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| SEPTEMBER 13, 2005 | Send
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Welcome to Controversy
Dallas company’s T-shirts
stir mixed opinions
By Mary
Richert
The Shorthorn Scene Editor
You can use the latest trends to make a
fashion statement or just a good, old-fashioned T-shirt.
People find new or vintage shirts with funky sayings, or some make
their own shirts. Often, a shirt expresses something about the person
wearing it.
What happens when a shirt’s statement pushes someone’s
moral limits?
The Dallas-based company CharroKing sells shirts that walk the thin
line between clever and offensive. Oak Cliff residents particularly
respond to what the company’s Web site, http://www.charroking.com,
calls the “original and controversial ‘Welcome to Oak
Cliff’ T-shirt.”
The shirt reads “Welcome to Oak Cliff” below a picture
of one figure holding a gun and putting another figure in the trunk
of a car. Some students find the shirt inappropriate while others
think it’s a simple joke.
Social work junior Sharon Newman said she knows the shirts are supposed
to be funny, but that they only reinforce negative stereotypes.
“They must just be selling it to rednecks,” Newman said.
“I know nobody black would be wearing that mess.”
She said dead bodies in trunks are not exclusive to Oak Cliff.
Kinesiology junior Anjessica Williams lives in South Dallas near
Oak Cliff. She said the neighborhood is a “rough area of Dallas,”
but she, too, resents the stereotypes.
“Not all people from Oak Cliff are like that,” she said.
CharroKing had a kiosk in the Valley View Center in Dallas, but
according to the company’s Web site, the business was closed
due to complaints. Jose Hernandez and Hugo Oliveres are the company
owners, and they told local television station WB33 no customers
complained to them.
“It has never been our intention to offend anyone, and we
apologize to anyone who thinks otherwise,” the owners said
in an Aug. 28 public statement.
Hernandez and Oliveres could not be reached for comment.
Broadcast journalism sophomores Tia Latham and Ryan Stoker both
found the shirt humorous.
“Personally, I think it’s really funny,” Stoker
said. “I guess I just have a good sense of humor.”
Crystal Montgomery, Fort Worth resident and biology sophomore, said
she would not wear the Oak Cliff shirt, but she was not offended
by it.
“Probably only people from Oak Cliff could wear it,”
she said.
Students said they had not seen anyone wearing the shirt on campus,
but many had seen it on the news.
Nursing freshman Kamesha Russell says that even if the shirt does
bother some people, others have a right to sell and wear it. Russell
said the CharroKing shirt doesn’t upset her, but other shirts
have.
She described one that pictured a stripper with the caption “I
support single moms.” Although she was offended because she
is a single mom, she chose not to complain.
“I thought it was offensive, but what can you do?” she
said.
When psychology senior Tina Patel attended Grapevine High School,
her school’s football team played Oak Cliff every year. Students
from her school would write messages on their shirts, taunting the
Oak Cliff team. She said the rivalry didn’t bother her.
“It doesn’t bother me, but I can see how it would bother
someone from Oak Cliff,” she said.
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