Is This Inappropriate?

[ExcuseTheCheese]

We had the whole 'coolest monkey in the jungle' thing but I saw the jumper first whilst looking for some clothes for DD, in the search results all you see is the jumper and not the model. I thought it was an odd thing to put on a child's jumper in all honesty, I thought it should perhaps say boss. Anyway, I clicked on the other pictures and saw the ethnicity of the model and thought that someone, somewhere has made a massive error in judgement and that this is actually quite inappropriate. AIBU?

Well I suppose I’m pretty pissed off about African slavery, yes. I’m more annoyed about people on this thread (not you!) who just waved off any mention of it as if it’s irrelevant in this day and age.

I thought the ad was aiming for a right-on, anti-racist sort of vibe, but in rather a crass way. After all, oppression of black people is not a proper subject for shallow banter or jokey slogans. I'm white so a bit clueless about what is potentially offensive to POC, but it seems sensible to err on the side of caution when it comes to 'Would this sound racist?' type dilemmas.

Interesting to speculate what the female version would be. 'Be your own mistress' sounds even weirder. Language is a minefield...

Agust. Hit the nail in the head.... Language is a minefield. I don’t believe this was designed with the purpose of being offensive.

So it's not the quote mentioned earlier, ‘You are master of your own destiny” by Sivananda Saraswati?

ladydeadpool?

Not very empowerfulising if the people who feel empowerfulised can't agree on what it's alluding to

Maybe the message is to take of this what you will

And the message some people take is around racism, some in a positive and some in a negative light.

Agustarella maybe that "power" tshirt

That poundland had the Elf wearing as he "teabagged" a seemingly unconscious barbie?

Your question just reminded me of that!

Yuck.

Sorry the unconscious barbie was wearing it, not the Elf.

Of course that was all in good fun as well.

I do think that society in general has a massive problem with accepting when people of different cultures / races / women / gay people etc say "erm that's a bit iffy" with the NO IT'S FINE AND YOU'RE A SNOWFLAKE AND I'M NOT RACIST BECAUSE I SAY SO and so on and so forth.

Reggae
Thanks for the response. I see there have been a bunch of deletions now so those posts are hopefully all gone.

@Snibble, agreed that a lot of people seem to take it personally when other people find something offensive. Those of us from a white British background should at least recognise that a lot of subtle racism potentially goes unnoticed by us, irrespective of whether a particular advert (or whatever) is actually offensive in my opinion or yours or someone else's. Likewise for sexism, homophobia etc.

Excuse - which store is selling that T shirt?

a lot of people seem to take it personally when other people find something offensive.

You have read AIBU before right? You've seen some of the crap that MNers find "offensive" haven't you?

They're the most Professionally Offended bunch of people I've ever come across - this just gets lost in the crowd of other "what the fuck are they moaning about now" dislikes.......

which store is selling that T shirt?

I'd like to know too - I wonder if they do it in adult sizes too....

We all have different perspectives and the non dominant perspectives are starting to be heard.

I know how frustrating it is when the things that I am not dominant around are sort of invisible to people who are not affected by them - and if you raise them you get the people who aren't affected thinking / saying what's all the fuss about.

Of course not all people in non dominant groups think the same which complicates matters even more!

Bottom line though is if something doesn't affect you then probably better to leave the insights to those that it does. And if someone affected agrees with you that it's silly, not use that as firm final evidence and dismiss all the views of everybody else.

The older I get the more I realise that we really do experience the world in totally different ways, depending on loads of stuff. And it's complicated and there's no easy answers. Well some answer are easy like if 99% of people from a group say "this is bad / offensive / upsetting / inciting harm" or whatever then they can't all be wrong!

I’m confused. What’s wrong with it? Is it a Star Wars reference or to do with controlling your own destiny?

The reaction to the monkey one was OTT and I think this is aswell

See I don't think all the reaction to the monkey was OTT. Monkey wrt to non white people has always been negative and insulting.
This teeshirt is different (IMO) because its telling a child (in this case a black one) that they can be their own master.

The reaction to the monkey one was OTT

It wasn't. It's incredibly nuanced but I've come to find in life that those who have certain privileges do so because the problem never affected them. Odd that.

Fine on a white person, on a black person is impossible not to associate with black slave history.

I'm not sure about this. Yes, it's impossible not to associate it on a black person but I've been thinking about it a lot and I'm thinking it might not even work on a white model if you still make that connection. I definitely don't think the slogan works at all for a child in any sense of it (empowerment slogans are not for children's clothing imo, although I do believe it was a '...of your own destiny' kind of thing).

I think the designer is bonkers. How they could not see any connotations of it at all is beyond me. Although maybe they did, as pp suggested, as it was reduced yesterday, now the price has gone up and its out of stock!

Vladmirs

And yet the mother of the child model in the monkey incident actually came forwards and told everyone that it wasn't racist, it was an honest mistake, that they should get over it, etc etc.

She recieved death threats for that and had to move her family because of security concerns.

Just think about that for a second, the people most outraged on behalf of minorities then switched to actually sending death threats when it turned out that the minorities most directly affected didn't actually agree with them.

H & M stores in S Africa were looted, vandalised and set on fire.

H&M withdrew the advert and apologised unreservedly for it on day one of the public outcry.

On day one

Yet you still think the reaction to that advert was justified?

I'd like to see your idea of a disproportionate response.

Criminal acts are never justified, when I read your post I thought you were saying that it was a non-issue. To clarify, do you not think it was offensive in the slightest or see how it could be?

And yet the mother of the child model in the monkey incident actually came forwards and told everyone that it wasn't racist, it was an honest mistake, that they should get over it, etc etc.

Oh, well, thank goodness the spokesperson for the black community told everyone that it's not racist, all the black people can calm down and everyone else should then know they're not offended! Somehow I don't think it was just white people taking it too far tbh.

@PatriarchyPersonified Your post is so ridiculous I'm not really sure where to start. But in short: you are wrong.

I’m confused. What’s wrong with it?

I'll say it again - hopefully without getting deleted this time.

There's nothing wrong with it, but you'll be called a racist and accused of being White middle class if you say so.

I’ve read most of the thread now.

I would never in a milliOn years have associated master with black slavery. Commedia del arte maybe & Star Wars Jedi masters so I’m sure it’s completely innocent.

ust think about that for a second, the people most outraged on behalf of minorities then switched to actually sending death threats when it turned out that the minorities most directly affected didn't actually agree with them.

Aaaannnnd you absolutely know that for a fact

That it was exactly the same people that complained about the racism made the death threats

Dont doubt she got death threats poor lady, there are some right weirdos on the internet

I posted on the original thread at the time stating that it comes down to intent. H&M clearly didn't mean to offend, they apologised unreservedly on day one and removed the offending advert. It was an unfortunate mistake.

For people to say that their reaction doesn't matter and that they should still be 'punished' for this and in particular for people to get offended on behalf of the 'victim' and then to attack (verbally) and physically threaten his family when they tell you to 'get over it' and that they aren't offended and don't care is frankly shocking.

His family don't speak for the black community, but then neither do you and as it directly affected them far more than it did anyone else I'd say their opinion carries a bit more weight on this particular issue.

Lots of things offend me in my life, but I don't smash shops up and issue death threats, then claim it's a 'justified response'.