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The Obamas and the Fashion Industry: the Real Racism

So now the fashion world is abuzz looking for little black girl models. Malia and Sasha Obama have turned the fashion world upside down, making sites like J. Crew crash just by the simple act of wearing their clothes to the Inauguration. Saks and pretty much every other company is scrambling for Malia and Sasha impersonators. In this economy, I’m happy for anyone who can find positive and legal work but let’s be clear: the fashion industry is not all of a sudden embracing blackness and diversity. It’s embracing profits.

The video below is an excerpt from a CNN segment on how Malia & Sasha lookalikes are now getting work and in high demand. One man interviewed says that the fashion industry is now starting to realize that “black is beautiful.” Let us not allow our fascination with the Obamas to cloud our vision of racism in America. The Obamas are marketable and the fashion industry is all about marketing. I remember hearing a black woman in fashion once say that the fashion world is the only industry where you can be blatantly racist and say things like: “We’re not doing black or Asian this year. That’s not in.” That’s all it is folks. This is business.



Let’s look at a little history. Remember the model Iman from Somalia? Part of her rise to prominence was this story that she was plucked from the jungles of Africa and so many of us bought that story. Turned out she’s the daughter of a former Ambassador and speaks 5 languages. Who knew? The fashion industry knew. It’s all about marketing and what’s hot at the moment. Fast forwarding to 2009, how many more African supermodels have there been? Did Iman show that black is beautiful back then? Somehow I don’t think so.

If the fashion world is all of a sudden embracing diversity, I wonder if little Latinas, black boys, Native Americans who aren’t in traditional, and Arabs will start appearing in more advertisements. If so, I will have to write a retraction. As I said, I’m just a student of history and I know trends when I see them. For the fashion world, the Obamas are simply the flavor of the month or maybe the flavor of the next four or eight years. I would love to be wrong on this. Maybe the dialogues on race that President Obama’s ascension is forcing much of America and the globe to have will indeed prove me wrong.