of the Australian Council of Civil Liberties, launched legal action in the Victorian Supreme Court against the Sara Lee Household & Body Care Pty Ltd, White King’s manufacturer. Mackenzie claimed that his action was a test of Victoria’s recently introduced racial vilification legislation, and that he was acting in the interests of eradicating the “institutionalised racism that has become prevalent within advertising and marketing”. Mackenzie stated that "Perhaps in the 1950s it was acceptable to produce a product with such a clearly racist name. This action is to show that we have moved on, and an enlightened society no longer accepts this kind of veiled neo-Nazism." The Australian Council of Civil Liberties lost the case and was ordered to pay Sara Lee’s costs.^[1]

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