Olatiwa Karade, a New Jersey native, has created a new line of sweatshirts with political slogans that you can wear this holiday season.
The clothing line, Splendid Rain Co., features such slogans as “Don’t touch me, don’t touch my hair, don’t touch my culture,” “Africa is not a country,” and even “F*** your racist grandma.”
Karade said that she was inspired to speak out during the 2016 presidential election, not just because of the “blatantly racist” Trump policies and supporters but because of the more subtle racism she saw on both sides of the aisle.
“I was heavily supporting Bernie Sanders, and I think a lot of people weren’t talking about the other side of racism and hate we were seeing, a lot of which was coming from a lot of liberal people on the Bernie side,” she said. “Whenever he would come out and talk about Sandra Bland, or talk about anyone who was a victim of police brutality, of racism, of prejudice, his following would really go on their ‘all lives matter’ tirade. I just felt extremely excluded and felt like I didn’t have a voice when it came to race relations.”
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She tried to channel her frustration from this and other moments of prejudice and ultimately decided on sweatshirts.
Her first was for Columbus Day and read: “Columbus was a murderer.” The response was so great, with so many people asking if she would be making them commercially, that she decided to keep going.
Now, Karade creates sweatshirts with slogans from her own life experience, meant not only to express that frustration but to educate.
“I love my slogans, they’re very important to me and are honestly my thoughts,” she said. “They are in my head. This is what I think when people talk to me and I’m like, ‘What are you saying?’”
“We have this generation of people who are like, ‘Oh, yeah, my grandparents lived through three separate revolutions but they’re old and sweet,” she said. “And I’m like ‘OK, but they also vote.’ We have to be honest about the people in our lives and who we need to educate. You can love your grandma, I’m not saying don’t love her, but you also need to be saying, ‘You know, grandma, black people are human.’ That’s an important thing to say to her.”