Clothing company apologises for offending Travellers with 'racist slur' social media post

Martin Collins, PAVEE Point, said the post was offensive

An Irish online clothing store has apologised after they used a “racist slur” to promote a sale across their social media accounts.

Vinyl Vintage Clothing has since taken down the post in which they encouraged customers to use the promotion code “caravan”, and used a term, Tinker, that is deemed racist and derogatory by some members of the Traveller community.

In an apology shared across their social media, the clothing brand said: “Vintage Vinyl Clothing is very embarrassed and remorseful for this post. 

"We can offer no excuse only inexperience, it was not our intention to cause offence and we sincerely apologise to members of the Travelling community for any offence caused. 

"Vintage Vinyl Clothing only started up during lockdown and we have been working hard to make it work, this mistake has been a valuable lesson for us."

Rosemarie Maughan, a Traveller and a human rights activist, says there is a trend of companies using slurs against Travellers to sell products.

“Recently Travellers are seeing a rise in companies such as Vinyl-Vintage use racist slurs against Travellers such as a means to promote their business and boost sales. 

"This would not be accepted if directed at any other ethnic minority group.

“Imagine if they used the N-word, the public backlash these companies would receive but when its Travellers very few people actually care. 

"The reality is companies would never dream of using the N-word as part of their business promotion so why target Travellers? 

"What they don’t realise Travellers feel the impact of this in our daily lives leading to increased levels of Racism and rejection. 

"Resulting in our suicide rates being seven times higher for Traveller men and six times higher for Traveller women,” she added.

However, Martin Collins, Pavee Point Co-Director, doesn’t believe the terminology used by the clothing company was automatically racist, but the post was still offensive.

“The term caravan, even though I don’t like it, I prefer trailer, isn’t a racist term and the word Tinker, to me isn’t a racist term. But I do think the post was offensive and it was quite undermining. 

"I didn’t like the tone of it. I understand why some travellers will take offence it, but I would like to see more of an effort by Travellers to reclaim terminology that has been used for generations,” said Mr Collins.