In 1977, NIke, then known as Blue Ribbon Sports, issued one of its first major NBA endorsements to a Black American NBA player named Geroge “Iceman” Gervin. Gervin was a 6’5” shooting guard and one of the league’s most electric players. That year he averaged over 27 ppg (points per game) and his shoe of choice was the struggling new basketball shoe, the Nike Blazer.

Seven years later, the first modern-day athletic icon, Michael Jordan, signed with Nike (instead of his preferred brand, adidas) as a rookie. The contract was one of the largest endorsement deals at the time, giving Jordan $500,000 for the next five years, two Mercedes-Benz cars, and custom shoes upon his request. Only a year after the Jordan 1 released, Nike made an excess of $100 million in revenue.

This partnership paved the way for modern day superstar athletes like Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, and Lebron James to sign long and lucrative deals to further bolster the cultural cache with youth culture.

After missing out on signing Michael Jordan in 1984, adidas had to wait two years before shaping its own perspective pop culture stardom.

Where Nike had a young Jordan to inspire a whole generation of future athletes and early sneakerheads, adidas needed a voice already ingrained in culture. That voice became the infamous group, Run-DMC.

Run-DMC embodied the shifting landscape of the streets. The group was real, in what it said, how it dressed and what the men represented, which led to a powerful bond with the audience. They, at their core, were three men who simply liked wearing three stripes to express themselves creatively.

The group’s infamous song, “My Adidas” was bigger than any single pair of adidas Superstars, and born out of the simple belief to never judge a book by its cover. At the time, the men of Run-DMC felt that society looked down on the culture of B-boys and B-girls, glossing over the space’s cultural innovations in dance and fashion.

During the group’s “Raising Hell” Tour, Run-DMC performed at Madison Square Garden. During the now-legendary performance, the crew inspired nearly tens of thousands of fans to hold up their adidas shoes in unison. Watching from the crowd was Angelo Anastesio, a senior adidas employee who, after witnessing the response, lobbied the idea of the adidas and Run-DMC endorsement deal.

The deal was for $1.6 million and was the first endorsement deal between a hip-hop group and an athletic company. The endorsement led to the immediate popularity of the shell-toed adidas Superstar, as well as ushering in the beginning of a new partnership age for artists, hip-hop stars and non-athletes in the sneaker space.

In 2016, the adidas Superstar became the top shoe sold in the U.S. by dollar sales, supplanting Nike’s reign for the first time in decades.

In the early-2000s, adidas also connected with hip-hop artist Missy Elliot to produce her line Respect ME, and was one of the company’s first major deals with an entertainer since Run-DMC in the 1980s. This deal ushered in the new framework for larger collaborations with non-athletes and led to the opportunities for Pharell and Kanye West.

Until recently, there was a clear separation: Those at Nike leveraged sneaker partnerships to spotlight game-changing athletes and its pioneering sneaker technology. Those at adidas tapped into musicians and artists to showcase the brand’s style-centric sneaker offering.

While each brand might have dipped its metaphorical toe into one side or the other, the unifying reality was clear no matter which direction each brand took: Both Nike and adidas were benefiting from Black bodies.

The early cultural success for both Nike and adidas can directly be attributed to partnerships made with relevant and culturally influential Black Americans but, in forging these relationships both brands, and the sneaker industry as a whole, has struggled to consistently speak up or stand with the Black community during times of need.

Nike, being an American-born brand, has had much more to say on cultural issues pertaining to the Black experience in the United States. In 1987, Nike partnered with the young voice of Spike Lee, after a top executive discovered Mars Blackmon in the 1986 movie She’s Gotta Have It. Initially insisting that Blackmon help advertise the Jordan III sneaker alongside Jordan himself, Blackmon became a mainstay character in the Jordan Brand canon, spawning some of the most influential ad campaigns in sneaker history.

Blackmon’s (and by extension Lee’s) influence and presence within Nike advertising was so strong, that Lee was able to push for an ad to be released following the brutal beating of Rodney King by the LAPD in 1992. Known as the “Play Together” ad, the script is similar to King’s pleas to the public (“Can we all get along? Can we, can we get along?”), with the tagline, “If we’re gonna live together we gotta play together.” This ad was a clear, first major stance on police brutality.

In the modern era, Nike has continued this stance, most notably with the “Dream Crazy” ad starring Colin Kaepernick. While the ad—and the brand’s relationship with Kaepernick—is applauded as Nike’s most distinguished declarations on systemic racism to-date, most people forget the critical history before the ad was aired.

