Why Do Other Racial Groups Disapprove Of Racial Discrimination?

People often care more about what you have done than what you have done.

The same applies to business.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, today's global luxury business is becoming more and more risky. Recent cases of luxury brands suspected of racial discrimination are worrying and worrying the industry.

From two months ago, the Dolce&Gabbana insult to China incident, and Prada and Gucci issued an apology for suspected black discrimination. Three luxury brands in Italy have become targets of public criticism.

The event is still fermenting.

According to Fashionista's latest news, Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri and creative director Alessandro Michele have published long internal mail in the company. The severity of the incident is clearly beyond expectations, especially in the important period that Gucci's performance may now face inflection point.

A brief review of the Gucci incident is based on the latest black sweater "Balaclava". The black turtleneck sweater can be stretched to the face of the model, with a red lip gap on its lips. The black background and exaggerated lips of the sweater are considered by netizens to be an allusion to black facial features and racial discrimination.

Gucci immediately removed the product from the store and the official website, and issued an apology letter.

I am deeply sorry for the impact of Balaclava sweater.

We regard diversity as the foundation of value and place it in the most important position before making any brand decision.

We will enhance the implementation of diversity within the organization and take this incident as a major lesson. "

Surprisingly, the seemingly sincere apology letter and skilled public relations skills did not yield positive feedback in the social media opinion field.

Some netizens think that the short apology statement lacks sincerity. The perfect crisis public relations is just to quell the incident instead of really recognizing the problem.

Instagram opinion leader Luke Meagher said, "the brand doesn't seem to take the time to really understand the problem," he said.

This time, the luxury brand, which continues to gain a high reputation among young audiences of social media through new creative forms, has been severely criticized.

Actor Spike Lee and rapper T.I subsequently launched a boycott of Gucci and Prada in social media. The former said the brand would no longer wear Prada or Gucci before hiring some black designers.

T.I. said that as a long-term customer of Gucci, he spent tens of thousands of dollars per year for the brand. It is not enough to apologize. He does not accept such words as "sorry, we do not mean to disrespect you".

Dapper Dan, a black designer who launched a series of cooperation with Gucci earlier, publicly criticized the brand and vowed to let executives be responsible for this disgusting mistake.

"Before I was a brand, I was a black man."

He believes that no excuse or apology can eliminate this insult.

Marco Bizzarri and its team members have agreed to meet with Harlem from Italy to New York this week.

If Dolce&Gabbana insults the Chinese brand, the Chinese consumers who contribute 1/3 of the total sales to the world will be lost. Then Prada and Gucci will shake the foundation of another group of potential customers and the huge black consumers.

With the infiltration of hip-hop pop culture to young people around the world, the luxury worship of the former everywhere is starting to play a role, stimulating young black consumers to become a luxury brand fan, so that the deep-rooted "white priority" rule of fashion industry is first disintegrated from the commercial level.

In the European market of luxury core, people can see that the proportion of middle-aged white consumers in brand stores has dropped recently, while young black consumers are showing explosive growth.

Nelson's latest report, Black Dollars Matter, points out that although African Americans account for only 14% of the population, they contribute 1 trillion and 200 billion dollars a year.

Andrew McCaskill, senior vice president of global communication and multicultural marketing at Nelson, said that 43% of the 75 million millennial generation of the United States were African American, Hispanic or Asian. If a brand does not have a multicultural strategy, there will be no growth.

Consumption is closely related to the right to speak. Young black consumers have prized a corner in the luxury world, which means they have the right to judge any word or commodity that the luxury brand presents to the public.

Gucci's success in 12 consecutive quarters has been in a relationship with the young people and this cultural trend.

Therefore, the Gucci racial discrimination incident in the western world is no less than the impact of Dolce&Gabbana insulting China on Asian Americans.

Timing also catalyzed the ferment of events.

Just two months ago, Prada just started to stir up the same problem.

At that time, American netizens exposed an exaggerated red lip human hanging pendant on the Prada window, which was suspected of alluding and vilified blacks.

The reason for the two events is astonishing. In this way, people's feelings about the Gucci incident come from long-term accumulation, which finally triggered the public's dissatisfaction with the luxury brands' knowingly and repeatedly making mistakes.

However, in contrast, the crisis public relations action was also taken immediately to recall the circulated pendants in the market. Prada's apology statement received a completely different feedback from Gucci, even by some commentators as a template for the brand apology statement.

Prada first explains the situation. These pendants are called Pradamalia, but the imaginary creatures do not have any reference to the real world, nor are they black, and emphasize that brands hate all forms of racism.

