I think that like many other large white-owned companies, H&M is a product of white supremacy. Now you may think that I’m making a bold statement, which I am, but hear me out.

First, let’s look at the definition of a white supremacist. According to Merriam-Webster, a white supremacist is “a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.”

Therefore, anyone who worked at H&M and thought that the print on the hoodie “coolest monkey in the jungle” in conjunction with a black child was OK is a product of the white supremacist system. It is widely known that blacks all around the world are compared to monkeys. By promoting this hoodie, H&M was perpetuating this narrative of “blacks being inferior.”

And to show even more so why this is messed up, we can look back at Ota Benga a Congolese man who was captured and later shown in an exhibit with monkeys at the Bronx Zoo. This was in 1906. It wasn’t that long ago.

Was the hoodie as bad as Ota Benga’s conditions? No. However, it’s reopening a wound that has never been able to really heal. Just imagine yourself not even being treated as a human being. I don’t even particularly care for zoos because it perpetuates the captivity of animals, but it’s worse to think that a human being had to be in those same conditions.

So many people dismiss slavery as, “Oh, well, it happened in the past” or they think that racism isn’t a real thing. But it is something that negatively affects black Americans on a daily basis, whether it be the act of being followed around a store or murdered by a police officer. The ideology of white supremacy is a real thing that hurts the lives of black people.