While retailers in the U.S. are rightfully ridding their stores of the Confederate flag, a store in Argentina is outfitting the country's coolest teens with the symbol of oppression and racism and even uses the flag as its brand logo, Al Jezeera reports.
Argentina's John L. Cook was founded by Ramiro Fita. Fita spent time in Baltimore, where he came across the Confederate flag, and when he returned to Argentina decided to make a clothing store capitalizing off the iconography and culture of the United States. Even the brand's name is meant to sound traditionally American. Cook launched with the Confederate flag as its logo in 1975 and has been profiting off it ever since. In Argentina, the flag is associated with either Cook or the hit American television series Dukes of Hazards.
The founder's son Emiliano Fita is aware of the Confederate flag's connotations in the U.S. but doesn't see any reason to make a change. "It’s just the brand’s logo," Fita told Al Jazeera. "It symbolizes the history of self-improvement and love in the lives of my parents."
The brand uses the Confederate flag in all areas of its business. Whether it's the women's shirt above, or mixed into the brand's Instagram account among empowering quotes from the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and celebrations of Earth day.
Many of Cook's Argentinian customers either didn't know what the flag represented or simply didn't care. "I like their clothes, I love their shirts, I consider the style fresh and 'rocker,'" 14-year-old Irina Bergman told Al Jazeera. "I think that if a person likes their clothes, then they like them... the logo is just a logo and that's that." That attitude is frankly baffling considering not only the flag's historical connotations, but the fact that it is still being used symbolically by racist terrorists, like Dylann Roof, the man who murdered multiple African-Americans in a South Carolina church.