More importantly, Prada has put forward a more specific solution, saying that the group will further enhance its internal training for diversity (diversity) and immediately set up a consultant to provide guidance.

At the same time, the group will also review the complete workflow of the product touch market, which is donated to an anti racist New York public interest organization.

The brand name is "the company's top creative director and the shop manager work diligently every day, hoping to exceed the expectations of consumers. This incident is a lesson for us."

Obviously, consumers are immune to the seemingly impeccable apology statement, which is even more unacceptable to Dolce&Gabbana's earlier apologized statement. What they really expect is how luxury brands will act.

The crisis public relations skills are beginning to fail. The magnifying glass of social media has nowhere to hide.

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Perhaps it is a grim situation. Marco Bizzarri also gives specific solutions in the latest internal mail, which means that the internal organization will be deployed to prevent similar mistakes and make future group actions accurate.

"We made a mistake, a big mistake.

This is due to cultural ignorance, but ignorance is not an excuse.

We take full responsibility for this mistake. "

"We must act faster.

We are a learning organization, and I am working on a series of specific action plans that will be implemented soon. From the establishment of a global awareness of culture program to the establishment of a company wide system to protect diversity, and the introduction of a comprehensive scholarship scheme in major cities such as New York, Nairobi, Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul, this will help to enhance the diversity of the creative team. Detailed plans will be announced this week.

I will also discuss these important initiatives with executives from different communities to develop a constructive framework, "Marco Bizzarri stressed.

Alessandro Michele clarifies the matter from the creative aspect in the internal mail.

He said that the design of the sweater has a very specific reference, not intended to offend.

The inspiration of the sweater comes from Leigh Bowery. It is a tribute to his art of dress and his ability to challenge bourgeois conventions and stereotypes. He is the eccentric character of the performers and his pursuit of freedom through different clothes.

He reiterated his values, saying that he had been trying to empower people who had traditionally been marginalized to empower people who felt neglected or because of historical reasons, so that they could turn pain into joy and hymn, so they always tried to create a happy and inclusive image.

It is noteworthy that this race is actually at a critical time.

Yesterday, Kai Yun group released its fourth quarter and annual performance report. With the promotion of the core brand Gucci, the annual sales of Kai Yun group rose 29.4% to 13 billion 665 million euros in 2018.

Gucci, which has been leading for 12 consecutive quarters, surged 36.9% to 8 billion 285 million euros in the same period last year. For the first time in history, it entered the 8 billion euro club.

This means that the income gap of Gucci Louis Vuitton from last year's income of 10 billion euros is only 2 billion euros, which is the closest record. The industry estimates that its revenue will exceed 10 billion euros this year. It is undoubtedly a serious threat to Louis Vuitton's number one luxury status.

But Gucci, who is still at the forefront of the industry's attention, still suffers from the lack of stamina. The latest financial report is considered by some foreign investment analysts to be the last peak.

The crisis of racial discrimination, as the first public opinion crisis in three years, will become the turning point of the brand, and it will also shake the confidence of the market.

In fact, such a case of Gucci racial discrimination is not without precedent, for example, in 2011, John Galliano was dismissed from Dior for anti Semitic remarks, but the temporary turmoil has never had a significant impact on the brand level.

Gucci's "painful experience" and other luxury brands frequently hit the rocks. It has proved that racial discrimination is not a social media magnification accident, but a lack of two aspects of brand awareness and workflow.

With the following two questions, we may be able to get a clearer answer to what is wrong with Gucci and Prada.

Why do other groups disagree with the apparent racial discrimination of some groups?

After the Gucci incident, foreign public opinion is not exactly the same protest. Some commentators believe that the brand has not pmitted offensive information, and that public opinion put pressure on the brand is moral abduction and overreaction.

In China, "Gucci's apology for discriminating against black people" was once launched on Sina micro-blog. Many comments also expressed doubts and ignorance about the fierce reaction of the western world.

But the fact is whether the right to speak of racial discrimination is in the hands of the group that has been touched by interest.

If there are black people who believe that Gucci sweaters are suspected of racial discrimination, then no matter how the other ethnic groups are proving such charges, it is unreasonable that racial discrimination exists.

More often than not, racial issues are closely related to historical issues. People's lack of sympathy for racial issues often stems from a lack of understanding of the history of others.

