*A t-shirt promoting the return of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” has been removed from store shelves by a British retailer after someone complained that it was “racist” and “fantastically offensive” against black people.
The shirt in question bore the image of a baseball bat and the message “Eeny Meeny Miny Moe” — referencing a scene from the zombie drama in which Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) decides who in the protagonist group he should kill with his spiked bat, Lucille.
In the scene, Negan continues the phrase with, “Catch a tiger by his toe” — though, historically in the U.K. the rhyme replaces “tiger” with the N-word.”
Shopper Ian Lucraft was the first to complain after spotting the shirt at a branch of the U.K.’s Primark retail chain.
“We were shocked when we came face to face with a new t-shirt with a racially explicit graphic and text,” Lucraft told the Warwick Courier. “It was fantastically offensive and I can only assume that no one in the process of ordering it knew what they were doing or were aware of its subliminal messages.”
Lucraft added: “It is directly threatening of a racist assault, and if I were black and were faced by a wearer I would know just where I stood.”
In a statement to TheWrap, a Primark spokesperson offered an apology for the shirt, saying that any offense that the shirt caused was “wholly unintentional.”
“The T-shirt is licensed merchandise for the U.S. television series, ‘The Walking Dead,’ and the quote and image are taken directly from the show,” the spokesperson said. “Any offense caused by its design was wholly unintentional and Primark sincerely apologizes for this. Primark has pulled the product from sale.”
To all of this, Morgan tweeted: “People are stupid.”
Holy crap people are stupid. ‘Walking Dead’ Shirt Pulled From Stores After Complaint of Racism https://t.co/cpeIqcxTwJ
— Jeffrey Dean Morgan (@JDMorgan) February 22, 2017
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