Popular clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch attracted national media controversy and boycotts on college campuses nationwide last week after unveiling a line of T-shirts that portray what many have called stereotypical and racist depictions of people of Asian descent.
The retailer, which primarily targets college-age people, pulled the T-shirts Thursday after Asian student associations at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University complained, called for a boycott of the store's products and picketed outside local branches. The Stanford and Berkeley clubs encouraged student organizations on campuses across the country to follow their lead.
"They're shrugging their shoulders and saying OWe're sorry, we didn't know,'" said Duke Asian Student Association President Jin Park. "A company like that should know about the effects of their advertising and commercializing their products. I would tell them what I tell everybody: to be better informed."
The T-shirts feature caricatures of Asians with slanted eyes and cone-shaped hats, as well as depictions of Asian Americans in stereotypical jobs, like laundry service and Chinese restaurants.
"People don't really understand the history of Asians and Asian-Americans, and therefore why these images hurt," said Park, a senior. "Everyone knows and they learn in school about the legacies of slavery, but Asian-American history is something that very few people are aware of, and thus can't be sensitive to."
The slogans on the shirts included, "Wong Brothers Laundry Service--Two Wongs Can Make it White," "Abercrombie & Fitch Buddha Bash--Get Your Buddha on the Floor," and "Wok-N-Bowl, Let the Good Times Roll--Chinese Food and Bowling." Some of the pulled T-shirts are being sold on the online auction house Ebay.com, commanding bids as high as $510.
"It has not been our intention to offend anyone," Abercrombie & Fitch spokesperson Hampton Carney said in a statement. "These graphic T-shirts were designed with the sole purpose of adding humor and levity to our fashion line."
Carney said the company thought the new line would appeal to Asian-American shoppers.
"The thought was that everyone would love them, especially the Asian community," Carney said. "We thought they were cheeky, irreverent and funny."
Although Abercrombie & Fitch removed the shirts from its shelves Thursday, Park said she and the ASA executive board are calling on students to continue boycotting the store.
"For now, the boycott stands," Park said. "We're waiting for Abercrombie & Fitch to say something more than they're sorry." Park said ASA will continue the boycott until it sees an internal change at the corporation, although she said she was not sure what form such a change would take.
Carney said the company has made fun of groups such as taxi drivers, foreign waitresses and Britons in the past, but has never been the object of boycotts for such portrayals.
But the company has come under fire for portraying stereotypical and potentially offensive items in other cases. It has received criticism for using sexually provocative marketing images to sell its products to teenagers and college-age consumers. The company's catalogue, A&F Quarterly, features partial nudity and became the object of a consumer campaign against pornography last year.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.