Just as some Westerners strongly resist Chinese consumers, Dolce&Gabbana can not understand and empathy. Chinese consumers who are relatively unfamiliar with Western racial issues are also hard to fully perceive the sensitivity of black racial discrimination in the western world.

The "black faced" (blackface) issue jointly covered by Gucci and Prada has a profound origin in the history of American colonization.

The Emmy award-winning documentary "Ethnic Notions" tells about the evolution of American racial consciousness from 1820s to the civil rights movement in the United States. Cartoons and other video images and books depict African Americans as savages, low intelligence, and blacks with exaggerated red lips. This stereotype has entered the American subconscious by the hand of popular culture and has become the shackles of the black race in the past 150 years.

So in recent events, the sting of black people is not just a product design, but also the symbolic meaning of the exaggerated red lip black and the collective memory that it arouses.

It is worth noting that luxury brand is not the first time to step on the black faced forbidden area.

As early as the 2013 spring summer series, Dolce&Gabbana has been criticized for a more obvious pair of humanoid Earrings because of racial discrimination. The humanoid earring presents the most typical stereotype of African women.

As Pulitzer prize winner and Washington Post Fashion Critic Robin Givhan commented in the commentary "black face phenomenon and fashion itself is white supremacist", those who are criticized for being black faced are often indifferent to black history.

After all, if this is not your past, then you will not be hurt.

Those stereotypes become people's imaginary monsters and become creative materials and creative inspiration.

For people of other races, their history is separated from the history of black, not shared.

Another voice for Gucci argues that the brand is well aware of the importance of black consumers, and that it is impossible to publish racial discrimination on purpose. It is only creative, without the need to impose correct requirements.

Paolo Cillo, a professor of marketing at the University of Milan, said in an interview with ABC news that the intention of the design may be taken out of context and magnified, and Gucci has taken action to quell the controversy.

"I will not criticisms fashion. Fashion design is like art forms like film production, painting or music.

Many artists have done more appalling things, but no one has accused them.

People may think that fashion is fleeting or commercialized.

But in my view, it is not. Fashion is just like all other forms of art, just a reflection of the times. "

However, the problem now is that when luxury becomes a global business, it is already not only about creativity. After all, fashion is different from art. Consumers not only appreciate creativity, but also pay for creativity by paying for it.

Most luxury brands come from Europe, but the Western European luxury market is sinking. The main market that truly supports brand finance is the emerging markets of Asia and America, which are not familiar with the brand.

According to a McKinsey report, Chinese luxury consumers spend more than 500 billion yuan per year, accounting for nearly 1/3 of the global luxury goods market. It is estimated that by 2025, Chinese consumers will contribute nearly half of the global luxury goods sales. Among them, the Chinese generation after 90 has become an incremental consumer of luxury goods.

As a global company, luxury brands are stepping up their marketing budgets for these emerging markets, but at the same time, brands are also more responsible for the cross-cultural information they pass, and they will inevitably pay a price for their ignorance.

Why do not a huge luxury brand find a problem?

After the incident, many people were amazed at how large luxury brands with rigorous workflow entered the market with obvious racial discrimination and displayed them in windows and official websites.

There is even a view that the mistake is so obvious that people doubt that the designer of the brand is interested in it.

Of course, the luxury brand level can not be knowingly committed. The incident only exposes the awareness of the fashion industry to social problems far below the expectations of the public.

From the actual operational level, the diversity of the work team and the lack of understanding of the global culture are the most direct problems.

As Spike Lee puts it, only when teams really include black designers and other race designers and give them the right to speak, can such problems be really avoided.

In contrast to the abstract moral manifesto, the establishment of a diversity Advisory Committee, like Prada, and the reassessment of each procedure level, will filter the problem through layers of questions, which may be the urgent measures for all luxury brands.

In fact, race is just one of the problems that need filtering.

In the process of cross-cultural communication and global market expansion, if luxury brands want to avoid risks and better localization, the most fundamental thing is to re evaluate the working procedures and organizational structure for specific markets to launch marketing measures that conform to local culture.

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In the past Spring Festival, the Spring Festival special series of luxury brands still does not satisfy Chinese consumers.

Burberry's "new year" New Year's advertising blockbuster is intended to cater for the Chinese consumers' spring festival atmosphere. However, the dark coldly hue and the layout of the whole family are totally different from the traditional spring festival atmosphere.

In order to show off to the Chinese market, Italy luxury brand Dolce&Gabbana, who was exposed to China's crisis in November last year, has also launched a series of Chinese T-shirt shirts.

