Jeffrey Dean Morgan who plays Negan on the cult show The Walking Dead has responded to the controversy surrounding an alleged racist t-shirt in classic Negan-style.
Earlier this week clothing store Primark decided to pull a Walking Dead t-shirt, bearing the rhyme ‘eeny-meeny-miny-mo’ along with a bloodied baseball bat, from its stores when Methodist minister Ian Lucraft complained it was racist.
Responding to the furore surrounding the t-shirt Morgan posted on Twitter: “Holy crap people are stupid.”
Mr Lucraft claims the rhyme was a clear reference to racist hate crimes of the past and that it was ‘directly threatening of a racist assault’ adding: “If I were black and were faced by a wearer I would know just where I stood.”
Many online pointed out that the t-shirt was in fact referencing Negan’s sadistic way of choosing a victim to kill in the season seven opening and was not a reference to the racist rhyme.
Others claimed they’d always thought it was ‘catch a tiger by the toe’ and that they’d never heard the racist version of the rhyme.
Despite backlash online Mr Lucraft has stood by his decision to complain about the t-shirt.
The Sheffield Star report Mr Lucraft as saying:
I am very pleased that Primark’s chief executive and his team took immediate action within an hour of my letter being sent to them and I thank them that they have withdrawn this horrid t-shirt.
It is very easy for hateful words to become part of our culture, especially when drenched in the violence of hateful films such as these. And when that does happen it is easy to fail to grasp the offence because we become used to it. But we must hold onto our values and not stoop to such language ourselves.
If you’re not offended by the t-shirt and would like to stay up to date with The Walking Dead you can catch it on Fox UK, Mondays at 9:00pm.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.