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H&M pissed off and offended several people across social media Sunday with a racist ad. The clothing giant posted a page that featured an African-American boy wearing one of its hoodies with the words, “Coolest Monkey In The Jungle,” the New York Daily News reported.

Bloggers and the rest of the Twitterverse instantly dragged the company for the horribly offensive ad that demeaned the Black child with a racial slur. Plenty of social media users shook their heads in angry over the hoodie, available at the store’s United Kingdom page. As New York Times columnist Charles Blow put it, the company looked as if the marketing staff “lost their damn minds.”

H&M had removed the Black child’s image, continuing to sell the hoodie with a generic apparel photo.

H&M quickly issued a half-baked apology, a standard move in situations involving companies who mock the pain of Black people. “This image has now been removed from all H&M channels and we [apologize] to anyone this may have offended,” the company told the Daily News in a statement from its Stockholm headquarters.

The company’s statement didn’t take into account the terrifying history behind the racist imagery. The term, “monkey” has long been considered a racist slur, hurled as a weapon to promote the dehumanization of Blacks. It’s a horrible shameful act that H&M committed to posting the ad, many social media users said.

One even person pointed out that the sweatshirt in orange, with the words  “Survival Expert” and “Junior Tour Guide,” was modeled by a White child, according to The Huffington Post. Why wasn’t consideration given to the Black child, social media explained, especially at a time when African-American children need protection from so many things.

 

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(Source: New York Daily News, The Huffington Post )

(Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

H&M Sparks Outrage Over Black Child In Racist ‘Coolest Monkey’ Hoodie Ad  was originally published on newsone.com