The footwear and apparel company Converse said this past week that it had taken down a sneaker advertisement that set off intense backlash as social media users said it was evocative of Ku Klux Klan imagery.
One image in the campaign featured the bottom half of a person wearing a white garment, which commentators likened to a Klan robe, while the figure holds a pair of black sneakers.
The lighting is such that the shoes, critics said, appear to be dangling in the air as if someone were being hanged.
The shadows also create the outline of a long, tapering triangle that was compared to the pointed hood of a Klan robe, an image of racism indelibly seared into US history.
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“As a Black man and someone who loves Converse shoes, I find this very insensitive and distasteful,” Kendall Peacock, who runs the Education Firm, a tutoring and mentorship programme in Atlanta, said on social media.
“Deliberate racist intent hasn’t been established yet, but that doesn’t erase the impact,” he added.
Stephanie Schwartz, a social justice photographer, wrote on social media, “Every photographer can tell you, whoever did this ad knew EXACTLY what they were doing.”
Online commentators said that, taken together, the design evoked a lynching.
“We’re sorry,” Converse said in an emailed statement Saturday (Sept 19). “We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognise that we got this wrong.”
“We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared,” the statement added.
“This should not have happened and we will do better.”
It was not immediately clear who designed or approved the advertisement. Converse did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
The photo was part of a campaign that started internationally at the end of August to promote the Chuck 70 X sneaker.
The promotion was a collaboration with singer Karina, who is a member of K-pop group Aespa. She was appointed as a global ambassador for Converse in June.
Representatives for Karina did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Converse introduced the first sneaker mass-produced for basketball players in 1917.
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Chuck Taylors, or Chucks, as the style came to be known, were named after the company’s most popular spokesperson, Chuck Taylor, himself a famous basketball player who joined the company in the early 1920s.
In August, the retailer Target stopped selling a children’s Halloween costume that many said evoked racist stereotypes of Black Americans.
The product depicted a circus clown costume with accessories including gloves, a top hat and a mask shaped like a grinning mouth with large teeth.
Critics said those features, in addition to a promotional image that appeared to show a Black child wearing the costume, echoed caricatures from Jim Crow-era minstrel shows. – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
