Gucci recently came out with a balaclava sweater, which seems innocent enough at first. Upon closer inspection, many were outraged to find a distinct resemblance to blackface in the oversized red lips and literal black face covering. When this was pointed out on twitter, there was a resulting twitter conversation regarding the issue.
The resulting deliberation asked this- how can Gucci market products that are not offensive? Most argued that the solution was simple. Many asked for companies to simply stop using stereotypes as marketing tactics, and that it would be easy for companies to avoid situations like these if they simply hired a more diverse group of employees to speak against it. Others argued that this was not a case of blackface, and that people were looking “too much into it” and getting offended over a harmless design.
The deliberative elements of this thread are easy to find. It is built on a solid informative base, as it presents blackface and then questions whether this is an incident of blackface or not. The key values in question are racism, presenting this as a case of harmful stereotypes being utilized as a marketing ploy. A broad range of solutions are not offered, as most simply argue for Gucci to remove the product, although there is some dissent over how Gucci should handle the situation from there. Due to the very few solutions presented, there is not much weighing of options. Gucci’s reputation has already been hurt, but the matter of how much they can recover lies in question- what will an apology do, or how can they move forward with new company policies in response to this incident? The social process of this deliberation was lacking, as racially based issues often are. It is rather impossible for a racist to be respectful of the opinions, ideas, experiences, and concerns of a race that they see as sub-human.
Gucci has since removed the baclava from all stores and stated that is was “a powerful learning moment.” This raises the question if the deliberation has truly encouraged change, or just monitored a single incident.