This may be the dumbest internet freak-out of the month if not longer. Converse, the shoe brand, has apologized for an advertisement featuring a Korean K-pop star holding a pair of the companies shoes. Someone with way too much time on their hands decided the ad was racist.
Sneaker company Converse has pulled an ad that was criticized for evoking racist imagery.
Shared on Instagram, the image featured K-pop singer Karina wearing a long white skirt and holding a pair of classic Chuck 70 X hi-top sneakers. Online critics said the triangular-shaped skirt resembled a Ku Klux Klan hood, while the way the singer is depicted holding a pair of sneakers also conjures up the image of a lynching victim.
Converse, which is owned by Nike, has apologized for the ad and pulled it from the internet.
"We're sorry," the company said in a statement to CBS News. "We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and recognize that we got this wrong. We removed it from our channels and are working to remove it everywhere it appeared. This should not have happened, and we will do better."...
Marketing experts and social justice advocates panned the ad as culturally insensitive, with some critics speculating that the spot may have been intentionally crafted to draw attention by sparking outrage.
Are you prepared to be outraged by this outrageous ad? Gird your loins!
How any American who is remotely educated can look at this horrifying ad & not see a klan hood and the feet of a hanging body…makes me speechless.
— NanaSue 🪷 🟧💙🇺🇸🌊🦅 (@NanaSueSpeaks) September 19, 2026
I cannot fathom why @Converse would green light something so abhorrent. Lynchings of Black people in the US is NOT ancient history pic.twitter.com/t0fou2Ct4Q
Do you see a Klan hood? Did you see it before someone told you to look for it?
That's it. There's nothing else here except the shape created in the skirt by the star spotlight and the fact that the shoes are black and appear to be handing. That was enough for people to jump to the conclusion the company is racist. People on TikTok were freaking out. [Lots of NSFW language here.]
NEW: Boycott of Converse has spread among the left-wing woke mob, with some people burning, cutting up, painting over the logo and throwing away the brand’s shoes after the company released a new ad for its iconic sneakers.
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) September 19, 2026
The campaign featured a female model holding a pair of… pic.twitter.com/N2tDlHQXq9
More burning of shoes:
OMG 🤣
— Cinema Shogun (@CinemaShogun) September 20, 2026
Converse ad continues to TRIGGER 💥 woke meltdowns‼️
Black liberals are now filming themselves performatively dancing and singing as they BURN 🔥 their Chuck Taylors.
I think this whole “racist” Converse controversy might be the dumbest/most desperate reach for… pic.twitter.com/cemK3H4uea
Members of Congress got in on this.
@Nike and @Converse, what the hell were you thinking?
— Congressman Troy A. Carter (@RepTroyCarter) September 18, 2026
Your campaign shows what looks like a hooded Klansman, framed by what appears to be the dangling feet of a lynching victim. There is nothing creative or artistic about it. It is racist, reckless and deeply offensive. https://t.co/AmW1plRl99
In fact, the Congressional Black Caucus put out a statement about it.
“As we all gathered for the 55th Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Annual Legislative Conference—the nation’s largest convening of Black leaders, activists, academics, and advocates—the Congressional Black Caucus was deeply disturbed and disappointed by Converse’s decision to release this advertising campaign.
“With 62 Members of Congress gathered to celebrate Black excellence, honor the contributions of those who came before us, and invest in the next generation of Black leaders—including the young interns joining us—it was particularly disheartening to see an advertisement that many found deeply insensitive...
“The Congressional Black Caucus will be reaching out to Nike executives to request a meeting as soon as possible. We look forward to a candid conversation about this campaign, the concerns it has raised, and Nike’s broader commitment to corporate responsibility, meaningful engagement with the Black community, and support for the next generation of Black leaders.
Nike, which owns Converse, isn't woke enough. That's clearly the problem. And of course the Washington Post was all over this.
A photo promoting a Converse sneaker shows a figure in white carrying a pair of sneakers. But it looks an awful lot like a Ku Klux Klan member’s pointed hood foregrounded by the dangling feet of a lynching victim, according to social media users. https://t.co/VLtZB2hH8W
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 18, 2026
The author of that piece did a follow-up today claiming he saw the racist imagery immediately.
After our story published, more than 400 readers left comments. One sent an email that described any reference to a hood and a hanging in the photo as “your pure invention.”
“Repeating baseless internet accusations isn’t journalism, it’s lazy, and it’s offensive,” the email continued.
I was among those shocked by the image. When I first saw the photo, before I had read anything about the controversy, it gave me a literal jump scare. Seeing feet dangle at that height and angle looked unmistakably like a person hanging. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the person was holding the sneakers. But by then I couldn’t unsee what I had first seen.
