Why is this ad considered racist?
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Someone please explain to me why this ad is considered to be racist.
It wouldn't bother me to wear such a hoodie.It reminds me of when Howard Cosell got in big trouble for calling a player a little monkey. Why did he get in trouble? He had previously called other players and even his own grandchildren little monkeys.
Someone needs to explain to me why someone would consider being called a little monkey to be offensive. Perhaps short people like Marco Rubio don't like to be called "little"?
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To act as if this is a real question I'm going to give a real answer.
Since there's a long history of racists in the USA calling black people 'monkeys' and 'apes' it's a slur to call a black kid a 'monkey'.
A big problem is that people mean two completely different things by 'racist' (or sexist or homophobic or anti-Semitic). The first is saying that an individual has a personal bias. That isn't all that common now and most likely is not the case here. The second is saying that we live in a society with a history that gives adventages to some people and disadvantages to others. Sometimes it's subtle - as a Jew I have to use my vacation time to follow my own holidays but am not allowed to work on somebody else's holidays since I live in a Christian majority country. Not one person has to be "Jew-hating" for that to happen.
The same with countries that don't allow same-sex marriage. Nobody has to be overtly homophobic to have the effect that gives a disadvantage to homosexuals.
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As Anita Sarkeesian so famously pointed out; everything is racist, everything is homophobic, everything is sexist and you have to point it all out.
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In Sweden for about ten years ago when we had an black women in the government, Nyamko Sabuni, (right wing liberal) she was always by a sort of people on Flashback (it is like a Swedish uncensored version of Reddit) referred to as the ape or the monkey, and there is like no way H&M could not known that. I do think it was an honest mistake from their side, but as long as people keep using the word ape or monkey as a negative term for black people, you don't put a black kid in a tee with that message.
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OOOps, I forgot to mention the picture I posted above.
That's the 2015 and 2016 ads for GAP. One of them is racist and the other is fine.
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In Sweden for about ten years ago when we had an black women in the government, Nyamko Sabuni, (right wing liberal) she was always by a sort of people on Flashback (it is like a Swedish uncensored version of Reddit) referred to as the ape or the monkey, and there is like no way H&M could not known that. I do think it was an honest mistake from their side, but as long as people keep using the word ape or monkey as a negative term for black people, you don't put a black kid in a tee with that message.
Yes.. but as long as people keep freaking out when a black kid is put in a tee with that message.. people will continue to associate black people with apes or monkeys.
They could never make this show with a black cast…
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