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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

H&M mother has said for people to 'get over it'

450 replies

WomanEmpire · 11/01/2018 14:28

Apparently she has said on Facebook it's people 'crying wolf' and to 'get over it'

Wdyt?

I personally think H&M are counting their lucky stars and have sort of preyed on her, (this is very presumptuous, so I am prepared to be shot down) knowing that perhaps as someone who is native Nigerian and moved to Sweden (I think relatively recently, but again pull me up on this if I'm incorrect) might not be quite as aware of the racism that incurs in the US/UK, as those who live in these countries and wouldn't think to second guess in a shoot, because you'd trust such a popular retailer to not have racist slurs put on a jumper and modelled by a child, who could quite possibly still be called this by those idiots. Because I still can't believe that NO ONE along the process picked up on this.

I'm not saying racism doesn't occur in other countries but I have experience of those two countries.

OP posts:
Rufustherenegadereindeer1 · 12/01/2018 12:23

Nah bummy

You sound fairly chilled to me

Stay on the thread

Smile
Zarathrustra · 12/01/2018 12:24

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

bummymummy77 · 12/01/2018 12:25

@cindersrella but ALL of my black friends found it offensive. Is that not a problem?

Just because some black people didn't find it offensive a lot did. Does that not matter?

bummymummy77 · 12/01/2018 12:26

I'm not ashamed that racism upsets me actually.

Zarathrustra · 12/01/2018 12:26

Anyways. I’ve been repeatedly accused of being a racist, without any substance.

So again, point to a singe racist comment.

Or don’t. And reflect on how the use of accusation to attempt to limit discussion has negative consequences for both society and your own cause.

Zarathrustra · 12/01/2018 12:27

Good bummy. Shame is no place to be.

ToffeeUp · 12/01/2018 12:29

cindersella can you explain you reasons just like bummy and many other posres have done

Just stating that you agree with the mum doesn't give us a lot to go on

DreamyMcDreamy · 12/01/2018 12:30

So again, point to a singe racist comment

There's not much point really, is there? If you can't see it after it repeatedly being pointed out and you're now resorting to playground type responses to other posters, you're never going to get it (or indeed care.)

cindersrella · 12/01/2018 12:35

BUMMY
I think it must be about the individual.... it offends your Black friends but it doesn't offend the boy who modelled it or his Mom who are both Black. I believe they are not from the uk and they are from Switzerland? Maybe racism isn't such a problem over there and are not on the defence constantly.

H&M are a worldwide brand and are not stupid enough to put this top on a boy if they thought there would be the backlash and offence that there has been. I think (I'm not 100% sure) but hasn't it been taken down from the website now?

LemonShark · 12/01/2018 12:43

Tsundoku brilliant post 🙌🏻

Bummy, don't feel you have to leave the thread to cantankerous goady racists who keep demanding others 'show [them] where [they've] been racist' despite the fact their posting history is there for all to see and they'll wilfully pretend not to understand what's wrong with their comments anyway.

I have zero interest in debating with somebody whose starting position is being reactionary for the sake of it (how shocking!) and racist. Some views simply don't merit the attention, when it's clear the protagonist is closed down to any other ideas and desperate to prove their own perceived superiority while others look on with embarrassment for them.

Tsundoku · 12/01/2018 13:15

The idea there isn’t an objective truth that we can reach through dialectic and investigation, but merely the ‘truths’ of different groups, and the idea that to attempt to investigate ideas is an affront to the subjective truth of this or that identity group. If an oppressed group has a subjective truth, it has to be ‘respected’ by the oppressor group.

The transactivist ideology is lobbying for objective truth to be overruled in favour of personal agenda. Physical biology is objective truth: women's lives have and continue to be shaped by the specific functions/attributes of the female body, including childbearing, menstruation, physical strength and specific female health conditions. Whether you call us women or any other word, we are physically present in the world as a group with these characteristics.

To say you can be genetically, physically male but also be unquestionably female due to self-definition, and to demand practical inclusion - this isn't prioritising one subjective truth over another. It's saying objective, observable, palpable truth can be overruled if you shout loud enough.

But monkey and jungle are words. There are standard meanings (type of animal; type of environment), colloquial meanings (cheeky child; hostile or primeval setting) and offensive meanings. Meaning differs according to intent and context.

Intent and context are easy to pin down on an individual basis, which is why plenty of people have no issue calling their own kids monkeys and see it as a million miles away from a hostile football terrace chant.

Intent and context are more problematic with mass-audience advertising campaigns, which is why most companies are very careful to avoid terms which have alternate meanings which are used to insult, or have negative associations, the use of which can seem everything from clumsy to clueless to deliberately offensive. But oversights happen. (A few years ago, someone thought 'Lolita' was a great name for a children's bed, IIRC, and nobody noticed any issue with this until the product launched)

If 'monkey' is neutral to a large number of people (meaning: small animal, cheeky child) but offensive to a minority (meaning: sub-human, unevolved) then the company needs to decide whether to retract its usage, or decide they don't really care what the minority think. Historically, the latter option has been popular: I doubt that, even a few decades ago, anyone at a European multinational would lose sleep about offending a minority group.

But things are different now (or at least superficially different). You can class it as the automatic and mindless prioritisation of an oppressed group's subjective truth; I see it more as acknowledgment that oppressed groups have any right to any opinion or feelings at all. It's not like there have been years and years of holding varied subjective truths as equal: there's been a long, long period of not giving a shit what minorities think, because they had a lesser status. And then, much later, a shift towards the notion that we should care; a recognition that certain terms can be interpreted as offensive and that, even if they remain neutral to a large group of people, that still doesn't justify their usage in a mass campaign.

bummymummy77 · 12/01/2018 13:27

Yes. Exactly. Put in actual words rather than my rambly, banging my head on the Leonard.

