# Racist all white Vanity Fair Cover? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 5, 2010, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820 "2010-02-05T18:22:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/81 "2010-02-07T00:35:13Z")
My non-white daughter asked me at the grocery store why they were all white. The button noses and patrician looks remark seems to sum it all up. I see no point to the magazine pointing out how white their appearances are in celebrating them other than to invite us all to bask in their whiteness. Maybe they had a hard time finding non-white actresses. This just shows that the problem is more pervasive than with Vanity Fair. They should have tried harder to find a non-white actress: America Ferrera,Kristen Kreuk, Maggie Q, Vanessa Hudgens, Brenda Song (the last two associated with kids’ shows but imo with very promising futures ahead of them). Why should Hollywood try harder to promote equality when magazines such as Vanity Fair idolize the opposite? ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/82 "2010-02-07T06:32:15Z")
> [@ShibbOleth](#): > > FWIW, many Latinos self-identify as white. Well, perhaps I should have said non-Hispanic white to make my point clearer. But to _your_ point, many Latinos do self-identify as white…until they immigrate over here and find out that they aren’t viewed that way by most of the population. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/83 "2010-02-07T08:26:15Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > Well, perhaps I should have said non-Hispanic white to make my point clearer. > > But to _your_ point, many Latinos do self-identify as white…until they immigrate over here and find out that they aren’t viewed that way by most of the population. No, you’re missing the point. Many Hispanics/Latinos are indistinguishable from what most Americans call “White”. They may or may not retain their cultural background, just like a 3rd, 4th, 5th generation white European might not care that much about their background, or may have become so mixed that they’re now German/English/Italian/Cuban or Mexican/Norwegian/French, etc. Example 1: my grandfather changed our last name from something long with a lot of vowels - it was Basque origin name - to something English sounding. He always had fair skin, but his grandfather was a Mexican bricklayer. In Europe I am often mistaken for German (and recently Finnish), but never for Mexican and seldom for American. Example 2: at my son’s ballpark, you could take a snapshot of a given team and I guarantee you you’d only be able to identify 1/4 to 1/3 of the kids who are Hispanic/Latino as such. Many have blue eyes, fair skin, or otherwise look like every other kid around. Ditto some of their parents. Most are Panamanian, Dominican, Cuban, Venezuelan, Ecuadorean, etc. Some of the Cubans look white or black, none look particularly “Cuban” (there is not, IMO, a Cuban look). One kid is either 1/2 or 1/4 Japanese with beautiful green eyes, and only looks vaguely Asian. Funny enough, his mother told me he used to be upset that he wasn’t Latino like his friends. The Latino part is mostly about food and culture, but that will blend with generational changes. They self identify as white because that’s the color of their skin. My point is that whites won’t become the minority because a lot of people who come in to the country will become white, even if they are from Latin countries. If you’d looked at the demographics around the turn of the century you might have said the country was becoming less white because of the Italians. Now we just see Italians as another version of white Americans. The Latinos that people see as “taking over” are a mix, not a homogeneous group. The easily visible ones cutting our lawns are usually the ones that are mostly indigenous background and make up the poorest population in Mexico. They are escaping economic hardship in Mexico and other Central American countries where they make up the lower classes and have had fewer opportunities. Once they get here, they or their children will start to intermarry with other Americans and eventually become more white and identify less with their parents and grandparents background. If they get out of the old Barrios they might eventually lose their Spanish. Not all of them, of course. Here are some pictures of Mexicans and other Latinos to illustrate my point: [Mexican girls](http://www.kevinalfredstrom.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/mexican_girls.jpg) [Guillermo Del Toro](http://cinemagia.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/guillhermo_del_toro.jpg) [Two Cuban girls](http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/southamerica/images/cubanpeople08.jpg) [Cuban soap actor Jordi Vilasuso](http://activesubmissions.net/profiledata/jordivilasuso_981298/headshots/low_res/4.jpg) [Half Cuban Cameron Diaz](http://www.sliceofscifi.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/cameron_diaz.jpg) [Cuban girl](http://www.anthonymcevoy.eu/Cuban%20People_9698.jpg) [America](http://profashionelle.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/america-ferrera-39th-naacp-image-awards-2008.jpg) [Ferrera](http://www.dailymakeover.com/appImages/galleryImages/all_womens_looks/America_Ferrera+Jan_25_2009.jpg)(born in USA, parents are from Honduras) ---
