Racism’s New Frontier? Vogue Magazine

Okay, to be fair, people have been calling fashion magazines racist for years. All the cover models are white, they complain. So, when it comes time for the publishers to risk their money on someone who’s not white, people tend to take notice. This month’s Vogue, which features basketball star LeBron James and supermodel Gisele Bündchen, is exceptional in more ways than one. It’s one of the rare times that Vogue has put a man, let alone a black man, on its cover. James is, in fact, the first black man to ever grace the cover of American Vogue (not Men’s Vogue, mind you). So, the analysis begins: “For a magazine that’s been, I think, around for 115 years and has only had four African-Americans on its cover in all that time and LeBron James is the first African-American man on its cover, it means that yeah, every time, you see an image that’s a person of color, it’s going to be examined in this way,” said TV commentator Nancy Giles on the Today Show. Writer Wesley Morris dissects the image on Slate, and though the rest of article is exceptionally written, the lede presents one of its best points: “No matter how many “courageous” speeches Barack Obama gives, America will never be a “Let’s talk about race” kind of place. It’ll always be a “Let’s talk about how we can’t talk about race” kind of place.” To summarize the chatter quickly, people say the photo conjures up images of King Kong gripping damsel in distress Fay Wray in the 1933 film, King Kong. For more info, read the article.

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