Converse pulls ad and apologizes over KKK imagery
Whether or not Converse intended to reference the Ku Klux Klan or lynching when it launched its latest sneaker campaign, that is exactly where the internet went. The Nike-owned brand has pulled an advertisement featuring K-pop star Karina of aespa after critics said one of the images appeared to contain KKK and lynching imagery.
The start of the drama
The campaign was promoting Converse’s Chuck 70 X and Run Star Crush sneakers. In one photograph, Karina appears in a long white, calf-length skirt while holding a pair of black high-top sneakers down at her side.
On its own, that might sound like a pretty standard sneaker ad. The problem was how the image was framed. Critics said the white garment resembled a KKK robe, while the shoes hanging beside it appeared to look like the feet of someone being hanged. Shadows on the garment also created a triangular shape that some viewers said looked like the pointed top of a Klan hood. And once people saw that interpretation, the campaign became somewhat impossible to unsee.
Converse says it got it wrong
After the backlash, Converse removed the image from its social media channels and said it was working to take it down everywhere else it appeared. “We’re sorry,” the company said in a statement to ABC News. “We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong.”
The company added that the campaign should not have happened and said it would do better.
However, critics are not having it, as many wonder how the image made it through the creative and approval process in the first place. Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who represented the family of Ahmaud Arbery, argued that companies need to catch potentially offensive imagery before campaigns go public.
“We keep having this conversation because corporations keep failing the same test,” Merritt said in a social media post. “Do better means catching this before it airs—not after we’re offended.”
Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., also criticized the campaign, saying Black suffering should not be used as a marketing device. “Black pain is not a marketing prop,” Carter said. “Lynching is not a creative concept. The Ku Klux Klan is not an aesthetic.”
More than an apology
Carter's office later said the apology and removal were not enough. The congressman's spokesperson called on Nike and Converse to explain how the campaign was created and approved, identify those responsible and commission an independent investigation.
The office also called for stronger safeguards to prevent imagery invoking the Klan and lynching of Black people from making it through the approval process again.
Converse’s next steps are unclear. But when a campaign on their end touches something as historically loaded as the KKK and lynching, “we didn't mean it that way” is unlikely to be the end of the conversation.