Bravo @Tsundoku

bummymummy77 · 12/01/2018 13:28

Fuck's sake! Keyboard! 😂

DreamyMcDreamy · 12/01/2018 13:30

banging your head on the Leonard Grin

that made me lol.
Feel a bit head bangy myself,maybe won't headbutt Leonard though, poor Leonard

Lovely333 · 12/01/2018 13:40

I agree with the Mum and son. Kind of feel a bit sorry for the kid really he was probably really chuffed to get the chance to model for h and m and this all blows up.

bummymummy77 · 12/01/2018 13:42

@DreamyMcDreamy Grin

Actually I do feel sorry for the lad.

Rufustherenegadereindeer1 · 12/01/2018 13:42

Dunno what poor leonard has done to you bummy

I do feel a bit sorry for mother and son as well lovely

Beautiful child

Wayfarersonbaby · 12/01/2018 13:43

Good grief there are some dimwits on here. Yes, the ad is breathtakingly racially insensitive. No, noticing that isn't itself racist.

But then I imagine there are a fair few on here who would be just as happy to put their little girl in a "biggest cow on the farm" t-shirt and think that wasn't at all offensive or sexist, no....? Because cows are just animals, there's no connection with misogyny at all, and anyone who thinks little girls shouldn't wear tops with cows on them is the sexist one....

JAPAB · 12/01/2018 13:53

And then, much later, a shift towards the notion that we should care; a recognition that certain terms can be interpreted as offensive and that, even if they remain neutral to a large group of people, that still doesn't justify their usage in a mass campaign.

When the term itself was invented as a pejorative or in itself has acquired a pejorative meaning, that is one thing.

An object depicting a physical caricature of black people is one thing.

I am not sure this ad is guilty of featuring either though. It is more that racists have likened black people to a type of animal ergo associating that animal with a black child is seen as offensive, insensitive, or even racist.

People of course have every right to their opinions, but I don't think anyone is a sole arbritrator when, in order to not cause them offence, someone else is required to modify their behaviour. Such as not putting a particular generic slogan on a particular child.

Tsundoku · 12/01/2018 14:06

bummymummy77 poor Leonard must be tired of this thread...

...I don't think anyone is a sole arbritrator when, in order to not cause them offence, someone else is required to modify their behaviour. Such as not putting a particular generic slogan on a particular child.

JAPAB but this isn't just about personal behaviour. It was a personal choice for this kid's mother to allow her kid to wear the shirt; that's completely up to her. Not in a million years would I approach a woman at a supermarket and tell her she shouldn't put this garment on her child.

But it was a professional, multi-levelled corporate decision to produce and publicise this image as promotional material. I don't think it's incongruous that people might suspect H&M of being a) crashingly insensitive, or b) deliberately provocative, since we've seen examples of both of these in marketing (I don't think it's B, but it definitely happens: all PR is good PR, etc, let's get a good controversy going).

I went to a talk about language in advertising once. There was a discussion about potentially offensive language, and someone said you should think of it (on a commerical level) like catering a very large corporate event where you know paprika will almost certainly make a small number of guests sweat and vomit.

How much paprika are you going to put in that food? How many people sweating and vomiting at your party is okay? Maybe one or two could be passed off as isolated incidents, but any more than that and you're going to make your occasion memorable for the wrong reasons. The smell of sick will probably make other people nauseous, and forever more this will be known as That Party With The Puke. (Although there will of course be people who keep working through the buffet, saying 'but paprika is delicious! you're just puking for attention' and 'I can't taste any paprika: you're imagining it'.)

Or you could just, you know, avoid putting paprika in the food, since there's a million other spices available in your kitchen.

I know that's not a perfect analogy, and that someone will probably say 'where does it end: there's always someone who doesn't like a particular flavour, so we'll end up eating flavourless paste at every meal'. But some offensive connotations are as obvious and divisive as paprika, so on a commercial level it's a statement to include them in your offerings.

Tsundoku · 12/01/2018 14:13

I meant to finish (because obviously that wasn't already long enough) that the notion of a sole arbritrator is meaningless when it comes to words. There never is a sole arbritrator; perhaps a tiny number of words are considered sufficient in themselves to be unequivocably, deliberately malicious, but everything else depends on intent and context, and the interpretation of intent and context is what you struggle to control when producing material that will be seen by millions of people. So companies lay off the paprika, unless they're deliberately being provocative.

quencher · 12/01/2018 16:09

I agree with her and I find it rather disgusting that people think they know better than she does. Feel very patronising I Grande here. Racism does not just affect one person. If it did not affect her it does not mean it didn't affect other people within that race. In this case, her words and how she feels means nothing. The fact is, it's easily a trigger for some people.

I once saw an article somewhere were the person wrote why they would not discuss racism with African people. (A spin off to the white one) I understand why they wrote it and I am African. different experiences of racism and how you connect to it gives you as person different understanding.

PonderWoman · 12/01/2018 20:17

Absolutely appalling racism experienced by a footballer as a child.

www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jan/12/graham-rix-gwyn-williams-accused-racism-bullying-chelsea

Ghanagirl · 12/01/2018 22:56

I’m pretty certain the mother has been pressured into making this statement.
I’m done with posts regarding race on Mumsnet as it always seems to go the same way.
“I’m white but my best friends are black but they don’t get upset by my golliwog dolls”
“My DH is mixed race and grew up in the Hebrides he loved when his friends threw bananas on the pitch whilst he was playing football”...

DreamyMcDreamy · 12/01/2018 23:08

I’m pretty certain the mother has been pressured into making this statement.

Yup, she's not going to come out and say she didn't think and now sees it, is she?
Seeing as presumably being paid by them to model.
Seems like she's either uneducated or being told to say she doesn't have a problem.

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