I wonder if and when enough people will wake up to the fact that when they vote for progressives, this is the kind of culture they are voting to live in. You know: hysterical, power-mad, and insane.
The footwear and apparel company Converse was attacked this week by the woke social media mob for an ad in a new sneaker campaign. It featured the bottom half of a person wearing a white garment and holding a pair of black sneakers.
The shadows that suggest the outline of a long, tapering triangle was obviously reminiscent of the pointed hood of a Klan robe, see. And the lighting makes the black sneakers look like someone is being hanged. The sneakers are black, get it? And have a single leg in two shoes, or something. The alleged lyncher was K-pop singer Karina wearing a skirt and holding a pair of Chuck 70 X sneakers, but never mind: some genius figured out this was another opportunity to hold 21st century America guilty of racism.
Naturally, Converse groveled an apology, thus ensuring more of this crap from the race-baiters and political correctness thugs. “We’re sorry,” Converse said in an emailed statement. “We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong. We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared,” the statement added. “This should not have happened and we will do better.”
I wish I bought Converse merchandise so I could boycott the brand. Their craven behavior harms every American, the culture, society, commerce, kids, brains, everything. Just listen to these idiots:
“As a Black man and someone who loves Converse shoes, I find this very insensitive and distasteful,” Kendall Peacock, who runs the Education Firm, a tutoring and mentorship program in Atlanta, said on social media. “Deliberate racist intent hasn’t been established yet, but that doesn’t erase the impact,” he added.
Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney based in Texas, posted on Instagram that Converse’s apology “doesn’t undo what got past legal, marketing and leadership at every step.”
Stephanie Schwartz, a social justice photographer, wrote on social media, “Every photographer can tell you, whoever did this ad knew EXACTLY what they were doing.”
I discovered the racist sneaker ad because Holly Mathnerd wrote about it on her exotic and eccentric substack. I can’t do better than Holly’s evisceration of the latest woke obsession, and besides, she’s sharp, she’s funny, she writes well, and she deserves attention. She wrote in part,
the way folks look at the world is truly insane. I am currently in a training class with 20somethings and few older folks. Everyone else is a POC. The instructor brought up this “issue” and got a general rumble of agreement that it at the least looked bad. He did talk about Converse history a bit.
OhOH. I just realized from all previously written on this post that stars are racist. If you will take time to attend to your favorite star of preference, notice that when you squint just right, there are 5 hood looking extensions on every common star shape. See. The more points on the star, the more racist it is, even if the image has T-Rexes fighting over who’s going to get to eat baby Jesus. Geez America sucks! Who will evere rid us of this racis problems.
I’m sorry, she’s a what now?
Is it just me, or does she sound like somebody with no real job and only a hammer to to it with?
“Once someone mentioned that a popular Christmas image that I’ve seen in yards near my house and hanging on Christmas trees looked like two T-Rexes fighting over a baby,”
My eyes! My eyes! Why did you do that to me?
I know.
Maybe it really was intentional…
I can’t see the T-Rexes no matter how hard I try…and I loved looking at those hidden 3-D images years ago.
That speaks well for you. I see dinosaurs in everything and have since I was 5.
Only look for heads with open mouths, looking up at the sky – no bodies, no tiny little arms.
These social justice race baiters have completely lost their collective minds. They really do need psychological help.
I tend to agree with what you wrote, Jack. It is a proverbial tempest in a teapot.
Yet, here we are. Egg meet face.
I cannot fault the K-pop star. I believe she is Korean, so she probably has no idea what the image could have conveyed.
Converse, though, let this happen: Someone in their marketing division came up with or approved this marketing strategy and either thought “wow – that’s edgy and cool” or, more cynically, “let’s see what happens – maybe we can get away with this.” Someone with an IQ above room temperature should have looked at the photo or ad campaign and asked, “When did we start eulogizing Emmitt Till?” Self-inflicted controversies like this are beyond belief.
To me the ethics here is not necessarily the response of the Al Sharptons of the world but the absolute deleriction of duty in companies to protect their brands. It happened with Bud Light (Bud Light lost something like 25 to 30 percent of its market share and billions of dollars with that stupid faux woman ad). It happened when GM wanted to sell Novas in Spain and Latin America but couldn’t figure out why that market wouldn’t buy the cars (uh, dude, “nova” in Spanish means “it doesn’t run”). It happened when the Lululemon president stated that he wasn’t marketing his yoga pants to plus-size ladies (oops).* There are tons of other mistakes that could have and should have been prevented had someone stepped up and said, “yeah, this is a dumb idea and we are gonna lose money because of it, which will not make our shareholders happy.”
jvb
*Ed. Note: I don’t fault American Eagle for the “great genes” campaign, though. I thought it was a clever play on words and the controversy contrived.