**Author:** ![Carmady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f04885/32.png) [@Carmady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carmady)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/84 "2010-02-07T10:37:56Z")
> [@ShibbOleth](#): > > No, you’re missing the point. Many Hispanics/Latinos are indistinguishable from what most Americans call “White”. The same can be said for some Black people. Derek Jeter comes to mind. I never knew he was black until reading an article that mentioned it. Jeter even gets the “white athlete” treatment, being called “scrappy”, “gritty”, and “intelligent”, instead of “effortlessly gifted.” ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/85 "2010-02-07T11:06:14Z")
Bi-racial/multi-racial/multi-ethnic kids throw off the curve. > [@](#): > > Jeter was born at Chilton Memorial Hospital in Pequannock Township, New Jersey, in 1974. His father, Dr. Sanderson Charles Jeter, a substance abuse counselor, is African American; his mother, Dorothy, is Caucasian and of Irish/German descent. Charles and Dorothy met while serving in the United States Army[8] in Germany.[9] His father played shortstop at Fisk University in Tennessee.[10] Derek has one sister, Sharlee, who is five years younger and was a softball star in high school.[8] [Alicia Keys](http://urie.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/alicia-keys.jpg) is another (beautiful) example. She’s also got some nice curves, so I’ve always wondered why she doesn’t get more love on these Boards. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/86 "2010-02-07T17:42:06Z")
> [@ShibbOleth](#): > > No, you’re missing the point. Many Hispanics/Latinos are indistinguishable from what most Americans call “White”. Physically, some are indistinguishable from Anglos. And? It doesn’t counter the point I was making, so I don’t understand why you think your point is worth stressing. > [@](#): > > My point is that whites won’t become the minority because a lot of people who come in to the country will become white, even if they are from Latin countries. This is not a secret to anyone, seriously. But can you really not see that repeatedly showing only or mostly Anglos to the exclusion of other ethnic/racial groups is an issue regardless of what people self-identify as, or what the future makeup of America will look like when everyone assimilates? Most Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans that I know do not lump themselves in with WASPs; so they may call themselves “white” but they doesn’t mean that a cover full of Reese Weatherspoon wannabees speaks to them the same way that a cover that features some of their own does. And why would it? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/87 "2010-02-07T20:29:46Z")
> [@ShibbOleth](#): > > [Jurnee Smollet is also stunningly beautiful.](http://newsblaze.com/pix/2008/0101/pix/jurnee.jpg) Woah! Is that the kid from _Cosby_? She \*did \*grow up stunning. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/88 "2010-02-07T20:39:18Z")
> [@Waenara](#): > > I did a Google image search for _Vanity Fair cover_ and within four pages of results I found the [cover with Zoe Saldana on page 3](http://www.watchinguglybetty.com/wp-content/uploads/cusl14_hollywood_covers0803.jpg), a [cover with a bunch of teen stars, including a non-white girl I don’t recognize, on page 4](http://www.fashionista.com/images/entries/vf%20cover.jpg), and a [cover with Iman and Alicia Keys on page 4](http://www.netweed.com/prohiphop/graf/vanityfairaliciakeys.jpg). It definitely seems like the search results show a majority of covers with white people, but there are also some non-whites. Just re: those linked covers. One is from a series of covers specifically devoted to Africa (several of which include Caucasians – I don’t have a problem with that, given the context and the specific people they chose, but it is funny that even with that series they included token whites). The other two only include non-white girls after the fold. And the teen stars one – yeah, that’s Lindsay Lohan Raven Symoné’s standing next to. Just to give you an idea of how old that one is. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/89 "2010-02-07T20:49:04Z")
> [@Waenara](#): > > I did a Google image search for _Vanity Fair cover_ and within four pages of results I found the [cover with Zoe Saldana on page 3](http://www.watchinguglybetty.com/wp-content/uploads/cusl14_hollywood_covers0803.jpg), a [cover with a bunch of teen stars, including a non-white girl I don’t recognize, on page 4](http://www.fashionista.com/images/entries/vf%20cover.jpg), and a [cover with Iman and Alicia Keys on page 4](http://www.netweed.com/prohiphop/graf/vanityfairaliciakeys.jpg). It definitely seems like the search results show a majority of covers with white people, but there are also some non-whites. Of course, if you searched on a different day than I did results would vary because, as I understand it, how frequently a site gets a “hit” can affect where in the search results it shows up. If people have been deliberately looking for non-whites on _Vanity Fair_ covers this past week that could change the results. In other words, I don’t dispute your search yielded different results than mine. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/90 "2010-02-07T22:29:47Z")
