Yahoo Finance Aldi pulls 'racist' T-shirts after online outrage
Discount supermarket chain Aldi has pulled an Australia Day T-shirt and singlet from its stores amid claims on social media that designs featured on the garments were racist.
Complaints that the range of promotional T-shirts with 'AUSTRALIA EST 1788' logos were racist led to people targeting @ALDIAustralia on Twitter and calling for them to be withdrawn.
The T-shirts and singlets were scheduled to go on sale on this week in the lead up to January 26.
Twitter users slammed the design as racist and culturally insensitive to indigenous Australians, who inhabited the continent for thousands of years before Europeans arrived.
Aldi under pressure to pull "Australia Est 1788" t-shirts. Who even considers a design like that? http://t.co/VKJrUec18v
— Bridie Jabour (@bkjabour) January 8, 2014
Not cool, Aldi, not cool. (via @smh): Aldi pulls 'Australia Est. 1788' shirts http://t.co/nELrZEK2Mm
— John (@phatsoluble) January 8, 2014
Not sure if you are aware, @ALDIAustralia - but Australia was around long before 1788. pic.twitter.com/d8hXAn5hig
— Rae Johnston (@miss_raej) January 7, 2014
The outrage forced Aldi to apologise on Twitter for "any offence taken" before announcing that it had "decided to remove one of its Australia Day special buy products, the Adults Australia Day T-shirt and Singlet from retail".
It maintained that complaints from "a limited number of concerned customers" prompted it to withdraw it from sale.
