Dear H&M, Are We Monkeys Now?
Story by Paris Dozier. Photo courtesy of Washington Post.
January 11, 2018. A lot of people have heard about H&M´s monkey sweatshirt that was trending on Monday. If you haven’t, H&M has put a dark-skinned child in a “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle” sweatshirt. People are extremely upset about the fact that the people in charge of the ad decided to put a child of his skin tone in this sweatshirt. I wondered why this popular retail store would do something like this. So, I decided to do my homework to find out about the whole idea of calling black people monkeys.
According to an article in the Huffington Post article called, Comparing Black People to Monkeys Has a Long, Dark Simian History, there was once
a man named Heraclitus who called apes ugly in relation to humans. Blacks were compared because of our dark skin color.
Why did the photographer decide to put the dark-skinned boy in that sweater? Personally, I believe this is unfair to African Americans. It is so mean and sad that one race could be compared to monkeys. What do you think? Are people overreacting?
Paris Dozier is a