> [@](#): > > But when is White Heritage Month? Here in America white culture is the dominant culture, but when it comes to their ‘heritage’ most white people I know indentify and feel a claim to with the European cultures their relatives came from, most often in the last century. I’m of Scotch and British descent, but I am a ‘Daughter of the American Revolution’ - two of my ancestors signed the American constitution. I feel pretty plainly American and white, myself. Irish American Heritage Month is March. Italian American Heritage Month is October. Jewish American Heritage Month is May (designatedin 2006 by George W. Bush). Most people who would celebrate these months are light-skinned and identify as white. > [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > I don’t get why talking about an issue like this means racism must be dead because it’s obviously unimportant. I don’t think that this particular magazine is the be all and end all to racism. But as **Anaamika** alluded to earlier, it kind of adds up. As someone who’s grown up non white in a white culture, it does get kind of annoying–white, blonde, etc.=attractive. Blonde white dolls, actresses in movies, models on billboards, magazines…everywhere. And once in a while you get a token, but the mainstream is what it is. And I think if you’re white, you take it for granted that everyone around you, everyone in the media, looks just like you. > > And you see non white people, or anyone for that matter, questioning this and to you it’s just so much whining because who cares? To you, racism is overt oppressive stuff. The stuff you can relate to. This is just so far outside your realm of experience that it doesn’t even register to you. > > Now, I do agree that sometimes it goes too far in the opposite direction. I don’t think EVERY movie, book, or ad is something that represents deep entrenched patriarchy, sometimes a spade is a spade, etc. I don’t know if this particular cover is racist, but I do agree that there definitely is this bias. And it’s just something that most white people don’t think about. > > It reminds me a lot of Toni Morrison’s the Bluest Eye–where the (black) character Claudia talks about her hatred for the beautiful white baby dolls that she’s given and for Shirley Temple and all little white girls, because everyone–even black women–are telling her that that’s how you’re beautiful. And if you’re a little black girl, the closest you can hope for is to be light skinned or mixed–otherwise, you’re just out. No, stuff like this isn’t racism in the same way as obvious topics like slavery or lynchings or voting rights. But I think it is important to acknowledge that so many people feel unacceptable or ugly or invisible because of what the culture presents. Exactly! I don’t think this particular instance is a deliberate racial/racist statement. It’s just another symptom of the widespread institutional racism in America and the dominance of white culture. It’s certainly noteworthy for this reason. At this point in time, I think it’s fairly inexcusable. Even if I couldn’t think of one non-white actress who fit the criteria (under 30, recently getting more roles and a bigger name for herself in the last 2 years, thin) - and I surely can - I do think an effort should be made to balance media representation of women in particular ethnically and racially (I would like to see more balance in size and body types also). ‘Token’ or not. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/91 "2010-02-07T22:52:39Z")
Another thing they could have done is a sidebar with “also-rans” that might acknowledge other actresses and why they _weren’t_ included. For example “Zoe Saldana - she appeared in a prior group of up and coming actresses and we don’t feature actresses twice on the list, we had an age cut-off of 30 and she is 31, and with major roles in two of the year’s biggest films we don’t think she’s up and coming, we think she has arrived.” As a hypothetical example. That doesn’t mean it’s the ideal solution, or in any way obligatory, but magazines often have such sidebars with folks who didn’t make the cut for this or that list. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2010, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/92 "2010-02-07T23:08:35Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > What immediately comes to mind is Jurnee Smollet, the little girl who starred in “Eve’s Bayou”, a wonderful flick. She had also had small bit parts like the one she played in “Jack”, and frequently appeared on TV (her and her sibs even had their own short-lived show). She also had a major role in the movie “Roll Bounce”, which VH1 airs just about every week it seems. But once she starred in “The Great Debaters” with Denzel Washington, she was suddenly “up and coming”. Oprah “introduced” her on her show in such a way that you’d never guess she’d ever graced the big screen before. It irritated me tremenduously. Jack? Roll Bounce? For real? These are the movies you’re using to show someone is “up and coming”? I’ve heard Eve’s Bayou is quite good, but it was a very small movie. There are dozens of “white people movies” that are criticially acclaimed that few people have actually seen. > [@needscoffee](#): > > They should have tried harder to find a non-white actress: America Ferrera,Kristen Kreuk, Maggie Q, Vanessa Hudgens, Brenda Song (the last two associated with kids’ shows but imo with very promising futures ahead of them). In order: television actress, television actress, terrible actress, see **ShibbOleth** ’s “some Latinos are white” post, television actress. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2010, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/93 "2010-02-08T07:05:30Z")
