Blackface Statues Made In New Jersey Sold On eBay, Seller Account Suspended

E-commerce company eBay on Monday, suspended a user for racially offensive listings with most of it being blackface statues. These were being manufactured in New Jersey.

“Surfsidejack1” is a top rated seller with over 100 transactions a year. The user has been a member with the portal for over 18 years with 98 percentage positive reactions from users.

The user had 125 active listings on the site as of Monday morning including blackface statues with one showing a boy with exaggerated lips and teeth having watermelon. The statue was captioned “Original color Trump fav.hot topic art.” The user also has quite a few buyers. According to eBay listing data, he sold 20 such pieces in December with sums up to $700.

News 4 contacted the site which immediately took action against the user by suspending his account.

"eBay has long-standing policies in place which prohibit items that promote or glorify hatred, violence and racial intolerance. Several of the items listed by this this seller clearly violate our policies, and we have taken immediate action to suspend the seller and have these listings removed," the company said in a statement.

The I-Team also went to the user’s house located in West Creek, New Jersey and found Confederate flags and blackface statues similar to ones sold online. He was spotted getting into a truck filled with packages. He denied being the user and also said he didn’t want to discuss the black statues being sold on eBay.

Calling the listing “hate images,”Dr. Nicole Fleetwood, an American studies professor at Rutgers and author of books on racist imagery said, "And they’re images that really are about white racism, white fantasies of others. They’re not at all anyhow representative of people, of color, black people, or other groups of people.”

Civil rights lawyer Chinyere Ezie said,"If you’re deciding to sell these things and profit off, of racist memorabilia, you’re not just indulging, you’re enabling hate speech and you’re abdicating your responsibility."

This comes a week after Italian fashion label Prada was forced to pull out key chains from its shelves after accusations of them being examples of the racist American blackface tradition. The so-called "Pradamalia" creatures sparked outrage over the exaggerated red lips.

"We would like to convey our deep regret and sincere apologies for the Pradamalia products that were offensive. They have been removed from the market and will not be sold. Going forward, we pledge to improve our diversity training and will immediately form an advisory council to guide our efforts on diversity, inclusion and culture. We will learn from this and do better,” Prada said in a statement released Sunday on Twitter.