Boycott Spencer Gifts - Racist "Asian" Shirts

Thank you all for your support. The shirts were pulled from shelves and discarded January 19, 2006. Spencer Gifts also extended an apology. This petition along with a letter signed by twenty organizations in the Coalition Against Hate Media and the Asian Pacific American Voters Alliance (consisting of over forty organizations) made the difference.

To:  Spencer Gifts, LLC

To Spencer Gifts:

You obviously learned nothing from the Abercrombie & Fitch debacle. We are appalled and disgusted by your line of “Asian-themed” t-shirts featuring stereotyped Asian caricatures and offensive text. The shirt that reads “SUK MAI COCK POULTRY FARM” is an obvious mockery of the Chinese language and sophomoric jab at Asians and their supposed difficulty with English spelling and comprehension. The shirt featuring the likeness of Buddha, which reads “I MAY BE FAT BUT MY COCK IS HUGE,” demonstrates blatant disrespect for a religious deity and the religion’s followers. One need only replace the image of Buddha with that of Jesus Christ and swap “fat” with “skinny” to see how offensive this would be to the Christian majority. Finally, the shirt that reads “HANG OUT WITH YOUR WANG OUT” features a caricature of a slanted-eyed, buck-toothed Chinese man wearing a queue and rice paddy hat and childishly holding his penis. This image is demeaning and painfully reminiscent of racist images in popular culture in the early 1900s.

Whether you intended to offend or to be funny and irreverent is not the issue. The issue is that the shirts are plainly offensive. Images like those on shirts sold by Spencer Gifts serve to promote the misleading notion that Asians are exotic foreigners to be insulted and ridiculed without consequence.

The shirts are not funny, innovative, novel, or edgy. They are racist and degrading and we demand an official public apology and a recall of the aforementioned shirts. Until then, we vow to boycott Spencer Online and all Spencer Gifts stores and encourage others to do the same.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Boycott Spencer Gifts - Racist "Asian" Shirts Petition to Spencer Gifts, LLC was created by and written by Vanessa Au (vau604@yahoo.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

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