In case you've been living in a cave, I'll summarize. Converse shoes had an ad which many black people took as a KKK reference. The lighting effects created a "pointed hood" and a pair of dangling shoes looked like a lynching.
Well, it turns out that the picture was part of a series. Maybe even a video, I'm not sure. The young woman pictured is a K-Pop celebrity. She's wearing a white dress and standing on a simple five pointed star. (I think the intended result of that specific lighting angle was to give the star a 3-D effect.) Seeing the context, I realize this.
But it does not change the fact that my initial reaction upon seeing the image was "someone hung themselves". I did not realize until I looked closer that the shoes were dangling from her hand. So yes, that single image triggered me. I took a closer look and realized that the shoes are dangling from a girl's hand.
I don't think Converse is guilty of promoting racism or suicide. At least not on purpose.
But that does not mean the people who saw that as a violent image are wrong. Art is subjective. I saw something reflecting my fears. Blacks saw something that evoked their own collective trauma. The shadows, I think, took our minds into a negative place. There's something haunting about that image even once I have the context.
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