When Converse launched an advertisement featuring Korean singer Karina, people started freaking out: The way the Converse star was lit up on her skirt was a Ku Klux Klan hood, and she was holding sneakers to simulate a lynching. Others "found" that the shoelaces spelled out KKK. It was all very silly, but there was one element missing in all of the conspiracy theories about Converse and the KKK: Grace.
Do you really think that Converse (or Nike, which owns Converse) is intentionally evoking KKK imagery and celebrating lynching Black people in a shoe advertisement? Are you really so cynical that you think White supremacists, Neo-Nazis and Klansmen are stalking the halls in Converse's marketing department looking for an opportunity to promote an ideology of racial hatred? Do you think they are really so stupid as to make these images so obvious? Or do you think they were trying to be artsy?
Yes, Converse apologized for the ad. That does not make the ad a pro-KKK image. The apology proves that large corporations are notoriously risk averse and will pull advertising and apologize if people get offended, even if that offense is completely unjustified. They do not want to defend themselves. They just want the controversy to go away.
Should I, as a White "cisgender" man, be telling a "person of color" how to interpret the ad? In a word, "yes." If a POC has a delusion that is harming his mental health, the answer is absolutely "yes." We do not want people to be needlessly paranoid or even overly cynical. That becomes even more important when people are spreading false information that threatens the careers, safety, reputations and lives of innocent people. The Ninth Commandment teaches us that you do not get to speak "your truth" to the detriment of innocent people.
One of the worst things about our cultural and political discourse is we are far too quick to assume the worst of someone, especially if it fits with our political prior assumptions. Leftists are terrible and support this horrific thing, while the Right is terrible and support this other horrific thing. We all live on a hair trigger and are ready to be offended and "fight back" at every slight, whether real or imagined. We have absolutely no grace for anyone on the other side, or even on our own side of they stray from orthodoxy. All of us could benefit from a willingness to assume good motives, or at least resist the temptation to assume the worst. The best way to start those habits is to go outside and touch grass.
Having grace would decrease conspiracy theories
We all live on a hair trigger and are ready to be offended and "fight back" at every slight, whether real or imagined. This is a very bad thing.
