Amazon removes shoe description following complaint from MP

NEW YORK: Amazon has removed a listing for a pair of shoes described as “n***** brown” after a complaint from Labour MP David Lammy.

The shadow secretary of state for justice, who on the same day highlighted a separate incident of alleged racism he had faced on Twitter, said he had come across the descriptor after attempting to buy a pair of shoes from the site, foreign media reported.

“Just buying brown brogues tonight leads to this racist micro aggression”, he wrote “Is it 2020 or 1720? Please ??Amazon take it down.”

he firm has since removed the item, sold by a company based in Sichuan, China, from its listings.

The phrase evoking the racial pejorative had historically been used as a descriptor before falling into disuse due to its offensiveness – however in recent years it has turned up alongside a number of items being sold by Chinese firms on English language sites

In 2007 Canada’s Toronto Star reported that a seven-year-old had spotted the phrase on the label of a sofa that had been delivered to her parents’ home after being delivered from a local furniture store.

The item’s manufacturer, a firm in Guangzhou, laid the blame on a bug in translation software, while stating it had intended for the text to say “dark brown”.