Group Asks Outfitters to Clean Up Its ‘Dirty’ T’s
Regina Medina, Philadelphia Daily News, July 21
The Urban Outfitters T-shirt sure looks fashionable enough to wear — brown and orange landscape with cream background and orange lettering — but its words sting many Latinos.
The copy is so offensive — “New Mexico, Cleaner Than Regular Mexico” — that the leader of a liberal Latino Web Site began an Internet petition on Monday.
As of yesterday afternoon, BlueLatinos.org has logged in 1,100 notes of protest to the Philadelphia retail company, said Jose Quinonez, founder of BlueLatinos.org.
“They need to remove that T-shirt [from its stores] because it’s offensive and soft racist,” said Quinonez, who started the site in March. “What I mean by that is that they don’t outright say it, but they allude to the ‘dirty Mexican.’”
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Urban Outfitters has a history of being an equal opportunity offender. The store has sold “Ghettopoly,” a board game based on Monopoly but set in an urban neighborhood. Game pieces came in the form of a pimp, a crack cocaine rock and an Uzi, prompting protests from the African-American community.
The company, which is in the process of moving to the Philadelphia Naval Yard in South Philadelphia, also has offended women and people of Jewish faith.
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