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24 April, 2002
WHEN
THE SHIRT HITS THE FANS
Sometimes, I'm flabbergasted by the sheer ignorance of successful companies. If they're successful, you would think they were smart. But that's not the case with Abercrombie & Fitch.
| The company said, "We personally thought Asians would love (the Wong Brothers laundry service) T-shirt." Wrong. |
Ooops, I'm starting to sound like my folks used to sound when I was in high school and I wore chambray shirts and baggy bell-bottom pants (had to be Levi's, no other brand would do!) that dragged on the ground. I guess you do grow up to be your parents….
Anyway, A&F is the brand of choice for young people these days. Smart. But the company made a dumb move last week. It was with some consternation that I read a JA e-mail list posting from Alisa, a young Japanese American woman attending college in Seattle, warning about a new line of Abercrombie T-shirts she found offensive. She described the shirts, and included a link to the company's Web site.
 |
There were several designs available for sale on the company's Web site. One featured a caricature of two Asians with slanty eyes and conical "rice paddy" hats with the slogan "Wong Brothers Laundry Service - Two Wongs can make it white." Another features a slanty-eyed bowler wearing a conical hat, and the slogan "Wok and Bowl, Let the good times roll - Chinese Food & Bowling." A third showed a cartoon "Chinaman" with a traditional cap and yes, slanty eyes, smiling over a plate of steaming food and the slogan, "Abercrombie's Pizza Dojo - Eat in or Wok Out." A fourth design sported a grinning bald Buddha-like figure and the words "Buddha Bash - Get your Buddha on the Floor."
The designs recall racist images and stereotypes
of Asians from a century ago, and has been banished from the American
pop scene since at least the 1960s (baby boomers will remember Hop Sing
from "Bonanza") - far enough back that the teens who might wear such crap
didn't grow up with the hatred they symbolized and institutionalized.
 |
It's another reminder that racist feelings still exist not too deep beneath the civil veneer of today's political correctness. The fact that some people think it's OK to express such feelings in the guise of humor - or satire, as in the case of the recent Colorado College April Fools issue of the student newspaper featuring offensive articles - makes me want to throw up. Or throw a fit.
I forwarded the e-mail to several people and organizations, and discovered that thanks to the Internet, news about Abercrombie's offensive shirts was rapidly making the rounds. Within hours, the Organization of Chinese Americans, the Japanese American Citizens League and the 80-20 Initiative, an Asian American lobbying group, were aware of the issue, and in touch with Abercrombie's management. And so were hundreds, if not thousands, of students and people like Erin and me, who were part of a grassroots campaign to click to the company's Web site and fill out an e-mail form to complain about the shirts and ask that they be withdrawn from sale.
By the end of the day, the San Francisco Chronicle had posted an article on its Web site quoting Asian students at Stanford University, who were the first in the country to see the shirts on the shelf at an Abercrombie store in San Francisco. The students marshaled their forces and got the word out, and by the end of the day, the company had yanked the offensive shirts off the Web site and promised to pull them off the shelves. That night the Asian community in San Francisco protested at the main Abercrombie location to hammer home their point that this type of marketing was unacceptable. Most of the Abercrombie stores across the country had not yet received the shirts, and now they never will.
Amazingly, although the company apologized for offending anyone in articles by the SF Chronicle, the Washington Post and CNN (I didn't see any other major mainstream media coverage of the shirts or the protest), its spokesman was quoted as saying "We personally thought Asians would love (the Wong Brothers laundry service) T-shirt." Wrong. The company spokesman told the Chronicle in an updated story that the T-shirts were designed and manufactured without any market testing to see if they would be acceptable to their intended target audience. In fact, he said the entire line was partly aimed to appeal to "Asian shoppers with a sense of humor," according to the newspaper. He told CNN, "The thought was that everyone would love them, especially the Asian community." Sorry, I must have left my sense of humor at home today.
But just removing the offensive shirts simply deals with the symptomatic expression of racism without addressing the underlying issue of corporate racism itself. I mean, why would anyone at the company - including its management - think the shirts would be funny and cool in the first place?
"We never single out any one group to poke fun at," the Abercrombie spokesman said. "We poke fun at everybody, from women to flight attendants to baggage handlers, to football coaches, to Irish Americans to snow skiers. There's really no group we haven't teased." Yeah, right.
Would the management have approved a "humorous" line of shirts with stereotyped images of thick-lipped African Americans with watermelons, hook-nosed American Indians holding a bloody scalp, Jews wearing yarmulkas grinning over a stack of coins or mustachioed Latinos sleeping under sombreros?
I agree with Asian American groups who hope to get Abercrombie to make a public apology to its Asian American consumers, and to create an ad campaign with positive images of Asians. For now, I just hope the Ohio-based chain follows through with its promise to remove the shirts from all of its 311 stores in 50 states.
In a pathetic postscript to this sad incident, some of the people who managed to buy those T-shirts while they were available for $25 each, immediately started selling them on eBay for up to $200 as collectible memorabilia.
Sigh. Sometimes, I'm flabbergasted not just by companies, but by the sheer ignorance of people, too.