The Clothing Store H&M Posed A Black Child In A Shirt Identifying Him As A Monkey
Clothing store H&M has issued an apology, after stirring outrage with an ad featuring a black child wearing a hooded sweatshirt bearing the motto “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.”
In a statement to TheWrap on Monday, H&M said that it had removed the image and pulled the garment from sale.
H&M also said that it will “thoroughly investigate” how the ad came about.
“We understand that many people are upset about the image. We, who work at H&M, can only agree. We are deeply sorry that the picture was taken, and we also regret the actual print,” H&M said. “Therefore, we have not only removed the image from our channels, but also the garment from our product offering globally.”
The company continued, “It is obvious that our routines have not been followed properly. This is without any doubt. We will thoroughly investigate why this happened to prevent this type of mistake from happening again.”
The image drew wrath on Twitter, including from the group Models of Diversity, which tweeted Monday, “And then H&M UK got the bright idea to feature a black boy model with ‘Coolest Monkey in the Jungle’ hoodie on its website. How on earth can this be? SHAME ON YOU !
New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow was equally blunt in his assessment of the image, tweeting Sunday, “@hm, have you lost your damned minds?!?!?!”
https://www.thewrap.com/hm-is-deeply-sorry-for-ad-featuring-black-child-in-coolest-monkey-hoodie/
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What happened?
A racist who works for the store's ad department, or someone who thought this was "funny", arranged the photo.
No way this was an "accident".
I wonder how many people this shirt had to go through before it was allowed as a marketing ad. Those in the clothing industry are hardly known as conservative.
What's sad is it shouldn't matter what race the child is in the ad. It's a cute kids' hoodie and the kid in the ad is cute.
I am surprised you would say that Pat.
One day society will truly be post-racist and an ad like this will mean nothing. Too bad it's not there yet.
But there are those who go out every day looking for something to be offended by and this happened to be it.
Where was this child's parents?
They probably thought it looked cute. Just like many others.