If H&M getting thrashed wasn’t enough, more children have been caught in the crosshairs of racial warfare as online retailer, Amazon pulled a line of racially insensitive children clothing from its website.
Images of the racist products began to surface on social media last week, with pictures of various garments and accessories modeled by children bearing the slogan “slavery gets s**t done.”
.@amazon how lovely is this? A little white boy with a highly insensitive and ignorant ‘Slavery Gets Shit Done’ bib on. Hmm.. did they pick the cotton right amazon? Or no? Gotta love 2018, what a great start. #Amazon #BOYCOTTAMAZON pic.twitter.com/DKKLFH4JKJ
— KatchMyEgo (@MrsMajestic_) January 19, 2018
Justifiably, this caused global outrage with many people calling for a boycott of the website. To which, Amazon released a statement explaining that the products were listed by a third-party seller, not the company, and have been removed from their marketplace.
“All marketplace sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who don’t will be subject to action including potential removal of their account,” a company spokesman explained in a statement. “The products in question are no longer available.”
Even though the products were pulled from Amazon’s UK site – where the third-party retailer is based – bags featuring the same slogan made their way into the US before being removed.
Due to the nature of the products, many anti-slavery groups, such as the charity Anti-Slavery International (ASI), view their sale as an attempt to trivialize the existing horrors.
Modern slavery or human trafficking is considered one of the world’s most “hidden” crime. According to the Washington Post, even though nearly 44,000 people have identified as “modern slaves,” the government insists that there are at least 20 million people being trafficked around the world. Even this number is debated as many trusted media sources claim it is closer to 40 million.
So, to sell the products that appeared on Amazon in what many believe is a prank does not sit well with Jakub Sobik of ASI who told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the hoax “failed miserably,” while David Westlake of International Justice Mission (IJM) UK, explained the deeper issue behind the “joke.”
“Children the same age as those modeling the T-shirts will be forced to work long hours for no pay in desperate conditions,” Westlake told the New York Post. “Rather than trivializing slavery, companies and the global community must recognize the vast injustice of modern slavery and work together to end it for good.”
With the ongoing outrage, Amazon’s this recent lack of detail is something the site will surely avoid in the future, as the company continues to innovate on its way into becoming one of the world budding media powerhouses.