Children T-shirt line

The children’s clothing company behind a racist monkey T-shirt display released a statement today calling the display a “total misunderstanding.” The company was criticized for hanging the monkey T-shirts on hangars featuring a black boy’s head. Other T-shirts displayed in the same line featured Caucasian children on the hangars.

The clothing company, Just Add A Kid, blamed the mixup on the store employees who assembled the floor display.

“We are looking into all the situations that occurred around this little incident,” company co-creator Lowell Cohen told the NY Daily News by phone. “We’re looking at the vendor, we’re speaking to our employees.”

The company said the pairing of the monkey shirt and the black boy’s head was “not authorized, condoned or tolerated” by the company.

The T-shirt line features cartoon drawings of an astronaut, a ballerina, a soldier, a princess, a mermaid, and an angel on the front of the shirts.

The company refused to identify the store location where the shirts were displayed.