Elite designer Prada has yanked a number of products off its shelves due to complaints over racist imagery.
In yet another case of how clueless and out-of-touch elites are, Prada released a series of luxury trinkets — key chains, phone cases, necklaces, shirts, charms and more — that feature a design that more than resembles a monkey with large red lips, which immediately brings to mind (at least to normal people) the racist “Sambo” imagery from the early 20th century.
Prada actually put this stuff in its store window, which set off a firestorm of social media criticism:
Prada Purse with 'Sambo' Figurine Triggers Cries of Racism https://t.co/pbJszULBuv
— TMZ (@TMZ) December 15, 2018
Prada hasn’t been popping for at least 3-5 years but imma keep it real with you… when I look at this, I don’t automatically think of Black people. I don’t even think of monkeys. Idk wtf this is but I damn sure don’t see myself or my ppl when I look at it. pic.twitter.com/ZOjgzypmLq
— Dark Zuckerberg Ὠ (@STEFisDOPE) December 15, 2018
Prada apologizes for 'Pradamalia' toys that evoke racist blackface imagery pic.twitter.com/wV9pCh7v7P
— Antonio Stanchev (@antonio_s_t) December 19, 2018
Prada withdraws luxury trinkets over blackface controversy https://t.co/RRhLJpWOZG pic.twitter.com/acCf6GNhuS
— 1010 WINS (@1010WINS) December 19, 2018
Prada finally agreed to pull the products this week, and issued a statement saying the company is “taking immediate steps to learn from this.”
We are committed to creating products that celebrate the diverse fashion and beauty of cultures around the world. We’ve removed all Pradamalia products that were offensive from the market and are taking immediate steps to learn from this.
Full press release attached. pic.twitter.com/rKhnKjasDz
— PRADA (@Prada) December 16, 2018
Honestly, we have the worst elites.
How does anyone become so bubbled and sheltered they miss something like this? How did no alarm bells go off?
What’s more, how did this stuff make its way through an international corporation, all the checks, double-checks, and triple-checks, without one person saying, “Uhm, are y’all out of your minds?”
Oh, wait, someone did and no one did anything about it.
According to Chinyere Ezie, a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, “When I asked a Prada employee whether they knew they had plastered blackface imagery throughout their store, in a moment of surprising candor I was told that, *a black employee had previously complained about blackface at Prada, but he didn’t work there anymore.*”
The fact that Prada is an Italian company might help to explain how something like this could be manufactured, but not how it ended up in a SoHo store window here in the United States. Moreover, according to the far-left Washington Post, Prada’s flagship store in Milan displayed all seven of the trinkets in this particular design series, which, as a group, just looks like a bunch of anodyne characters — a rocket ship, octopus, robot, dog… When displayed with this group, the monkeys look like goofy space aliens.
For whatever reason, though, as you can see in the photos above, the SoHo store chose to focus on the monkey character, which gave the display a totally different context.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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