Freida Pinto - seriously. Highly recognizable after _Slumdog_, 3 movies coming out this year and is now filming a movie with Woody Allen and closing a deal as a face of L’oreal. She’s even thin with patrician features. Or Catalina Sandino Moreno - third Hispanic actress nominated for an Academy Award for _Maria, Full of Grace_. Also in _Fast Food Nation_, the Che biopic, and in a bunch of upcoming movies including a Twilight movie (I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve known who she was since I saw the first trailer for _Maria_). ---
**Author:** ![enomaj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/59ef9b/32.png) [@enomaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enomaj)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2010, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/94 "2010-02-08T13:03:13Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Jack? Roll Bounce? For real? These are the movies you’re using to show someone is “up and coming”? I’ve heard Eve’s Bayou is quite good, but it was a very small movie. There are dozens of “white people movies” that are criticially acclaimed that few people have actually seen. > > In order: television actress, television actress, terrible actress, see **ShibbOleth** ’s “some Latinos are white” post, television actress. Never seen Jack but if movies like Mean Girls, Zombieland, and The House Bunny count, so does Roll Bounce. Blake Lively is/was also a television actress. She was on a previous cover. They really don’t have many excuses. Every so often Hollywood latches on to an actress and promotes her as the new ‘it girl’. Some of them are it: Scarlett Johannson, Reese Witherspoon. Some of them aren’t: Gretchen Mol, Julia Ormond. I don’t recall ever seeing this happen for a black actress. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2010, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/95 "2010-02-08T14:09:27Z")
> [@rhubarbarin](#): > > Here in America white culture is the dominant culture, but when it comes to their ‘heritage’ most white people I know indentify and feel a claim to with the European cultures their relatives came from, most often in the last century. Whoosh. ---
**Author:** ![Cyningablod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9fc29f/32.png) [@Cyningablod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyningablod)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/96 "2010-02-08T15:57:22Z")
**Boyo Jim** (and someone else, whom I can’t recall at the moment) spoke truthfully: There can indeed be racism without malice. **Broomstick** said: > [@](#): > > I could see it as unconscious bias. That is, it’s racism without malice, but racism nonetheless. I think it technically possible, lexically speaking, for such a thing as non-malevolent racism to exist. Haven’t bothered to look up “racism” in any dictionary, but I’d wager that none specify any sort of emotion or intention to the definition. So Broomstick may–again, _technically_–be correct in his/her way of thinking about the word. However… I think that in the reality of American dialogue, there is indeed a sort of de facto distinction in most people’s minds between “bias” and “racism”. As I see it, the former just represents a tendency, often unconscious and thus almost certainly not malevolent, towards viewing one group as “superior”, “better”, more “beautiful”, etc., than others. The latter to me suggests an active, malicious bigotry, a result of conscious cogitation on the subject. Someone once said something along the lines of, “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.” I think that’s largely applicable here, WRT to the _VF_ cover. One last comment: Honestly, I tend to side with **Contrapuntal** in his/her assessment of the significance of this issue, and its implications for the state of race relations in the US. Only fifty years ago, in the American South, blacks were being lynched, systematically denied their voting rights, and suffered forced segregation in the public sphere. Now the US has a black President (a fact that fills me with joy and pride, whether or not I agree with all of his politics), and the apparent exclusion of women of colour from a magazine cover seems to be the most pressing issue\* of “discrimination” at the moment? Wow. We’ve come a long way, indeed. \*Nota bene that I am not bemoaning the discussion here, per se. Eternal vigilance against racism is our moral and civic duty; being aware of it and speaking out against it is always necessary. I’m just saying that the _VF_ cover is not racism, nor is it even a particularly grave instance of bias. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2010, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/97 "2010-02-08T16:03:09Z")
> [@Cyningablod](#): > > One last comment: Honestly, I tend to side with **Contrapuntal** in his/her assessment of the significance of this issue, and its implications for the state of race relations in the US. Only fifty years ago, in the American South, blacks were being lynched, systematically denied their voting rights, and suffered forced segregation in the public sphere. Now the US has a black President (a fact that fills me with joy and pride, whether or not I agree with all of his politics), and the apparent exclusion of women of colour from a magazine cover seems to be the most pressing issue\* of “discrimination” at the moment? Wow. We’ve come a long way, indeed. I don’t think it’s an either/or thing. Magazine covers and so on were issues back then, too–but obviously not quite as pressing as the other issues. It’s all a symptom of the same problem. It contributes to the idea that white is mainstream and that if you’re nonwhite, you’re other–you don’t really belong. It’s little things that add up–flesh colored crayons formerly being peach colored, no dark foundation make up at one point, white dolls being the most easy to find. Again, I’ll mention Toni Morrison’s the Bluest Eye–it’s the idea that being attractive and visible means being white and being black means operating outside of that. It’s not as simple as “Too many white folk on a magazine cover.” It’s more a symptom of a problem that defines normal as white and everyone else as exotic or other. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2010, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/98 "2010-02-08T17:25:16Z")
