There are so many words for different shades of brown: Walnut! Sepia! Almond! But every once in a while, we can count on a manufacturer or retailer to dig up a descriptor that refers to black people rather than, say, trees or nuts. And it's just never going to sit right with us.

The latest lacks the apparent hostility of Abercromie's infamous "n--ger brown" pants [5], but still -- "Barack Light Brown" for an Overstock.com sofa bed? Somehow this never seems to happen with "John McCain white" linens or "Mitt Romney-on-Univision orange [6]" socks. Why? Probably because people don't see either man's skin color as his defining quality.

Not to mention, it's inaccurate: The couch is light and dark brown (a play on Obama's biracial heritage would at least have been clever, but Overstock didn't go there).  

Finally, this is not exactly an Oval Office-worthy item. It's so ugly that one can almost miss the fact that it's pictured with a plate of fruit ... on the floor. Race aside, we should all be able to agree that it's disrespectful to name a piece of furniture this unattractive after the president.

The Daily News [7] reports that it's been renamed "light-brown sofa," which we guess would have been too easy to do in the first place.

Read more at Jezebel.com. [7]

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