Zara Accused of Instances of Racial Insensitivity

Retail clothing giant Zara has been accused of three separate instances of racial insensitivity within the course of one year. The clothing giant in the USA was most recently accused of racially profiling its customers as potential criminals. The brand first came under scrutiny earlier on when it sold a t-shirt that resembled a Nazi concentration camp uniform.

The Centre for Democracy in New York released Stitched with Prejudice: Zara USA’s Corporate Culture of Favoritism last week, after interviewing 21 of the company’s employees. The report revealed scathing accusations towards the brand, including that darker-skinned employees were less likely to be promoted than their European counterparts.  Employees of colour claimed they were reviewed with harsher scrutiny from management, and black customers were seven times more likely to be targeted as potential thieves than white customers.

Racial Profiling

The report illustrates how Zara employees adopt a practice of labelling suspected shoplifters as “special orders” as a security code to alert other staff. This practice led overwhelmingly to African-American customers being labelled as ‘special orders’ upon entry into a Zara store. Of the 57% of employees that mentioned the use of “special orders”, 46% noted black customers were called special orders “always” or “often,” compared to 14% of Latino customers and only 7% for white customers.

Anti-Semitic Dismissal

Ian Miller, a former attorney for the company, filed a $40 million lawsuit under the claim that he was harassed and ultimately dismissed for being a Jewish, homosexual American. Miller is alleging he was excluded from meetings, given smaller raises than co-workers and subjected to racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic remarks. He claimed to have received emails that included images of racially insensitive content from top executives. Zara has denied the allegations, but the case is still before the New York state court in Manhattan.

Racially Insensitive Products

Zara released a children’s shirt last year that customers likened to the concentration camp uniform worn by Jewish prisoners during World War 2. This followed a week after the company pulled another shirt with the slogan ‘white is the new black’. Both shirts were pulled after customers accused the company of being racially offensive on social media. The striped shirt featured a yellow six-pointed star, which led commenters to say the garment resembled the striped uniforms of World War Two Jewish prisoners of war. And although the star had the word “sheriff” written on it, customers complained this was not clear from the website images for the product.

Conclusion

For a company, being associated with racial insensitivity can be extremely damaging. Nicole Matejic, a specialist in crisis communications, argues that a company “skates on thin ice” when it asks its employees to act as security guards or “pseudo police officers” to stop shoplifting. She says:

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Zara accused of racial profiling: Three times the retailer has faced racial controversies