CULTURE WARS
Is H&M racist, tone deaf or just stupid?
Black American radio show host Charlemagne does not believe the monkey slogan was deliberately racist, but that H&M is clearly 'profoundly tone deaf'
How stupid can they be? These exact words were uttered by my South African and Scandinavian friends this week as the H&M debacle unfolded. But that’s where the commonality in their response stops. While most South Africans believed that it was the Swedish clothing giant’s apparent lack of concern for racially loaded language that was "stupid", Scandinavian friends found that, although its advertisement might have been naive and embarrassing, it would be "stupid" to think that the ad was intentionally racist. Nobody would alienate a large part of their consumer base on purpose, was the crass economic logic to their argument. The disconnect is obvious. When you follow coverage of the H&M story in Scandinavia, you quickly find that a large part of that society is struggling to get to grips with criticism from SA. As a mainly white, middle class but also profoundly egalitarian society, Danes and Swedes have huge problems grasping what it feels like to live as a black person in a fundame...
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