Amazon removes 'Black Lives Don't Matter' ball caps after complaints
The caps sold by a third-party vendor were removed from Amazon by Monday
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Amazon removed a baseball cap that read “Black Lives Don’t Matter” for sale on its site after several complaints, including one from a British lawyer who first sounded the alarm on Twitter.
Alexandra Wilson, a barrister from Essex, on Saturday tweeted a link to the hat available for purchase, asking Amazon, "why is this racist hat being sold on your site?”
“THIS IS NOT OK,” she said. “Are there no checks in place? This is honestly embarrassing.”
The hat initially placed on sale by a third-party vendor for £12.96, or about $16.49, had been removed from Amazon by Monday.
In a statement to FOX Business on Tuesday, an Amazon spokesperson said: "All sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who do not will be subject to action including potential removal of their account. The product in question is no longer available.”
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“It’s really disappointing that it took some time for it to be removed. Multiple people reported it and racist material should be removed immediately,” Wilson told the UK’s The Independent. “Websites like Amazon need to have better checks in place for both their descriptions and photos because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.”
Last month, Amazon removed a pair of shoes for sale after the seller based in Sichuan, China, used the N-word to describe a brown color. The item wasn’t removed from the e-commerce site until British Parliament Labour MP David Lammy spoke out about it on Twitter.
“Just buying brown brogues tonight leads to this racist microaggression,” Lammy tweeted, including a screenshot of the shoe description. “Is it 2020 or 1720? Please @amazon take it down.”
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According to its own guidelines for those who supply products for sale on its site, “Amazon does not allow products that promote, incite or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views. We will also remove listings that graphically portray violence or victims of violence.”