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LeBron among those outraged by H&M sweater ad

Posted at 5:49 PM, Jan 09, 2018
and last updated 2018-01-10 07:24:49-05

LeBron James is among the voices, famous and otherwise, outraged by an H&M advertisement.

The ad shows a black child in a sweatshirt with the words, "Coolest monkey in the jungle."

H&M has apologized and removed the image, but not before it circulated and was widely called out on social media as racist and inappropriate.

James posted a redone image of the ad, replacing the words on the sweatshirt with a crown. The James image also includes a crown on the boy's head and the words "King of the world."

On his Instagram post of the refreshed image, James said he sees a young king ready to take on the world and H&M "got us all wrong," referring to the African-American community. 

"We as African Americans will always have to break barriers, prove people wrong and work even harder to prove we belong but guess what, that's what we love because the benefits at the end of the road are so beautiful!!"

Rapper Diddy also spoke out against the ad, calling it disrespectful and changing the word "monkey" on the sweatshirt to "king," so it reads, "Coolest king in the world."

"When you look at us make sure you see royalty and super natural God sent glory!!" Diddy tweeted.

The Weeknd, who has a deal with the clothing line, tweeted that he would be ending his partnership with H&M.

H&M released the following apology:

"We understand that many people are upset about the image of the children's hoodie. We, who work at H&M, can only agree.

We're deeply sorry that the picture was taken, and we also regret the actual print. Therefore, we've not only removed the image from our channels, but also the garment from our product offering.

It's obvious that our routines haven't been followed properly. This is without any doubt. We'll thoroughly investigate why this happened to prevent this type of mistake from happening again."

Locally, Abdul-Kareen Henton with Black Lives Matter said H&M's ad was "idiotic."

"You have a people that are very culturally insensitive, because they have never been smacked in the face with their own racism," Henton said. "These are the people that are disconnected with the customer."