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Urban Outfitters: Overpriced Clothes with a Side of Racism
Thanks to Jezebel for pointing me to this gem of a marketing campaign. In their online catalogue, Urban Outfitters is selling a shirt that comes in two colors: “White/Charcoal” and “Obama/Black.”
Just as a simple analogy, this makes no sense. White is to charcoal as black is to the president of the United States? My head is spinning.
And then, of course, there’s the wee little problem with equating the colors of objects with the races of people; imaging buying a paint color called “White/Liv Tyler.”
This reminds me of when my grandmother serves brown butter beans alongside her green ones, and asks, “Do you want some of the coloreds as well?” But she’s 87 and she grew up in rural Georgia. And she’s not serving her food to a generation of teenagers.
Photo: Jezebel
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3 Comments
Rebecca commented on Jan 31 10 at 4:44 pmWow. Well, maybe the writer was distracted listening to a speech or something? Haha, nope, still ridiculous.
Lisa commented on Feb 01 10 at 9:29 pmIf you read the comments on the Jezebel piece, someone suggests that Obama refers to the blue buttons. That the white/charcoal means white buttons on a charcoal shirt and obama/black means obama(?) colored buttons on a black shirt. The poster also claims that there was a shirt somewhere else on the site called Obama that was blue.
indigo commented on Feb 15 10 at 12:54 pmi’m a frequenter of the urban outfitters website and sorry to say that this time there’s not much to this story. i’ve seen a lot of the clothing have color options of obama bllue. most likely they have shortened the name of the color to obama. that is all…
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