Are you racist if you own Converses? In a recent protest against the company, a few viral videos encouraged viewers to burn their shoes as a stand against racist advertising. The ad campaign in question features the K-pop star Karina in a white skirt and Chuck 70 X shoes in her hands. Light falls upon her skirt to show the top half of the Converse star. However, to the public, this brightened triangle instead resembled the hood of the Ku Klux Klan garments. Adding to the controversy, the hanging shoes appear as legs, widely associated with lynching victims. This imagery continues to spark major disagreements over whether the ad contained a “dog whistle” — subtle racist language to provoke the African American community — or was simply a corporate oversight.
Individuals began to point out the overinterpretation of the image. They debated whether the presence of a K-pop star indicated a Korean target demographic, contradictory to the dog whistle’s intended audience. Furthermore, the group claimed that the countless Black models, the alternative teenage consumer base, and the former Chief Marketing Officer of the company, Rodney Rambo, a Black man, prove the dog whistle would be unreasonable. In defense, the crowd preaching the severity of the accusation points to the oversight by numerous marketing professionals and a long history of ignorance feigned to lynching victims.
Then which side is correct? The truth is hard to identify amid the absurdity of burning purchased shoes as a boycott and the risk of dismissing a dog whistle whose meaning is hidden behind plausible deniability. In all truth, neither side poses a well-researched argument. Those who argue that the ad was just an oversight simplify an overarching issue of Black pain as “too woke,” while the opposition counters with groundless charges that feed upon confirmation bias and frequently reworking the original image to accentuate the controversial imagery. Both sides are guilty of circulating misinformation through AI images and cherry-picking their evidence.
The intense emotions on either side of the conflict can be described by the idea of “performative activism”. The current coexistence of extreme liberal and conservative viewpoints in the United States has led to a looming distrust among people. Under the pretense of taking a stance, individuals exploit generational issues to produce opinions with poorly researched evidence and radical claims to promote negative ideas about the opposite side. Similarly, the Converse controversy has led people to accuse others of trying to “discover racism” and identify them as “too woke” — a pejorative often used by conservatives to categorize the negative aspects of the progressive movement.
The normalization of a “limit” to progressivism attaches a negative connotation to liberal ideas and heightens hesitancy when speaking out against systemic injustice. Furthermore, attempts to “cancel” Converse prioritize public displays of rash and ineffective efforts in order to amass social approval in popular controversies. Such actions dismiss legitimate racism and neglect obvious instances of systemic injustice.
Then is Converse a racist company attempting to dogwhistle at KKK violence and lynchings? It’s difficult to conclude with complete certainty. Perhaps it’s better that the “correct” side be left ambiguous. Then we, as consumers, could stop trying to prove the “others” wrong rather than actually helping the victims of systemic oppression.