The Weeknd Pulls Out of H&M

Swedish retail giant, H&M, made a small oops in their kids hoodie campaign by featuring a black kid with the sweatshirt imprint, “COOLEST MONKEY IN THE JUNGLE”. That took some poor decision making skills. Unless you know Sweden. One of the most horribly racist countries in the world. Sorry, Bernie. The socialist Utopia of goodwill and taxes would have you dead.

There’s certainly racism in America worth addressing. Yet it’s always been odd that the people who call it out so frequently seem to have a strong positive promotion of European values. The majority of which are vile and racist. Small, isolated incidents of racial hatred that occur in the U.S. are the regular in numerous nations in Europe. Did the idea for the Final Solution suddenly appear on day in Munich? That sucker was brewing for a good long time. Wake me when fans at NFL games start making monkey noises and throwing bananas at black players or fans holding up “Auschwitz” taunting signs. Sweden is merely a nicer Ikea-decorated floor display of the Jim Crow Deep South. Point is, these Swedish retailers didn’t pick up this hoodie shit because it didn’t ever strike them.

Numerous black celebrities took to Twitter to berate H&M, forcing The Weeknd to withdraw his men’s line partnership and modeling contract with retailer.

“Woke up this morning shocked and embarrassed by this photo. I’m deeply offended and will not be working with H&M anymore.”

Just woke up and suddenly H&M is not a racially sensitive company from a racially sensitive land anymore. Huh. Who has time for Wikipedia. H&M pulled the ad along with a rote apology and a bunch of things about corporate responsibility. No word yet on saying sorry for selling fifty dollar t-shirts.

This isn’t quite as bad as pretending not to know Harvey Weinstein was forcing your better looking co-workers to soap his nutsack for the past three decades while you said nothing. Scandinavia has a better overall rep than Weinstein before the allegations. More like a Charlie Rose where you couldn’t imagine he was inviting women into his PBS office while playing bottomless AARP anchor.

There’s a lot of wrong in this story. Don’t forget Sweden’s only black kid who is now out of a job.