Perhaps every marketing department should hire someone as race-rabid as Ben Crump and pay them bonuses for every possible scintilla of racism to avoid publishing something racist. Or BLM could function as an official accrediting agency for authorizing who is qualified to determine racism-free advertising.
“Converse, though, let this happen: Someone in their marketing division came up with or approved this marketing strategy and either thought “wow – that’s edgy and cool” or, more cynically, “let’s see what happens – maybe we can get away with this.” Someone with an IQ above room temperature should have looked at the photo or ad campaign and asked, “When did we start eulogizing Emmitt Till?” Self-inflicted controversies like this are beyond belief.”
Completely disagree.
The people who created and approved that are most certainly of the generations that grew up in an educational and social system that worshipped diversity and sensitivity of any “oppressed” group. They’d never intend, see, or comprehend that it could ever be interpreted as anything but edgy and cool.
Once the race hustling whores saw the equivalent of the T-Rex nativity scene as a way to make obscene amounts of money, it was over. Because Converse are of such generations, they believe groveling to TRHW as their righteous contrition – the ONLY right option as they see it.
Anybody with an IQ above room temperature on a cold day, when the heater is broken, knows what a giant crock of crap TRHW are pushing. The End.
I don’t disagree. However, a tennis shoe/apparel company like Converse is not normally known for its edgy ad campaigns. Benetton, Guess, American Eagle (to an extent), and others have skated controversy because that is what those brands pedal and their customer bases approve.
Converse, on the other hand, is in the business of selling moderatley priced traditional clothing and activewear – that should be its primary activity because the more attire they sell, the more money they make for their shareholders.
Putting this kind of idiotic ad out into commerce unnecessarily hurts its brand and market share, notwithstanding the maxim “their is no such thing as bad publicity.” Budweiser’s experience would suggest otherwise.
If the ad and marketing people couldn’t figure out that the photo would resemble a lynching, then those people should be fired. I don’t care that they may be millenials or GenZ. Someone in the marketing department should have said, “Uh, nice photo. Try something else.”
jvb
Your insensitivity to the T-Rex community is astonishing. There is no way they would fight over the baby, they would’ve applied Solomon’s wisdom. To suggest otherwise is offensive and perpetuates hurtful steroypes of the T-Rex community as vicious carnivores. I think you should be sent to re-education ca… er… sensitivity training.
It’s a good thing I’m not in charge of Converse, I’d have put out a statement calling the “outrage” a poor attempt at high tech lynching, and anybody who took the race hustling whores seriously was a complete moron.
Five or so years ago I might’ve had some sympathy for those saying the ad could possibly have some overtones, but the absolute clown show the left has become has obliterated any consideration I might give arguments from “the other side” on ANY social or political issues.
That was a fun read.
jvb
What a weird, confusing photograph. To sell Chucks.
Yes! Young Bill – I don’t object to the ad because of alleged racism – it’s just not good.
Jack! Love the T-Rexes.
As for Converse – they’ve been producing canvas shoes for over one hundred years. By the 1960’s more than 70% of basketball players wore them.
I got my first pair as hand-me-ups. My younger brother had outgrown his white high tops, gave them to me to wear for gym class.
I currently have nine pair in six different colors.
I’ve seen what is supposed to be the commercial video this image came from, so it looks like someone took an image from it and blew it up to eliminate any extra details that didn’t contribute to this narrative. It reminds me a bit of the craze in the 1970s or so about subliminal images in advertising, where images in the ice cubes in a glass spelled out “sex” or something else. If you scrutinized them long enough, you’d see something, sooner or later. Unfortunately, once a ball like this starts rolling, it is nearly impossible to change course.
I live near a city that tries painfully hard to be ‘trendy’ (think using slightly corroded iron pipes for all the chair rails in their restaurant). So, I wouldn’t have looked twice at this picture.
The British royal cost of arms contains a phrase in old Norman French, “HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE“. The precise translation to modern English is debated, but the basic meaning is “Shame on those who see evil where none exists“.