Why I Hate Abercrombie and Fitch

Dwight McBride’s article on “Why I hate Abercrombie and Fitch,” retold the creation of world wide brand and how it came to characterize race in modern society. He argues to his readers that A&F has created an ability through commercialization to define race and class gender throughout America’s youth. He states, “People but Abercrombie to purchase membership into a lifestyle.” (86) He believes that it is the lifestyle of the white and privileged and that Abercrombie has enforced its privileged stature in society. Both in the market place and throughout its retail stores he portrays evidence on how the discriminate based on color and class.

The article began by describing the corporation’s creation and that its movement to commercialization was sparked by an idea in its earliest stages. Co owner Fitch was ready to expand the business and sell its ideas to the general public all across the country. “In retrospect, this might have been one of the very earliest cases of big businesses ideology winning out over small.” (63) Throughout the early 1900’s Abercrombie was known to be an outfitter of the rich, famous, and powerful. From its creation Abercrombie was linked with white men and women.
“So A&F’s legacy of an unabashed consumer celebration of whiteness, and of an elite class of whiteness at that, in the face of a nation who’s past and present is riddled with racist ideas, politics, and ideology, is not entirely new.” (64) In a sense the author is stating that A&F is capitalizing off of race to boost its company’s profits by marketing towards the whit majority with who also contain the money and power. The author believes that the company celebrates whiteness. “The danger of such a marketing scheme is that it depends upon the racist thinking of its consumer population in order to thrive.”

My problem whit the author is that he continually bashes the consumer of the product such as in the case of describing them racist. How can he defend the beliefs of the consumer when he is not a consumer himself and has no data that represents the consumer in his article?
Yes I agree with the author that the consumer has segregated cultures within its products and hiring processes, but I believe that their intentions are to be a successful company based on profits not the desire to define race and to sustain white privilege. Their target market is the middle to upper class, mainly white, youths. So I believe that it would be in their best interest to market and portray this image for profits sake.

The author of the article is entirely too biased on the stance and beliefs of the company and his desire to bring it down. It is especially displayed on pages 78-79 where he posts the complaints of against the defendant A&F, and he fails to posts A&F’s response to the complaints.