This is Your $400 Racist Anthropologie Candlestick
Robert Kessler

You've spent years carefully cultivating your home's boho-chic look. Tearing through boutiques, looking for just the right accent pieces that look like they'd been found at a Portland, Ore. estate sale.

Now, finally, you've found it. That last piece to complete the home you'd always dreamed of: a racist candlestick.

The "Trinket & Treasure Candlestick" from Anthropologie — a boutique for rich women who like to look French — is neither. It is a totem pole of racial stereotypes. Working from the bottom up, in just 21 inches, Anthropologie has managed to offend Asians, staunch JFK opposers, African-Americans, Palins and clowns (I think? I don't really have any idea what the hell that thing is).

I'm legitimately curious: did Anthropologie think sticking a porcelain mammy figurine in the middle of a candlestick was cool? Sure, the mammy archetype represents decades of marginalization of African-American women, but look how cute it is!

Your perfect candlestick is an "online exclusive" and will only set you back $398. Chump change if you're really dedicated to polishing your home's "fashionable horder" look.

http://gawker.com/5975162/this-is-your-racist-anthropologie-candlestick

Some comments are interesting, too.

rachelsmith1989
Reply

It's stuff like this sold at Anthropologie that give us Anthropology majors a bad rap. No wonder people are confused as to what I studied in college. Sweater thread count? Size conversion? Shit White Women pay $600 for but can get at Goodwill for $2?
This stick belongs in a museum…not. More for kindling for a campfire night of ethnographic excursions in the Australian Outback...