(Photo courtesy: Robert Mode via iStock)

Content Note: Article contains mention of anti-Asian slurs and descriptions of violence.

Afterwards a twelvemonth of pandemic-fueled anti-Asian detest crimes, U.S. corporations accept finally started decrying anti-Asian violence. Athletic habiliment maker Lululemon recently joined the chorus in early on March, sharing #StopAsianHate messages on social media. All the same, it's difficult to take the company'south acknowledgement that "in that location are instances in our history where we permit this community downward" seriously when one of those instances is the manner the company allegedly got its proper noun.

In 2004, Lululemon founder Bit Wilson reportedly said he chose the proper noun considering "information technology was funny to lookout man [Japanese people] try to say it."

"The reason the Japanese liked [my former skateboard brand, 'Homeless'] was considering it had an L in it and a Japanese marketing house wouldn't come up upwardly with a brand proper noun with an L in it … It'south a tough pronunciation for them," Wilson said.

Wilson denied making this annotate in a 2022 interview, but it's difficult to believe his denial because I've heard "jokes" like that my whole life.

I'one thousand Filipina and white. While "jokes" about Asian people having a difficult fourth dimension pronouncing Ls and claims of COVID-infected "bat fried rice" were aimed at E Asians, they still hit me because Asians are frequently "otherised" and treated equally a monolith in this country. It didn't matter that I wasn't Chinese when the boy I had a crush on in fourth grade chosen me a chink. Each time I've been told I looked "exotic," it didn't matter what variety of Asian I was. Every single case stung and contributed to a culture that sees people like me as perpetual foreigners.

I've lost rails of how many times white people accept asked me, "Where are y'all from?" People always seemed unsatisfied when I told them I was born in California. They're convinced that I must exist from some other country because of the way I look—that they belong here more than I do.

"Yous don't belong here!" is what the man who attacked a 65-twelvemonth-old Filipina woman in New York City yelled at her. He knocked her to the basis and and so kicked her iii times in the head. I dubiousness he cared which variety of Asian she was. I incertitude the bystander who airtight the door in front of her while she was lying on the sidewalk cared, either. And when Vincent Chin was murdered in 1982 for being Japanese, the fact that he was actually Chinese didn't salvage him.

When people commented on Lululemon'south #StopAsianHate Instagram posts in March almost the origins of its name, the company responded: "We want you to know this is not who we are today nor the hereafter we choose. Our founder has not been role of lululemon for many years. We are focused on expressing our support for the Asian customs."

Corporate statements against racism aren't actually useful if they're non followed by concrete action. If Lululemon wants to truly express back up for our communities, at that place is at least one manner it tin brand an active departure: The company needs to change its name.

Lululemon can't pretend its problems with anti-Asian racism left with Wilson, either. Final year while Asian Americans were sounding the alert about the dangers of anti-Asian and xenophobic rhetoric about the pandemic, a Lululemon art director posted a link to a T-shirt emblazoned with "bat fried rice" and a Chinese takeout container on his personal Instagram account. The company fired him subsequently public outcry.

Was this an isolated incident, or was he part of a toxic culture? I don't know, and that is a trouble. A company cannot both fight anti-Asian racism and proceed a proper name that is associated with making fun of Asian people.

It'southward funny to watch them try to say it. For me, every instance of hearing or seeing the name Lululemon is another tiny racist jab.

Whether the company wants to face up information technology or not, the name "Lululemon" is already tied to anti-Asian racism, and information technology won't exist long earlier people start to wonder if the anti-Asian racism of the visitor proper name is actually a feature, not a bug, for the make. If they won't be motivated by a sense of moral obligation to an at-risk customs—which includes their customers—perchance they'll be motivated past the threat of losing their customers' coin.

Lululemon is a profitable make that has products that are bought and worn by countless people around the earth. Yet, the visitor's name is a microaggression that spreads quietly and insidiously. Some people call back microaggressions aren't that bad because they're often unintentional. But their impact matters, because they accumulate and enable much larger aggressions, from decades of brutal colonialism in the Philippines and Japanese Americans forced into concentration camps on U.S. soil, to the attacks on our elders all over the country and the murders of vi working-class Asian women in Atlanta by a white man who thought they were likewise much of a "temptation" to live. Microaggressions enable indifference to this violence. People like the bystander who closed the door on the browbeaten Filipina elderberry and those who dismissed the Atlanta murderer'south actions as motivated by a sexual activity addiction—non by racism—are guilty of this.

I'one thousand tired of seeing people acknowledge that Lululemon's name is problematic, shrug, and continue raving nigh their yoga pants when we're being attacked by violent racists and our children are beingness bullied as "COVID carriers."

I realize that in a fourth dimension of racial violence, ongoing crises of anti-Black law brutality, displacement, a pandemic, and catastrophic climate alter that hit communities of color particularly hard, the name of a clothing visitor is not this land's most pressing race-related problem. But to fight racism, we demand changes on both macro and micro levels. This includes understanding the danger of ignoring racist microaggressions and making lasting modify to preclude more harm—specially when yous're a visitor as powerful equally Lululemon.