“Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.”
That was the text that ignited a bonfire of reaction. Several celebrities, such as G-Eazy and The Weeknd, have cut off ties with H&M, a Swedish retail company. H&M stores in South Africa have been heavily vandalized with wares stolen and mannequins destroyed.
What caused all of this to unfold? On Jan. 8, H&M posted a picture of a young black male wearing a green hoodie that contained the offending text, and a few hours later, the internet exploded.
Many people saw this as an egregious act of intentional racism. Members of the Economic Freedom Fighter party (EFF) in South Africa were responsible for trashing the H&M store in the Mall of Africa. Leaders of the EFF have responded by saying, “All rational people should agree that the store should not be allowed to continue operating in South Africa,” and “We make no apology about what the fighters did today.”
However, I think it’s also very important to note who did not see this as an inexcusable act of racism. The child’s mother was reported saying, “Stop crying wolf all the time, [it’s] an unnecessary issue here. Get over it.” Additionally, there isn’t really a racist stigma behind the “monkey” in Sweden.
I think there was definitely a lack of oversight on H&M’s part: Someone should have known the cultural connotation behind the text and fixed it immediately. That being said, the backlash seems a bit excessive and unwarranted. H&M has already heavily apologized and rectified the error by removing the wares from stores.
What exactly will all this H&M-directed outrage solve? I understand the fact that no one noticed the possible issues with the sweatshirt points to deeper, more systemic issues. These issues involve the normalization of racist language and behavior in everyday life and are definitely great discussion topics. Indeed, there is a lot we have to notice and be aware of when we speak and act, including different meanings of words in different cultures. However, getting mad at H&M and destroying company stores isn’t exactly solving those issues.
There’s no reason for rioters to damage stores. It only harms other protest groups — now detractors can effectively lump these EFF rioters and other more nonviolent groups together, which can take away from the message of both EFF and those groups. For example, after Ferguson, the riots that engulfed the town afterwards took away from injustice that had just occurred. Many people pointed to the riots as the reason that police were forced to be more violent and authoritarian — police had to protect themselves, especially with so many rioters around. In a similar vein, these riots paint such an immature picture. The rioters’ reasoning and motivations may have been noble, but their message certainly gets skewed and overshadowed by the fact that they turned to violence immediately.
It still boggles me that the EFF had the audacity to make the proclamation “All rational people should agree that the store should not be allowed to continue operating in South Africa” on behalf of “all rational people,” and then turn right around and take out its anger on employees and store workers who had no part in the design of the shirt.
I think it was constructive for the celebrities to make some sort of statement and for the protesters to bring the issue to the spotlight, but once things got violent, the protesters took it too far.
Contact Tiger Sun at tgsun ‘at’ stanford.edu.