Earlier this week I was scrolling my instagram feed when a
picture posted by one of my favorite accounts, @Tuffmagazine, caught my eye.
There was an attractive white man jumping rope in the middle of a boxing ring
with a jersey inspired shirt reading... NIGGA 00. My first thought was “What
the..?” This was blogger/model Mariano di Vaio in an Easy2Dress FW2014 campaign
ad shot. Easy2Dress, an Italian based street wear brand that identifies themselves
as creating “unconventional t-shirts & clothes”. But when does
unconventional become disrespectful?
Despite the fact that many of Tuffmagazine and creator
@akacharleswade followers sounded off in response to this coming to their
attentions, but there were many people supporting the brand and model. Some
saying that to Italians there is no negative connotation around the word, as if
they are unaware of the origins of the word nigga. Though not all were saying
that this made the concept and creation of this shirt okay, but that if you had
no idea that a word was “bad” how would you know not to embrace it?
