By Pedro Velazquez
It was just another normal morning. I had just woken up and was about to eat my breakfast. This was when I checked social media and had seen H&M trending. As a curious person, I went on to see what was happening. I then immediately lost my appetite.
I had just seen a 5 year old African-American posing wearing a sweater captioned “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.” How can such a well known company be capable of committing such a disgraceful act? H&M, the company who had released this had sweater, was seen by most people as blatantly racist.
About a week into 2018, most of us had checked social media to see everyone talking about how disgraceful H&M was for releasing this piece of clothing that they had to have known would offend tons of people, especially African Americans and other people of color. This was a terrible mistake and will forever leave a blemish on the company, and it had given me the curiosity to research the bigger problem--racism in advertisements.
Shortly after, I began my research. I was taken by surprise by how often things like this happen, along with the targeting of a certain races being much more evident.
For instance, most people from our generation are not aware of the incident that occurred with Abercrombie and Fitch several years ago. In 2002, they decided to release a collection of clothing presumably intended to be funny, but they were highly offensive to people of Asian descent. The designs were just straight out racist, filled with stereotypes that are just meant to be offensive. One t-shirt depicted a cartoon of two Asian men in a highly stereotypical manner with the phrase, “Two Wongs can make it white.”
To get a better understanding of what the general public thinks, I interviewed a family friend named Maria. I started off by asking for her thoughts on the H&M incident. She called it “a terrible mistake” and believes that the company’s apology was genuine and that offending anybody was not their intent.
I followed it up by showing her the Abercrombie and Fitch collection of 2002 and asked for her thoughts. She called them “disgusting and hateful people” and she then asked, “Why does everyone feel like they need to attack one another =m whether it be Mexicans or African Americans or Whites?” I had no response, and if you were to ask me again today, I would still have no response.
I believe we shouldn’t be having to have conversations about whether a company is racist or not. When you think about them, the first thing that should come to mind should be what they sell, not about a time they decided it was to attack an entire race.
I had just seen a 5 year old African-American posing wearing a sweater captioned “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.” How can such a well known company be capable of committing such a disgraceful act? H&M, the company who had released this had sweater, was seen by most people as blatantly racist.
About a week into 2018, most of us had checked social media to see everyone talking about how disgraceful H&M was for releasing this piece of clothing that they had to have known would offend tons of people, especially African Americans and other people of color. This was a terrible mistake and will forever leave a blemish on the company, and it had given me the curiosity to research the bigger problem--racism in advertisements.
Shortly after, I began my research. I was taken by surprise by how often things like this happen, along with the targeting of a certain races being much more evident.
For instance, most people from our generation are not aware of the incident that occurred with Abercrombie and Fitch several years ago. In 2002, they decided to release a collection of clothing presumably intended to be funny, but they were highly offensive to people of Asian descent. The designs were just straight out racist, filled with stereotypes that are just meant to be offensive. One t-shirt depicted a cartoon of two Asian men in a highly stereotypical manner with the phrase, “Two Wongs can make it white.”
To get a better understanding of what the general public thinks, I interviewed a family friend named Maria. I started off by asking for her thoughts on the H&M incident. She called it “a terrible mistake” and believes that the company’s apology was genuine and that offending anybody was not their intent.
I followed it up by showing her the Abercrombie and Fitch collection of 2002 and asked for her thoughts. She called them “disgusting and hateful people” and she then asked, “Why does everyone feel like they need to attack one another =m whether it be Mexicans or African Americans or Whites?” I had no response, and if you were to ask me again today, I would still have no response.
I believe we shouldn’t be having to have conversations about whether a company is racist or not. When you think about them, the first thing that should come to mind should be what they sell, not about a time they decided it was to attack an entire race.