In 2016, Colin Kaepernick sparked a controversial movement by kneeling during the national anthem. The idea to kneel was actually suggested by Nate Boyer a former active-duty Green Beret, who also had a short stint in the NFL himself. For two years, Kaepernick was metaphorically burned at the stake publically for his stance and blacklisted by the NFL, with many unaware of where the idea originated.

As Kaepernick told the NFL media in a postgame interview, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag that oppresses black people and people of color...There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

From 2016 to 2018, his relationship with NIke, the brand which he was signed during his meteoric rise to stardom, suddenly went dark. Personally, I was both skeptical and supportive of their ad featuring him, because the fact is, for two years, Nike distanced themselves from him—until they saw an opportunity to use him for their advantage.

As a result of “Dream Crazy”—which aired in September of 2018—Nike went on to win an Outstanding Commercial Emmy Award and see a 5 percent increase in stock that year––earning the nearly $6 billion in addition revenue (of course, the US Open and the start of the NFL preseason were encompassed in this timeframe which has also led to increased sales).

The full-on support of Colin Kaepernick puts Nike a bit of an edge when compared to its industry contemporaries. While its track record is far from spotless, the Swoosh’s decision to give major corporate backing to Kaepernick at a time when even the President of the United States was disparragining him shows at least some level of courage. It’s step in the right direction, but let’s be clear: Nike’s got a lot more steps to take.

When it comes to adidas, it does not have nearly the history of speaking out against racial issues, which unfortunately reflects much of the sneaker industry’s overall positioning. However, there are some strides. According to an adidas footwear designer, the company does have a few initiatives that are not heavily promoted to the public, one of them being the S.E.E.D. Program.

Dry Clean Only reached out to an adidas designer, who agreed to speak on the condition they remain anonymous. “The program, being run out of the [adidas] Brooklyn Farm, is made up of 6 diverse female designers learning from Cheresse Thornhill This program was created in collaboration with Pensole to build a platform for a diverse generation of designers coming into the industry.”

When asked if there were any collaborations that showcased the benefits of having POC lead storytelling efforts, the adidas designer mentioned the Grace Wales Bonner collaboration shown off in early 2020.

“The collection was inspired by the ’70s reggae scene in London,” noted our aforementioned adidas source. “The footwear was handled by a Black designer who grew up in London so the shoe resonated well due to the authenticity.”

Despite these initiatives or collaborations—on top of the larger corporate partnerships with celebrities like Pharrell and Kanye West, there have been very few campaigns, ads, products, or collaborations created to directly and explicitly address or stand with the black community. While Nike’s response to the George Floyd murder was praised for its direct and concise call for change, the lackluster response from adidas—largely devoid of any perspective or drive to change—exposed issues within its own company and ultimately surfaced a variety of internal allegations about the culture at the German sportswear label.

The irony, of course, is that adidas actively collaborates with a diverse group of athletes, celebrities and influencers, which has led to increased brand awareness. Currently, adidas has promised publicly to “actively” fight racism, and required that “30 percent of all open positions in the United States to be filled with black and Latino employees.” Change is coming, but why did it take the death of George Floyd?

In 2016, advertising campaigns around James Harden and Damien Lillard had to be scrapped because of obvious racial undertones. In 2019, The New York Times wrote a blistering article about the issues Black employees constantly had to face, one being that less than 4.5 percent of the 1000 employees that worked in the North American offices identified as Black. Sadly, the list goes on and on.

The aforementioned adidas designer validated these allegations by saying, “The issues that people have shared through speaking out are true. Black and brown employees are speaking out collectively because individually it’s been difficult to resolve these racial moments within the brand. I applaud the amount of people who have found the courage to share their stories. It makes no sense that our athletes and faces of the brand portray one thing but internally it is completely the opposite.”

The sneaker industry as a whole has a lot of room for improvement. While tapping into both Black culture and using Black figures to boost athletic or fashion-related cachet helps bring representation to the foreground, that representation means little to nothing at all if those same brands aren’t also willing to stand with the Black community when it comes to racial issues.

“The issues are real, the exploitation is real, but this is an industry issue,” noted an anonymous adidas designer. “We need to take time to solve this issue with the same effort we have with COVID. More diverse people of color need to be hired at every level and we need leaders who aren’t afraid to touch on these topics and do so in a way that isn’t disrespectful.”