Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaChiCard
Though not surprising, this lawsuit is ridiculous. The company is targeted towards the avg college kid. They target an audience and wish to convey an image. Is it so wrong to choose to hire the look of people to whom you target?
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But what this practice shows is that Abercrombie assumes that the 'average college kid' is not a person of color. Statistics aside (yeah, I know there are more white folks in University than people of color), this policy can be seen as sending the message that "You're not welcome at Abercrombie & Fitch."
I was reading a news story today about how major companies (like Procter and Gamble) are stepping up their efforts to do more 'tailored' advertising within ethnic communities. You know how you can watch Friends and see a McDonald's commercial that has mostly white people in it, but turn over to UPN to watch Girlfriends, and the McDonalds ads are filled with Blacks and Latinos? In the article, someone was quoted as saying that people of color view things like this differently than white folks; in essence, a white person can look at an ad that has women of color and white women in it and say "what a group of beautiful women", whereas a person of color will look at the ad and say "ah, there's someone in there who looks like me, this company must care about my community." It might be a nonsense lawsuit, but the feeling of exclusion is very, very real for some folks and shouldn't be dismissed.
But what do I know? I'm too damn old and have too much booty for Abercrombie anyway.
