New Shoe Is a Racial Misstep

A a lover of gym shoes both common and rare, and as avid follower of race relations, I found the following article of great interest, seeing as how both are discussed on this rare occasion. Thanks for this one, Miykie!

New Shoe is a Racial Misstep

By Jabari Asim
Monday, April 17, 2006; 12:01 AM

WASHINGTON -- During the 1980s, in the black neighborhood where I spent much of my time, a pair of rumors became as familiar as Jheri curls and that hideous red jacket Michael Jackson wore in his "Beat It" video. Both tales involved a couple of clothing lines that included sneakers among their products. One brand was said to have a logo that served as an acronym for "to rule over oppressed people." The other was widely believed to conceal a racial slur in the insole of each shoe. Both clothing lines have faded from prominence, and since the rumors were untrue, I won't name the manufacturers here.

I mention them merely to show that minority groups have occasionally voiced suspicions that clothes, sneakers and other commercial products can function as agents of racism. Asian-Americans expressed such sentiments in 2002, when Abercrombie & Fitch stocked their shelves with T-shirts bearing contemptible images of Asians and such infuriating slogans as "Wong Brothers Laundry Service -- Two Wongs Can Make It White."

A year later, the Urban Outfitters chain ticked off African-Americans by selling Ghettopoly, a racist board game created by David Chang.

Several readers wrote to me at that time, asking if I would have opposed the game if it had been created by an African-American. I responded that I would, and that I was just as disgusted by equally brainless products introduced by blacks, such as Pimp Juice, the brainchild of the rap star Nelly, and Rilniga jeans, sold by a black-owned company in Cincinnati.

I am no less disturbed by a new sneaker that Adidas has introduced as a limited-edition product in its "Yellow Series." A black shoe adorned by three gold stripes, its tongue is festooned with the face of a cartoon character with buck teeth and slanted eyes. Nearly as over-the-top as the Cleveland Indians' grinning logo, the image is lurid and confrontational. According to news reports and Internet chatter, the face on the $250 shoes has upset some Asian-Americans. Other Asian-Americans, however, have defended the footwear. The mixed response can be traced in part to the racial identity of the man who designed the shoe: Barry McGee, a San Francisco-based artist, happens to be half-Chinese. He says the image is based on his own appearance as a child.

Conventional wisdom suggests that some group behavior -- and other alleged characteristics, such as facial features -- can only be ridiculed from within the group. Therefore, a joke told by Dave Chappelle may be considered brilliant, while the same joke told by David Letterman would be deemed offensive. In a similar vein, African-Americans often seem reluctant to criticize racist language used by black performers, citing their ironic intent and attempts -- however feeble -- to remove the power from such words.

The irony is often lost on many blacks when others invoke similar arguments. David Chang tried to defend his Ghettopoly game in such terms. "I'm not trying to single a race out," he explained. "The whole point of me doing this is not so much stereotyping people, it's poking fun at stereotyping. It's meant to be satirical." Some of the same African-Americans who timidly tolerate black performers' obnoxious lyrics roundly denounced Chang's rationalizations. No doubt Asian-Americans confront similar dilemmas when they encounter creations like McGee's.

In a statement issued by Adidas, McGee said he never thought the image was racist and that he is "sorry to those people who perceive it that way. All I remember is having Stan Smith's face on my Adidas when I was young, and was elated to put a caricature of myself on a shoe when presented the opportunity this year." His motives may indeed be pure, although his defense of them is somewhat shaky. Unlike McGee's provocative design, the tennis champion's screen-printed visage on his namesake shoes couldn't possibly be described as satirical or stereotypical.

Nor did Smith's portrait carry as much potential to harm. Images such as McGee's are complicated by the wider, whiter world and its population, whose knowledge of racial minorities often remains inexplicably limited. Perhaps Adidas' puzzling decision to market the shoe -- and even more puzzling, to include it in its "Yellow Series" -- derives from its own circumscribed intelligence. Or perhaps the company was focused so intensely on profit that it was blind to everything but green.

2006 Washingtonpost. Newsweek Interactive