Designer Jeremy Scott created a shoe for Nike that was debuted last January on their Facebook page–a regular pair of sneakers with a shackle attached. In an effort to be edgy they failed to recognize that the use of “shackles” harkens back to a time when people were, you know, shackled and enslaved. Is this what hipster racism looks like in the corporate context? Was this supposed to be ironic?

The purple and orange sneakers come with a set of plastic “shackles” that strap around the ankles. “Got a sneaker game so hot you lock your kicks to your ankles?” the company asked in the Facebook post. The post was “liked” by more than 36,000 people by Monday morning and had received ...