Here's the full ad created to promote the release of these shoes. As you can see, there's no hate imagery here:
This ad by Converse has been pulled and deemed racist by black activists who say it reminds them of getting lynched. pic.twitter.com/9yERElOpwW
— Ian Miles (@ianmiles) September 21, 2026
But it doesn't matter. The online left has decided this was intentional racism and the only question they have now is whether to launch a boycott. The poor Korean pop star at the center of this probably has no idea what is happening.
Finally, some sensible takes.
The Converse “KKK lynching” freakout is peak internet brain rot.
— OutspokenSamantha (@Outspoken_Sam) September 20, 2026
K-pop star Karina, in a white skirt, standing in the brand’s star-shaped spotlight, holding sneakers.
That’s the ad.
But the mob needed something to be mad about, and the truth never provides the fuel they need -… pic.twitter.com/BXYehgoAPC
K-pop star Karina, in a white skirt, standing in the brand’s star-shaped spotlight, holding sneakers.
That’s the ad.
But the mob needed something to be mad about, and the truth never provides the fuel they need - so they make changes to help them cause chaos and division.
They cropped the photo to show only the lower half, stripping away the face, the campaign, and the context.
Then they had the material they needed to fuel the narrative that racism is everywhere - we’re just not enlightened enough to see it the way they are.
They circulated their cropped version as “truth”: Converse was supposedly portraying a pointed KKK hood, and the shoes represented a hanging body.
Duh!!
Smdh. 🤦♀️
If your racism detector only works after you crop out the person and ignore the context of the shoot, you are not fighting hate. YOU are manufacturing it.
Brands have now learned a lesson the hard way from these geniuses: Never use a shadow in your campaigns.
Apparently, it triggers people.
And one more:
To the Department of seeing a hate crime in a skirt:
— Glenn Reib (@GlennReib) September 21, 2026
Would you look at this shit, yet again.....you have done it. You have taken a K-pop star, a floor light shaped like a star, and a pair of shoes she was paid to hold, and you have produced the most expensive Rorschach test in… pic.twitter.com/1krupgZoNN
Would you look at this shit, yet again.....you have done it. You have taken a K-pop star, a floor light shaped like a star, and a pair of shoes she was paid to hold, and you have produced the most expensive Rorschach test in retail history. Historians will write that democracy did not fall to tanks. It fell to a cropped JPEG and a caption that said “look closer.”
The original picture is Karina of aespa in a white skirt, standing in a star, holding Chuck 70s. Then someone removed her head, dialed up the contrast, and asked the room what it saw. The room, being the room, saw a hood, a hanging, a manifesto, Lindsey Clancy, Malcolm X in a dress, Fat Joe, and the ghost of every freshman seminar since 2014. Incredible range.
Malaysia and Korea, those notorious architects of American Reconstruction, apparently paused the shoot to ask: “How do we offend a man in Ohio who will not see this ad unless a stranger DMs him the evil version?” That is how global marketing works now. Converse apologized. “We’re sorry. We got this wrong.” Translation: we would rather eat glass than spend ten days explaining that a spotlight is not the Klan and a hand is not a gallows. The photo had already lived a quiet little life as an ad. Then it got promoted to war crime. Brands no longer sell shoes. They sell preemptive regret. Rodney Rambo is Black. He is the CMO. You stepped over that like it was a wet floor sign. If the same skirt, same shoes, same light had been Malcolm X, half of you would have called it reclamation and the other half would have opened an Etsy. The only consistent principle is this: the picture must be about your feelings or it is “erasure.”
Pareidolia is the scientific term for what happens when your brain is unemployed. Clouds become dogs. Two dots become a face. A triangle of light on fabric becomes a hood if you have already decided the country is a hateful racist country and every campaign is a clue. You did not decode Converse. You ordered a monster and then acted shocked when it arrived wearing sneakers.
What’s next? White people having shadows. The sun will need a comms team. A silhouette on the sidewalk will be “visual violence.” Streetlamps will issue land acknowledgments. Children will learn that noon is problematic if the outline is pale. Two black socks on a line will be a hanging. A banana next to a white plate will require a task force. Timberland’s tree will be recalled. At some point a cloud will look like a pointed hat and we will ground the weather.
It is mind-numbingly, medically interesting how often you do this. Every day a new tantrum, a new crisis, a new demand that the rest of us salute an optical illusion before lunch. They sell canvas shoes. Rubber soles. Laces. A little round patch. If that object cannot appear in a photograph without becoming a seminar on racial terror, the problem is not Boston and it is not Kuala Lumpur. The problem is a set of eyes that cannot clock out. Look at the uncropped photo. It is a woman holding sneakers in a star. If that sentence feels like violence, please touch grass, then touch a dictionary, then touch grass again.
It's an old story by now but the demand for racism exceeds the supply so people make stuff up. That people are seriously burning shoes over this should embarrass them and anyone associated with them, but it won't.
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