Work

I work at a restaurant on campus in the kitchen and I happen to be the only white guy working in the back.  My nickname while at work is “white boy”.  While I like most of the guys that I work with, I don’t really like being referred to as “white boy” because it singles me out.  It’s not like I go around calling the other guys in the kitchen “black guy”.  While a small problem, I believe this is one of the little things that whites and blacks do to each other that separate themselves from one another.

Black Skin Is Not A Trend

During New York Fashion Week, famous black male super model, Tyson Beckford, said, “What happened to all the black people on the runway, there are no blacks on the cats.” Looking at the feedback and pictures from fashion shows, there were only a couple of black girls on the runway. According to fashion show coordinator Vendetti, with white girls there are so many looks to choose from, with black girls you get the same thing. Many people say that dark skin takes away from the garment. Many designers don’t like to have darker models because they believe that people notice the model more, that they notice the garment. So in Vogue Magazine and many other fashion magazines, you mostly see very pale European girls, because that is the trend. This article that I read from New York Times was very interesting to me because this is a very popular form of discrimination, that you don’t hear many people discuss. It’s illegal for people to not receive jobs  because of their skin color in any other place, so why not in the Fashion Industry.  Many people believe that racism is hidden very well, but it’s all around us, especially in fashion. Ultimately in fashion, I guess it’s up to the designers to take the initiative, and hire more black models.

The Princess and the Frog

I was reading an article about the controversy surrounding the new Disney movie “The Princess and the Frog”. A black woman commented: “I was not only unimpressed with this too-little-too-late idea, but downright wary of the thought of White folks writing about Black folks and presenting it to Black children,” she continues with: “There’s also a plantation owner, two practitioners of voodoo – one a Magical Negro, the other a villain – a singing alligator, and score by the whitest White man to ever rest his head in the Big Easy, Randy Newman”. Are you kidding me?? This is a classic situation of “reverse racism” (I hate to use that term because it’s still JUST racism even though it discrimination against whites). This woman claims she never wanted her children to see something that was written by “white folks” and had a musical score written by a white composer. Why? What’s the big deal here? There are plenty of black artists, technical designers, musicians etc that have contributed to the works of other Disney movie with predominantly white characters and you don’t see people throwing an uproar about that.

Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair is getting some negative feedback for lack of  diversity on its new cover. The Vanity Fair cover which is known for photographing rising female starlets for the year, fails to incorporate women of different races. Some of the women on the cover include Kristen Stewart, Amanda Seyfried and Emma Stone. Now i don’t  think Kristen Stewart’s acting skills are enough to land her on the cover when she is out shined by others such as Zoe Saldana in Avatar, but then again thats my opinion.