H&M Racism storm

I'm not saying they can't, they're (H&M) free to do as they wish but putting the black kid in something that's been used to racially abuse black people will lead to the backlash they're facing now. Recognise what it might look like and save yourself the headache, no one loses out.

The name of an animal has been used to racially abuse people, so now we can no longer use that word even when not intending to racially abuse people, seems like the correct way of doing things. As opposed to taking things within their pragmatic context and applying critical thinking skills to decide whether a large multinational company is intending to offend millions of people or was simply advertising an item of clothing.
 
There was blatantly no ill intention behind it but their marketing team has got to be pretty damn stupid to have ok’d it and not clocked onto how it could be viewed by some.

Don’t really think it’s got anything to do with modern pc times though, I’m fairly sure there would have been people kicking off about it back in the 90s as well.
 
Reminds me of this from South Park.. As mentioned already - doesn't the whole action of calling it out as racist, actually make it racist?

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We got called "little monkeys" all the time as kids - its just something people do because, well you know - we used to get up to mischief and act like monkeys - the same animal we are all supposedly evolved from (including black kids - shock horror /end sarcasm)

I'm white so not sure on the unofficial rules but am i to assume black kids cannot get called little monkeys too?

Embarrassed that people even jump to these conclusions.


(PS - for anyone who hasn't seen that south park episode, the moral of the story was none of the kids saw it as racist because skin colour doesn't matter)
 
Everyone should just wear plain grey clothes, save all this stress and outrage.


Should we get the mods to add monkey to the filter? It's the only way to be sure we dont offend the flakes.
 
I always call my kids little monkeys, my daughters friend is black, called her a little monkey once and was worried in case it was taken the wrong way.

But the shirt doesn't say 'little monkey.'

That depends on the age involved. Spoke about this at work, the older staff saw the problem, anyone under 25 wasn't aware that black people used to be referred to as monkey's

So you're acknowledging that some people would have found it offensive, which was my point.
 
I did chuckle when I saw it, obvious that the usual SJW types would get "triggered" instantly by it.

I mean on one hand, given it is such a big company, they perhaps should have been a bit more mindful of the fact it is [current year] etc.. and get one of the white kids to wear it.

On the other hand, if someone were to set up say "little monkeys' clothing company" or something along those lines and basically make branded merchandise for kids - would it be right for them to state that their policy is to never employ any black or mixed race models for their clothes due to their brand name... that could also be rather racist.
 
(PS - for anyone who hasn't seen that south park episode, the moral of the story was none of the kids saw it as racist because skin colour doesn't matter)

Skin colour shouldn’t matter but it still does in society. Racism exists and, as adults, we’re not ignorant to the possible subtext behind words and images.

We don’t live in the uptopian innocent world of children.
 
In today's age it is undeniably clumsy to have published that, but the irony is that in a perfect society (that people are trying to create) this wouldn't have been an issue. So there is an element of it being self-perpetuating. But, again, very clumsy. We are not in the ideal future and racism still very much is an issue.
 
‘You stop calling me a black man and I will stop calling you a white man’

It was a silly mistake - but that’s all it was. I can’t imagine for a moment H&M going out of their way to intentionally upset anyone. Trouble is with social media, especially Twitter, everyone is offended by everything.
 
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