> [@Cyningablod](#): > > One last comment: Honestly, I tend to side with **Contrapuntal** in his/her assessment of the significance of this issue, and its implications for the state of race relations in the US. Only fifty years ago, in the American South, blacks were being lynched, systematically denied their voting rights, and suffered forced segregation in the public sphere. Now the US has a black President (a fact that fills me with joy and pride, whether or not I agree with all of his politics), and the apparent exclusion of women of colour from a magazine cover seems to be the most pressing issue\* of “discrimination” at the moment? Wow. We’ve come a long way, indeed. Ask 100 American tween girls of any ethnicity what they want to be when they grow up. I guarantee more aspire to be actresses (or actresses/models/singers with their own fashion lines) than president. It may be pathetic, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I’m not tearing my hair out and weeping over this cover, and I don’t think anyone would argue that there aren’t more pressing issues facing ethnic minorities in present-day America, but to ignore the real (and possibly negative) impact media images have on young girls – especially when so many of them aspire to join the celebrity culture being depicted – is naive. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/99 "2010-02-08T17:39:25Z")
> [@Cat\_Fight](#): > > Ask 100 American tween girls of any ethnicity what they want to be when they grow up. I guarantee more aspire to be actresses (or actresses/models/singers with their own fashion lines) than president. It may be pathetic, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I’m not tearing my hair out and weeping over this cover, and I don’t think anyone would argue that there aren’t more pressing issues facing ethnic minorities in present-day America, but to ignore the real (and possibly negative) impact media images have on young girls – especially when so many of them aspire to join the celebrity culture being depicted – is naive. True, but it’s also important to note that this is _Vanity Fair_. Teen girls don’t read Vanity Fair. They read Entertainment Weekly, Teen Vogue, Cosmo Girl, J-14 and blogs. All of which often which non-white actresses. Ask a teen girl about Selena Gomez sometime. Like OMG! They’ll talk your ear off for an hour! ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2010, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820/100 "2010-02-08T18:01:02Z")
It’s a little hard for me to describe where I am coming from, since it’s apparent that many people have never, ever been the minority in your country, your town, your surroundings, your school, your workplace, for your entire life. But I will try. Am I saying this magazine cover was racist? Absolutely not. Am I saying this magazine cover could have stood to have an Asian girl and/or a black girl? Absolutely. Growing up non-white in this country - every thing I was exposed to had white people on it. Beautiful blondes everywhere. When I was growing up there wasn’t one Asian doll. I don’t remember if there was black dolls back then. I do know all of my Barbies were white. Every image of beauty was white people. Seriously watch the movies in the 80s. You get lots and lots of white men and women and occasionally a black male. Hardly ever even a black female. There is a Bloom County strip that I identify with very strongly. In it, the little black girl Ronald-Ann is sitting and watching TV. She says, “Sometimes, I wish I had long, flowing, golden locks like Christie Brinkley-” and slaps herself and then looks sheepishly at the reader and says “Sorry”. That’s what non-whites are made to feel in this country. Just…not there. Not ugly, necessarily, but non-existant. “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, you know. But what I know is that the LEGAL E. Indian immigrants have increased 53% from 2003 to 2009. That’s just Indians! Chinese people have been around for more than 200 years! We do exist! In droves. We’re as much a part of this country as white people are. So it might have been nice to throw a token bone at us and say, here is a beautiful young woman of X ancestry who is an up and coming actress. We don’t even mind living vicariously through blacks, as I mentioned before. Sure, put up a black woman. We’ll be happy. At least there’s some acknowledgement that not just white people live here, others do too. Am I mad about it? Hell no. Am I reconciled? Completely. Am I happy about it? Nope. It’s life and sure as hell there are bigger fish to fry but I never came out with a giant Pit thread about it. Simply responded in the way I felt. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/racist-all-white-vanity-fair-cover/527820.md?page=6)