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In a 2020 anti-bullying campaign aired in Japan, Nike portrays three students (two of which who are from racial minorities) who overcome bullying through sports.

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The ad faced backlash from some who argued that the ad paints Japan as racist and prejudiced.

For others, the ad does an excellent job of showcasing the pervasive racial discrimination that many minorities face daily..

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*Note: While I acknowledge that CRT is generally usually used in the context of race relations in the USA, it is applicable in this context as well*

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*Note: While I acknowledge that CRT is generally usually used in the context of race relations in the USA, it is applicable in this context as well*

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One of the main girls in this ad is one of (if not the only one) the only black girls in this school.

Many people criticized the ad, disagreeing with the notion that there is racism in Japan. This sort of blatant dismissal of discrimination parallels that of the USA, where many also refuse to acknowledge the prevalence of racism.

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The setup of this commercial plays directly into Ernest Bormann's symbolic convergence theory, which seeks to interpret the very sort of narrative fleshed out in the ad. An ad such as this one "which create[s] a sense of 'us and them' within a community" (Endres 109)
uses the parallels of the three bullied individuals to demonstrate how they found community within sport, to Nike's benefit.

Unfortunately and ironically, Nike's efforts to call out racism in Japan were met with a lot of backlash, to which movements like Black Lives Matter pushed back against--further reinforcing the "us versus them" narrative.

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A lot of academic articles that discuss racism tend to focus on racism in the West which, while understandable, is not the only site of racism.

Analyzing racism within a society of individuals that would be considered a minority group in the West presents a peculiar sort of problem. While the concept of racism holds true, the history that laid the foundation for such discrimination is simply not there, at least not in the same context of slavery and economic exploitation as it would be for Black people in the West.

This is not to deny that racism in Japan has no basis in its own history, nor to say that racism does not exist here.

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Nike's ad does not seek to oversimplify the issue of race relations or insult it by creating an ad that blanketly celebrates "diversity" while inadvertently sweeping the prevalence of racism under the rug. Nor does it try to say that racism is not a problem or that race isn't important. Race is important, only because we have made it so. We have used race as a way to highlight supposed differences between "in" groups and "out" groups and ads such as these "insist that these differences do not issue
meanings." (Storey 183)

"The work of cultural studies, like that of all reasonable intellectual traditions, is to intellectually, and by example, help to defeat racism, and by so doing, help to bring into being a world in which the term ‘race’ is little more than a long-disused historical category..." (Storey 195)

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We often see big corporations and companies make pandering statements or campaigns to appeal to social justice or minority groups (eg. during Pride Month, when countless companies put rainbows on all their products and in their media outputs without doing anything to support the LGBT+ community).

For Nike, this ad echos its efforts to fund underserved communities. It highlights the issue of racism and bullying to provide it with visibility and awareness--an impactful endeavor in and of itself, as clearly shown by the global response it garnered.

Nike started NikeUNITED, a program committed to providing funding and opportunity to underserved minority communities. (https://purpose.nike.com/until-we-all-win-community-investment). This is an extra step they took to back up their message with a mission.

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Nike Purpose: Until We All Win Community Investment Program

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The Until We All Win community investment program is a direct reflection of what our eight Employee Networks, collectively known as NikeUNITED, stand for - our commitment to diversity and inclusion in the communities where we live and work.