On one of the T-shirts, the piglet's brand Logo and a pile of paper money sparked controversy among netizens, questioning whether this is another distortion of Chinese culture, or implied that Chinese consumers are "more stupid than money".

For many years, the Spring Festival special series of beauty products has presented a simple and brutal combination of lucky characters, Zodiac elements and red and yellow tones. It has become the object of netizens' ridicule, and in fact reflects the cultural stereotype of luxury brands without progress.

Observer network analysis believes that "the Spring Festival restriction is now in an extremely awkward situation. Young people in China are looking forward to seeing these Spring Festival restrictions. The reason why they are the first to bear the blame is only to see what the new year's design of foreigners can do and what new level they can make to laugh."

Earlier in the Dolce&Gabbana incident, a person familiar with the matter revealed that the Dolce&Gabbana headquarters with serious concentration did not listen to the views of the Chinese team.

This also proves that Italy enterprises do not understand the Chinese market and do not want to know about the Chinese market.

On the contrary, the marketing of luxury brand Qixi Valentine's day, which is increasingly hot and new, has gained much more goodwill and social media influence than the longer spring festival marketing. This is mainly due to the enhancement of the creativity, autonomy and execution of the Chinese market team.

In the past, the Chinese market teams, which were strictly controlled by the headquarters, could gain greater autonomy in the Tanabata marketing and make more innovations in marketing methods.

From the current practice of brand names, the speed of the marketing of the seventh day of the seventh lunar month is faster and faster.

For every new culture and new market, luxury brands must maintain a modest learning mentality.

Dolce&Gabbana's long standing pride may have come from its success.

This pride is not only the personal factors of the founders, but also from the perspective of enterprise development, Dolce&Gabbana is indeed an enterprise that has not experienced "failure" nor seriously treats "failure".

But this will not happen again.

Luxury brands now need to deal with failures from all sides, because the young consumers with more mature consciousness, changing social trends, and social media with an amplifier function are standing in front of them, which speeds up the dissemination of information and magnify emotions.

Last January, fast fashion H&M was racially discriminated against by a black boy wearing the coolest monkey in the jungle (the coolest monkey) slogan in the official website. After that, 6 entities in South Africa were smashed by the radical militant economic freedom fighters in Africa.

Therefore, in global expansion, luxury and fashion brands are only more careful to avoid risks from time to time.

Moreover, with the expansion of the #metoo feminist movement, the whole world seems to have ushered in a real era of "missed lessons", and any mistakes or even historical mistakes may be criticized.

A few months ago, the US Justice Brett Kavanaugh took part in hearings in accusations in the western world, and the incident took place 36 years ago.

What happened almost simultaneously with the Gucci incident is that the US governor Virginia Northam Ralph and attorney general Mark R. Herring made a public apology for a black face in the 1980s photo.

Just as the black face problem was in the bug of the fashion industry, a black faced puppet on the shelf was also found in a household photo of Vogue fashion designer Grace Coddington.

Singer Katy Perry's personal footwear product line was exposed two days ago with a suspected black faced slipper. The product has been immediately released by retailers such as WAL-MART.

No matter whether there is a suspicion of overcorrection in the above events, the fashion industry is inevitably affected by this undercurrent, and the fashion as a social trend should be more sensitive.

On Monday's Grammy Awards, Childish Gambino's rap song "This Is America" (this is the United States) became the biggest winner of the night. This song is considered to attack the social problems such as racism in the United States. Childish Gambino has become the first rap singer to win the best album of the year and the best song of the year.

The global cultural climate is undergoing obvious changes. But at present, fashion has always been given the mission of promoting change. However, in terms of climate change, gender equality movement or race issues, the fashion industry has lagged behind other fields, and more remains in symbolic and slogan based diversity advocacy. It seems that a certain proportion of colored models and large models in fashion shows, or in magazines, ensure that the proportions of colored people appear to be adequate. In fact, it is only for the sake of self-protection, and it is not inner acceptance and respect for racial diversity.

Robin Givhan also wrote, "the fashion industry thinks they are not racists, because Prada is a red carpet dress for black actors Lupita Nyong'o, or Gucci for a dress to Donald Glover (the name of the former Childish Gambino").

The two brands of racial discrimination are exposing the long-standing hypocrisy of the fashion industry.

More vigilant is that the consequences of racial discrimination, cultural misunderstanding and asymmetry between knowledge and experience will become a stumbling block in the process of luxury globalization.

Just as the heart knot between people is difficult to eliminate, the invisible barrier between luxury brand and the offender will also lie between the two.

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