Abercrombie & Fitch, the Ohio-based clothing company, recently recalled some T-shirts it had printed that one company spokesperson called “cheeky, irreverent and funny.” The shirts feature cartoon caricatures of slant-eyed, grinning Asians in conical hats advertising such things as “Wong Brothers Laundry Service.” Naturally, Asian-American groups are in an uproar. Abercrombie pulled the T-shirts, which were selling for $25 each. The same Abercrombie spokesperson explained that the company thought that, “Everyone would love them, especially the Asian-American community.” OK, first of all, who in the ding-dong would pay $25 for a stinking T-shirt? I mean, you can get a perfectly good one at Wal-Mart for a fraction of that price. I might pay $25 for a good sweatshirt, maybe a windbreaker, possibly a meal at that nice Greek restaurant in Columbus for me, Mrs. Odom and her mother. But $25 for a T-shirt? Give me a break!
Second, what are the people at Abercrombie smoking, snorting or shooting into their veins? Who in their right mind would put that on a T-shirt and think that they wouldn’t offend anyone? How dumb do you have to be to work in research and design at the Abercrombie & Fitch company? That’s like printing shirts that depict old blackfaced minstrel-show caricatures advertising
watermelons or fried chicken and thinking that the black community will just love them.
It might be almost as stupid as dressing up in blackface, parading around a Halloween party with gun-toting buddies in camouflage and Klan robes, taking pictures of yourself and posting them on the Internet and then, to top it off, being shocked and amazed that somebody saw them, got mad and wanted to run you off campus. Not that something like this would ever happen. Especially not at Auburn or Ole Miss.
Third, you really have to wonder about a company that puts out something like this and thinks it’s being “cheeky, irreverent and funny.” It’s very telling that they thought that, and what it tells is chilling. They probably don’t see anything wrong with the T-shirts other than the fact that they made some folks mad. It is similar to the people who think that John Rocker’s and the blackface boys’ only mistakes were getting caught, not the things that were done or said.
At no point has the company come out and said, “You know, it was incredibly stupid and socially irresponsible of us to do that.” Instead, their comments have been along the lines of “Since some customers have been offended,” the shirts were pulled. There has been no apology, period. That is just plain rude. If the company’s prices hadn’t already turned me off to them, their callousness might.
I am all for freedom of speech. If you want to pay $25 for a T-shirt that depicts racist stereotypes, while you’re an idiot for paying that much for a t-shirt, you do have freedom of expression. The same First Amendment that protects your right to dress like a moron protects my right to call you one. Furthermore, I do not believe in censorship. I don’t think that the government should step in and start telling people what they can and can’t put on T-shirts. I am also not going to call for a boycott. It is kind of hard to stop buying something you already don’t buy. It’s sort of like when my doctor told me to cut mayonnaise out of my diet. Given my pre-existing hatred of the condiment, it wasn’t a problem.
My complaint is against stupidity. Anybody in their right mind who owns a multi-million dollar company and lets an idea like this one get out is obviously not employing the best and brightest minds in the marketing world. Abercrombie markets itself as a bastion of youth style and fashion. A veritable Fountain of Youth, if you will. One bumper sticker I recently saw mirrored my thoughts. It read, “We have enough youth, how about a ‘Fountain of Intelligence.'” Amen, brother.