I proudly bought my first pair of Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars when Kamala Harris ran for vice president. She paired Chucks with her pantsuits, and the shoes became a small, joyful symbol of women doing things their own way. My first pair was purple. My second, rainbow fabric. Now I can’t bring myself to wear either one.
Last week, Converse apologized for an Instagram ad featuring K-pop star Karina. She stands in a white skirt under a star-shaped spotlight, and one point of the star forms a bright white triangle that looks like a Ku Klux Klan hood. Black sneakers dangle from her hand like the feet of a lynching victim. A second ad from a related campaign showed a man on a ladder reaching toward sneakers hanging from a tree branch, while another perches in the tree.
A brand Black culture helped build
For Converse, the images cut especially deep. The Chuck Taylor All Star debuted in 1917 as a basketball shoe, and Black Americans have helped make it a cultural icon, from hip hop stages to street dance to schoolyards. Converse seemed to embrace that history, directing millions of dollars in grants and mentorship to Black creatives and releasing collections for Black History Month and Pride Month.
Converse, which Nike owns, took the ad down and issued a statement. It declined, though, to explain how the image moved through its creative and approval process, or what it plans to change. A global campaign like this one passes through photographers, art directors, brand managers, regional marketing teams, and executives. How did no one stop it?
A pattern, not a fluke
Converse isn’t alone. In August Target apologized for selling a children’s Halloween costume that evoked a minstrel caricature, pulling it after swift backlash. Target rolled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) commitments and investments in January 2025, and this latest debacle is just one more reason why I’m still boycotting the store. When companies dismantle the programs designed to bring different perspectives into decision making, blind spots like these become more likely.
In Word in Black, Joseph Williams asks the question at the center of both stories: who was in the room when these decisions got made? Companies can easily count what diversity programs cost, he notes, but “there’s no spreadsheet column for Disasters We Avoided Because Somebody Saw Something No One Else Did.”
The warning signs were easy to find
The most revealing piece of this story, though, came from Sarah Mahoney at Media Daily News. The consumer insights company Zappi showed the Karina image to 250 people in a simulated Instagram feed. Nearly a third of them, without prompting, connected it to lynching, the Klan, or racist imagery. One in four called it offensive, unpleasant, or disturbing. Nearly half of Black respondents made the connection, as did 42% of viewers ages 18 to 34 (Converse’s primary purchasers). And among people who saw the lynching reference, 42% said they were now less likely to consider buying Converse.
Spotting the ad’s problem required no special insight. A diverse group of viewers surfaced it right away. Mahoney notes that someone reading that same data carelessly might have approved the ad anyway, since two-thirds of viewers saw nothing wrong.
Reading those numbers, I thought back to my years as a communications manager for corporate social responsibility. My team had prepared a social media post featuring volunteers who had helped build a bridge in Rwanda. In the photo, the mostly white volunteers stood in the center, with the Black community members who had built the bridge alongside them on either side. The framing cast the volunteers as heroes and the community as background. One colleague flagged it, and we found another photo that showed everyone together as one group. The problem was far subtler than the Converse ad or the Target costume, but I’ve never forgotten it. Someone saw what the rest of us missed, and we listened.
Being in the room isn’t enough
That’s why diversity in the room is only a starting point. The people who see what others miss also need the authority to say stop, and leaders need to take a one-third objection as a red flag seriously. Majority comfort is a poor test for whether an image evokes racial terror.
Some people online insist we’re overreacting, and that Converse never meant to cause harm. But intent doesn’t cancel impact. A real apology comes with a plan for repair, as I wrote in “Intent Is Not enough: How to Apologize for Real,” and so far Converse has offered no plan.
Where that leaves my Chucks
I haven’t decided what to do with my purple and rainbow Chucks. For now they’re in the back of my closet. I’ve ordered a colorful pair of Inkkas instead, handmade in Latin America. Bye bye, Converse.
