An eBay seller based in China recently listed its "Korean style Lady PU leather handbag shoulder bag 4656" in colors including rose pink, peach blossom, watermelon red and "Nigger-Brown," the Huffington Post reports.
EBay's rules and policies state that they "don't allow using hateful, offensive, profane, or vulgar language in almost all public areas of the website, including listing titles or descriptions." But these bags were on sale for close to a month.
If this is anything like the case of the "nigger brown" couch sold by Furniture Today in 2007, or Apple's "Picture Effect Magic app," which allowed users to tint their pictures in various shades — including "nigger brown" — this is not a case of racism but, rather, a Chinese-English translation program that leaves a lot to be desired. We're still as confused as you are about the process that led to obvious alternative descriptors like "dark" being passed over in favor or the historically loaded slur.
The Huffington Post reported that after 12 months, the seller had received 1,536 positive reviews and only 14 negative comments, none of which point out anything problematic about the description. It's unknown how many of the faux-leather bags were sold before the listing was recently removed.
Read more at the Huffington Post.
In other news: VIDEO: Bachmann's Canned Answers.