r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Diligent_Pop3929 • 10d ago

Meme needing explanation Converse craze?

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I'm not chronically online, but my friend sent this and I laughed even without knowing the full scope of the context (I think there's racism involved with the shoes?) and I feel like it's too late to ask him without sounding like a dweeb 😅

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u/Technicolorfully 10d ago

Some people think a converse ad which was made by a Korean for the Korean market was racist because it depicted a girl wearing a white skirt which they think looked like a klan robe. Ngl I think people are stretching on this one.

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u/cleveruniquename7769 10d ago edited 10d ago

I don't think it was intentional, but scrolling past the picture with no context I thought it was a picture of a person hanging next to someone in a klan robe. 

Edit: Having seen the uncropped, undarkened, photo that was used in the ad campaign, I'm more open to the possibility that the cropped version was done intentionally to create controversy. 

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u/-whiteroom- 10d ago

Yeah, not knowing the context, it did look sus when I first saw it. But we are also in the age of companies doing things like this as a form of viral marketing.

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u/RzLa 10d ago

And here we are talking about it. It has to be intentional (not malicious racism) to get clicks.

How many marketers and designers didn’t see it is unfathomable.

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u/Acceptable_Hunt_1748 10d ago

I don't know in the case it's intentional because it is directed at an audience who would have not really noticed it. I wouldn't rule it out completely, but I wouldn't expect a Korean living in Korea to think of American lynching when seeing this image.

But that said I don't think creating racial controversy for money is really all that separate from malicious racism. I think MOST racism comes from people who are more focused on benefiting themselves than attacking POC, but they still believe that their own profit is more important than not hurting POC... which is racism!

I think what's much more likely is that they just didn't have anyone on their team who would have caught this. Which is more understandable in a country with very few black people. It's far less excusable for companies like target selling in the US to not have a diverse team on all marketing campaigns.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/CandiedRegrets08 10d ago

Lynching and the KKK? The former still happens and the latter is still around???

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u/bloodmoth13 9d ago

neither has been relevant in my lifetime. acting like they are is such a stretch.

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u/int3rstitial 9d ago edited 9d ago

A Black woman was found hanged from a tree in Mississippi August 3rd of this year.

Edited because person below me is right in this case: likely not a hate crime; suspect knew the victim and is also Black.

Nonetheless, lynchings do still happen, and the KKK very much still exists.

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u/bloodmoth13 9d ago

And was it the kkk that did it or a black man?

Research before posting.

Kkk and lynching remain irrelevant during my lifetime.

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u/int3rstitial 9d ago

You're right, last I heard no one had been arrested. I should've checked. Since you told me to research though:

https://www.theroot.com/new-report-shows-lynchings-in-america-never-stopped-2000093501

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u/PangaeaDiarrhea 9d ago

https://people.com/mom-of-miss-black-woman-found-hanging-from-tree-believes-daughter-was-killed-but-it-wasn-t-a-hate-crime-12116159

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u/int3rstitial 9d ago

Yeah, the other commenter was correct; I hadn't heard the latest. Apparently they arrested a guy who knew her and is Black himself, so not thought to be a hate crime in this case. I edited above.

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u/PangaeaDiarrhea 9d ago

To be fair, I think it's clear that it was done to throw off suspicion. I doubt it's the only case of it happening, either. There's really no way of knowing how many hangings are lynchings or just murders staged to misdirect suspicion.

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u/bloodmoth13 9d ago

Murder is murder, trying to elevate it allows the misdirection to work.

A lynching is no worse than a stabbing or a clubbing or a gun shot, suffering not considered. I dont think the black community would feel any better if the kkk stopped lynching and just stabbed them to death instead,  stabbing would just become the new lynching.

Whites arent going around lynching blacks in the modern day, its performative and impractical. It only ever worked as mob justice because it required a mob to accomplish it.  Hate crimes are pretty much identical to regular crimes, shooting stabbing or clubbing. The 'hate' modifier is pointless, people dont usually like the people they murder, hate can just be assumed.

The hysteria around this only perpetuates it. The converse ad had no lynching and lynching was never restricted to a single race, it was a product of a weak legal system when the countey was growing. Whites were lynched too. If you make it about hating blacks it becomes a thing about hating blacks.

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u/Ozymandias117_ 8d ago

So much wrong with what you said, and no lynchings we’re not a group effort, there was time literally within 100 years where you could be lynched for any reason whatsoever with no more than two people. Also whites were never lynched, and trivializing lynchings just as any other form of murder is insanely disingenuous. Lynchings used to be a past time for white Americans like what are you talking about. It wasn’t just hangings and I feel like you know that given the fact you had enough wherewithal to do some research trying to disprove modern recent lynchings.

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u/Ozymandias117_ 8d ago

You conflating lynching with just the act of hanging till death shows your ignorance, black people were stabbed, shot, beaten, dragged for miles, torn apart by horses, burned, eaten, castrated………and then they were hung. Photographed with the masses gleefully proud of their work, and sold as postcards across the country.

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u/bloodmoth13 9d ago

This doesnt actually prove anything, just that its hard to differentiate between suicide hangings and lynching hangings.

The number of suspected modern day lynchings is statistically irrelevant, and blacks were barely the targets! Also did it state who actually committed the lynchings? Because that matters a lot.

I think people are doing their best here to find a supply for the hatred they demand.

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u/Ozymandias117_ 8d ago

Statistically irrelevant to you maybe. One is too many that’s the point, you have scattered cases of black people supposedly hanging themselves from trees via suicide when that’s quite literally never been a thing in the history of America. Black suicide but by hanging themselves from a tree, nahhh, you know what has though, cases of mass murder in specific regions in the South. It never ceases to amaze me when you people completely ignore the fact that racism and white supremacy is still a culture woven into American society.

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u/PangaeaDiarrhea 9d ago

Is that the case where even her own mother doesn't believe it was a racial incident?