Turning Ethnic Pride into Sales

Posted by Amelia Hight

Listen to this as you read . . . "Air Force Ones" by rappers Nelly, Murphy Lee, Ali, and Kyjuan, 2002

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Nike is tapping into the sway of cultural “influencers” to attract new types of consumers. Traditionally, celebrity athletes have worn Nike shoes in return for lucrative endorsement deals. However, recent charges brought against famous Nike-sporting athletes like NFL star and criminal dog-fighter, Michael Vick, and more recently, track heroine and self-admitted steroid user, Marion Jones, have dirtied this image of the hard-working athlete and further urged Nike to look beyond the sweat-drenched athlete for culturally influential people to wear their shoes. While still focusing on the athlete as the main consumer, Nike is turning to “under the radar” influencers for inspiration. In many cases, this leads to Nike’s white sneaker being painted, embroidered or dyed the colors of a Latin American flag or taking on “cultural signifiers,” often stereotyped symbols meant to represent a certain heritage or ethnicity.

Nike’s most stylistic shoe, the Air Force 1, provides an excellent case in point. A new series of the shoe, called the “Cultura” collection consists of shoes like The Los Angeles Cortez, inspired by “the traditional images of LA street life,” the Handball Aztec Cortez designed to capture “our Aztec heritage,” and the green, white and red Mexican Airforce, which “pays homage to the Motherland.” Nike designers hired well-known graffiti and tattoo artists to create each shoe’s aesthetic appeal. Each year, Nike releases a new Chinese New Year AF1 (check out the Year of the Dog here). And, in previous years, Nike has introduced a series of West Indies Air Force 1s in time for West Indies Pride Days in New York City. Each shoe has the flag of a different West Indies country on its insole. There are also Jamaica, Philippines, and Puerto Rico Air Force 1s. Deemed “ethnic pride sneakers” by bloggers, these shoes bring up interesting issues about identity and consumerism. Through these shoes Nike present a pre-packaged narrative of identity. They tell consumers that it is possible to express ethnic pride by wearing Nike tennis shoes. Effectively, commodifying ethnicity has become a sales strategy for Nike.

However, according to Nike, developing shoes for certain ethnicities is not only about ethnic pride, but also about promoting health. Earlier this year, Nike introduced the Air Native N7, a shoe designed specifically for Native Americans. In addition to its signature swoosh, the shoe features “heritage callouts,” including sunrise and sunset patterns on the tongue and heel, arrowheads and feathers. Nike claims the new shoe is “an effort aiming at promoting physical fitness in a population with high obesity rates.” As one self-described Native American blogger, David Yeagley, summarizes, “American Indians are fat and have funny-shaped feet.” He continues: “Our own Nikes! What an achievement!” and asks, “A shoe designed especially for Indians is going to make us walk more? A national company name lent to Indians is going to inspire us to better health?” Another critic, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian had the following to say, “The day it was announced, I thought: ‘Are they going to have dream catchers on them? Are they going to be beaded? Will they have native bumper stickers on them that say, ‘Custer had it coming’?”

Apparently the idea behind these specialized shoes is that they will create a buzz that will spread to consumers closer to the mainstream. That's right, Nike is attempting to attract attention from "under the radar" consumers in order to appeal to the mainstream. Buying "ethnic pride" sneakers from Nike might allow someone to feel like they're expressing their ties to a certain culture or identity, but in the end, they're still just products designed to make profits for the biggest footwear company in the world.

One has to wonder if Nike's switch from risky celebrity endorsements to ethnic pride, is really just about creating a positive spin on its image, which has historically also been sullied by accusations of worker abuse in poor country sweatshops.

Book Review: Stolen Without a Gun

By Ian Elwood

Stolen Without a Gun reads like an Anarchist's Cookbook of Corporate
Crime and illustrates well how an international money laundering scheme
works (including how to nest embezzled funds in a series of quazi-legal
Cayman Island bank accounts) while telling the personal tale of Walter
Pavlo, Jr., a convicted white-collar criminal who was busted for
embezzling $6 million while working at MCI Telecommunications in the
mid-1990s.

Pavlo, who served his time is jail and now gives lectures and advice on
the subject of ethics and white-collar crime, is portrayed in the book
as an everyman, without any particular bent to stealing money.

The narrative gives an inside perspective of how a business person could
get wrangled into a high stakes game of money laundering. Pavlo, good at
his job, notices the graft and corruption all around him and sees people
hiding debt in accounts that he knows will never be repaid. Millions of
dollars are being thrown away all around him. All the myths that he
learned in business school, "The corporation as a community run by
thoughtful innovators striving to do good while doing well," are
shattered before him. As he is being groomed by his superiors in the
company and his rise to power begins, he realizes the upper limits of
just how much money he will make in his career at MCI. And it isn't
enough. Plus, his company is being ripped off by delinquent customers
everyday and he is the one responsible when they don't pay up. They are
all getting away with it, why can't he?

The entire scheme is viewed by the perpetrators as nothing more than a
college prank, they justify it by telling themselves that no one will
miss the money, and for a while no one does. They get increasingly bold
and sloppy with their methods and start to go after larger customers
with higher levels of oversight. It is fun to watch the dizzying high
come crashing down as Pavlo realizes that he cannot keep control of all
of the accounts he has been siphoning, and he is running out of shells
to shuffle money under.

The book does a good job of giving a frank perspective on how the
culture of graft and corruption works. The demands to collect money from
his clients are so unrealistically high that Pavlo has no choice but to
bend the rules to make his quota. Corporate won't tell him explicitly to
shirk regulations, but it is understood. Once he sees how easy it is to
break the rules, and that everyone is doing it, there isn't much ground
to cover for him and his buddies to come to the realization that he
could be making money for himself instead of chucking it away into
delinquent accounts.

Stolen Without a Gun is a "How-To" guide for students of the U.S
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) Act and shows
that too often a white collar criminal pushes externalities on their
families and friends; Pavlo loses his wife and two children and his
coworkers end up in jail. In the end the protagonist goes to jail also,
as the cover suggests, and presumably has a change of heart about his
life of crime. But a quote from the last pages of the book suggests
otherwise, "Bottom line, we are...getting what we deserve. We had our
eyes wide open. Our only real regret is that we got caught. Case closed."