Baobab, a well-known clothing brand, has apologized for an event considered racist in Cartagena

On February 25 of the current year, the brand Colombian clothes Baobab He launched his store in Cartagena. There, the company hired local Indigenous artists to perform a staging they had planned for the grand opening, but the meeting didn’t go as planned. The event generated hundreds of comments on social networks in which the brand was accused of being racist, after having, within its campaign, the participation of Afro-descendant women wrongly, according to the plaintiffs. The company apologized.

The organization for ILEX racial justice commented that situations like this, in which women in Palenque are asked to participate in campaigns of this type, “deepens stereotypes related to slavery and exacerbates racism. According to what the entity exposes, the women who were part of the event were used as a kind of ‘adore’.

On social media, those who questioned what happened pointed out that there were no black women present inside the event, and that they were all outside, dancing and welcoming event guests. This, the community commented, reinforced the company’s allegedly racist and classist behavior. In fact, in the midst of the situation, the controversial cover of Spanish magazine Hola was recalled. The printout accompanied a photo of an article titled “The most powerful women of Valle del Cauca, Colombia at Sonia Zarzur’s formidable Hollywood mansion in Beverly Hills, Cali.”

In the front, in the image, we can see Rosa Haluf de Castro, Sonia Zarzur, Royi Cucalón and Rosita Aljure seated on white chairs, in the view of a mansion, while behind them we can see two women of African descent, dressed in white, suggesting in the photo that they were domestic workers. This has been compared to the controversy which triggered the event for the swimwear brand.

“What we have seen in the city this weekend is a racist practice which, referring to imaginary slavers, deprives black women of their humanity, reduces them to negative stereotypes, linked to slavery , and presents them as simple decorative objects (…) These attitudes of survivalAlthough they may seem servile, they respond to a racist and structural system that prevents black women from accessing well-paid jobs through which they can guarantee a decent life for their families. We then speak of forms of resistance that allow black women to evolve in an anti-black world, which denies them access to employment opportunities and dehumanizes them by treating them as decorations“, details HOLM OAK.

Amidst the wave of criticism that fell about the baobabthe spokesperson for the swimwear company made a few statements in which they stated that his intention was never that of the plaintiffs they thought it was and they are ready to create a conversation about it to fully understand how problematic the situation is. With this measure, they say, they intend to deal with the situation through dialogue.

“In the face of what has happened, we have developed a plan for reflection, dialogue and reparation hand in hand with the people of the NARP population who have come forward to support this process, recognizing this collective opportunity to create new patterns of debate that balance different viewpoints to fuel discussions against the normalization of structural racism and the cultural representations of the NARP populations”, emphasizes one of the publications that the company has made in its communication channels with public opinion.