Posted on 06/18/2012 3:08:03 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Adidas Blasted Over New 'Shackle' Sneaker
Critics are fit to be tied over footwear giant Adidas' latest sneakers, which feature what looks like shackles attached to them.
The JS Roundhouse Mids, which are due to be released in August, were previewed on the Adidas Originals Facebook page in a photo posted on June 14. Although the German company insists the design has nothing to do with slavery, its own promotional material isn't likely to quell criticism.
“Got a sneaker game so hot you lock your kicks to your ankles?” reads a tagline posted beneath the picture.
Many users left comments on the page’s bulletin board ripping the day-glo orange shackles, saying they are particularly offensive to African-Americans because they evoke imagery of slavery and prisoners on the chain gang.
“Adidas, you should be ashamed of yourselves. The mockery of oppression that has not been overcome,” posted Facebook user Dace Moore on the photo’s bulletin board.
Many users were calling for a boycott of the sneaker company.
“Slavery isn’t a fashion example,” posted user Antonio Leche. “Everyone involved in this show should be fired ASAP! This is the new reason I won’t buy any Adidas anymore!”
User Kay Tee added: “It’s offensive and inappropriate in many ways. Not to mention ugly.”
"How would a Jewish person feel if Nike decided to have a shoe with a swastika on it and tried to claim it was OK in the name of fashion?"
Many also took to the blogosphere to express their disdain for Adidas’ new product.
Syracuse University economics professor Boyce Watkins wrote on Your Black World : "Shackles... the stuff that our ancestors wore for 400 years while experiencing the most horrific atrocities imaginable, ..."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
...and I bought a pair of sneakers for $60 this weekend and thought I was going overboard. (They did not come with chains. True.)
The Department of Homeland Security ordered 100 million pairs.
I see lines winding around the block.
Collectors' item!
< /sarc >
Has the Sharpton and Jackson Clown Car driven up to Adidas HQ to demand money to go away yet?
Probation / House Arrest anklet-friendly shoes.
Just replace one of the orange shackles with the court-ordered one.
First New World slave was in 1651: Anthony Johnson, a BLACKK MAN held as a slave John Casor, a BLACK MAN. Johnson had to win a court ruling to get Casor as a slave.
Two hundred years agoe... No worse than what blacks and koranimals have been doing to each other to this very day!
The beauty of the ignorant and the clueless, history means nothing to them and the atrocities of centuries ago justifies atrocities today.
At least a great percentage of the world has evolved beyond that. But they must suffer the ignorance and brutality of the inferiors?
Rwanda, Darfur, Burundi, Somalia, Ethipia, East Timor... not in the 17th century.
Today.
So they'll just look forward to having their feet chopped off instead?
Brilliant!
How are people losing gold chains today?
Deaths be coming...
Sorry, but as a person of Slavic descent, I find your cavalier use of the word "slave" offensive. ;-)
Blacks weren't really used as slaves en masss until the mid 1700s. Us whiteys were all the rage as slaves through the 1620s - 1775s.
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