Converse & The Ghetto Princess
#NikeReciepts ✔️🧾 Nike & Converse view women of color as “mood board stereotypes”. 📸 Taken at Converse HQ in 2017.
“They hate the fact that they need Black athletes and collaborators, so they treat Black employees like trash.”
This is a long-standing trend that dates back to the early 2000s when Nike had an internal briefing session from an all-white, British research team that stated: “the highest aspiration for Black and Brown girls is to be a drug dealer’s girlfriend.” The white execs in marketing, product, and design took copious notes until a few of us spoke up in disgust. The firm's work was canceled but the firm still worked on several projects for Nike and it appears their sentiment continued and reappeared at Converse in 2017. Nike is complicit in intimidation, coercion, and the exploitation of Black and Brown people. The Black and Brown employees at Nike are targeted daily with bullying and harassment. While white employees get to use the corporate card to buy prostitutes in Asia and take lavish trips to exotic “offsite” locations all over the world. Nike believes that they don’t have to care about Black employees because they have to pander to Black athletes. So they mistreat us as a form of retaliation.
They study us like a separate species and have “experts” on culture who speak for us as if we are monolithic. Often these are white British employees who are mimicking Black culture by dressing, speaking, and acting like Black people.
It’s Blackface as a form of social expression at Nike. People, often white, openly use the N-word and justify their racist remarks by saying “they understand the culture, they can’t be racist.” It’s cognitive dissonance at its finest.
“Nike thinks Black and Brown people will blindly continue to spend money on their products because we are dumb.”
What’s even wilder, is that Nike HR proudly promotes an internal task force that has made “change”. That’s like asking the police to investigate themselves for negligence and wrongdoing. We know how that goes.
The Kaepernick commercial is a distraction from the fact that Phil Knight himself called Kaep an idiot and Nike’s NFL team had advanced knowledge of his banning and instead of dropping the deal with the league they played both sides of the fence for optics and sales. Ask yourself, if Nike really cared about Black people, why have so many Black and Brown employees quit over the years? And why did they KEEP the NFL deal if they really rocked with Kaep. 🤔 Why have so many of the IG pages been taken down? Where there is 💨 there is 🔥.
Nike thinks Black and Brown people will blindly continue to spend money on their products because we are dumb.
That’s who Nike really is. A disgruntled, all-white running company, that only survives because they feed off of Black culture. This started when they signed Michael Jordan and continues to this day.
They hate the fact that they need Black athletes and collaborators, so they treat Black employees like trash.
There was an entire meeting about Virgil Abloh and how he should NOT be the face of Nike in 2017/18. That is when you saw a slew of Black execs be mysteriously “transitioned” out of the company during the “Me Too.” scandal. Most of them were not implicated in doing anything directly BUT Nike ensured that they wouldn’t be credible sources by inferring they did things towards women in the PR strategy. They’ve ruined people’s reputations and lives to protect mediocre white leadership whose only accomplishment is being able to stay employed at Nike for 20+ years. Congrats, you like Oregon. Yay. 🥳👏🏿
Long story short, people need to wake up and realize that Nike is the MAIN reason why the sports industry is racist. They start conflicts and play both sides of the fence.
https://www.theroot.com/nike-donates-millions-to-republicans-while-making-billi-1829277228
Then, they launch campaigns to appear to be the saviors. This trick has worked for far too long and Black and Brown people need to stop spending our money and taking our talents to a company that only sees us as “mood board” stereotypes.
This is anonymous because I know they will deny it and try to fire and bully people. Spread this message. Far and wide. We need to apply pressure on them and expose who they really are. People's lives have been ruined and Black and Brown employees' mental health is constantly under attack.
What’s your #NikeReceipt ✔️🧾 DM’s open. ✊🏿 @nikereceipts on IG
P.S. Having Trevor Noah speak to us over Zoom ain’t it dawg. Just Do better.
P.P.S. No shade to Trevor. Get your bag Black Man but some real Black Folks would love for you to hold Nike accountable.
