Nike Inc. has apologized for its new shoe, SB Dunk Low, which had been unofficially nicknamed, the “Black and Tan.” The Black and Tan was also a name given to the British paramilitary force that smothered an Irish uprising in the 1920s.
The shoe got its nickname because the colors looked like a mixture of Guinness and Harp pale ale.
A spokesman for Nike said “this month Nike is scheduled to release a
version of the Nike SB Dunk Low that has been unofficially named by some
using a phrase that can be viewed as inappropriate and insensitive. We
apologize. No offense was intended.”
“It would be the American equivalent of calling a sneaker 'the al-Qaeda,'” stated a story about the shoe controversy in the IrishCentral.com, one of the largest Irish-American news sites.
