By Now many of us have seen pictures of the newly proposed Adidas Shackle sneaker. This product is the single most brazen insult to the Black community I have ever seen and surely made Abraham Lincoln turn over twice in his grave.
After causing much outrage, Adidas is withdrawing the product from the market. Much of this outrage cited the Black slavery overtones but I think many people really missed the point.
It is not how Adidas sees the American Black slave then but how it sees the American Black slave now. The difference being that, in today’s world, companies will try an enslave your mind.
These sneakers got over 30,000 likes on the Adidas Facebook page which surely came from sneakerheads. Amazingly Adidas (and Nike) sees this demographic of people (mostly Blacks) as a pack of fanatical ignorant morons that would line up, riot, steal and kill each other to own a pair of shoes if they can hype it enough.
If that isn’t calling the Black community the “N” word, I don’t know what is.
I’m wondering where the public commentary from the leaders of the Black community is? Obama, Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton etc etc, should have been so vocal and slammed Adidas so hard that the stock would have dropped 40 points. Yet all is silent from these leaders as there is no political gain in it for them.
The designer of this shoe Jeremy Scott should be run out of NY and the fashion industry.
The only was this shoe could have been more insulting is if the shoe bag that came with the shoes was shaped like a KKK hood.
HK