Amazon pulls Chinese costumes modeled by white kids making ‘slanty eyes’

However, the e-commerce company has not apologized for the racist photos

Shanghaiist.com
Shanghaiist
2 min readFeb 5, 2018

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Following an intense online backlash, Amazon UK has removed a pair of Chinese costumes for boys that were modeled by white children pulling their eyelids back for a more “slant-eyed” look.

The photos created a social media firestorm late last month as internet users called for the costumes, sold by two different third-party retailers, to be taken off the online shopping site immediately.

Which they were. The same products were also pulled from eBay UK which said that the listings violated their “offensive materials policy.”

However, Amazon has not apologized for the racist photos. According to the People’s Daily, this has caused some — who apparently think that Amazon is able to police all of the products that it sells on its site— to accuse the company of implying that “it is acceptable to offend Chinese people” and of “blatant racist advocacy.”

Meanwhile, though the slant-eyed foreign children in traditional Chinese dress may have been removed from the e-commerce platform, it’s still quite easy to find many more racist products for sale on Amazon.

Of course, Amazon isn’t the only online retailer to struggle with policing its products. Last year, a German website which allows users to create their own T-shirt designs and sell them on its online platform was forced to pull a pair of offensive designs, reading: “Save a dog, eat a Chinese” and “Save a shark, eat a Chinese” following an internet uproar.

Over the years, stars from pop singer Miley Cyrus to Argentine footballer Ezequiel Lavezzi to Victoria’s Secret model Gigi Hadid have incited similar outrage after striking “slant-eyed” poses for photos.

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