No Black Models Allowed

A model came up to me a while back, dejected because she was just told that she is too dark to be a “successful” model. As a person who understand the business very well I was thinking to myself “welcome to the new world my friend”.

As a black man I was thinking you should have kicked him in his nuts. But in the end what the person had said carries a truth to it and here is why.

People want to relate to the person they interact with. Most people who aren’t black don’t know how to relate to black and in most cases it’s out of fear or intimidation. Most black people I have seen or talked to don’t know how to relate to black neither.

There are several points that I will cover through the article starting with, Jennifer Lopez. What makes her a good example is that she could relate to black consumers, Spanish consumers and white consumers all at the same time. With whites (mainly parents) having the most money to buy for their children at a local Wall Mart. Whereas we are more inclined to download it and as a business man I understand were the guy was coming from.

It’s one thing to be praised by your own circle of friends and fans but in the end as a model you’re a business, and businesses need green to come in to stay healthy. So mathematically speaking the worst thing to rely on as a person is a friend for support. But that is a different subject all together.

Another good study of this is also MXyMAG.com. The darker skinned models make it to the top 16 countdown but I have yet to see one black model become number 1 or hover in the top 7 for too long.  I remember sometime in the beginning of the year that I posted Raquel Reigns and Sarah Visa Lee at the same time. They both came later returned to drop new pictures and interviews around the same time again, and though promoting themselves as a brand has a part to play Sarah eventually got bumped from the SWEET 16 and Raquel is in the 8th place (still standing). It’s not a knock on Sarah (she is a good friend of mines) It’s showing that she would have to work twice as hard to stay up in the 16.

The trend on MXyMAG.com is this, once the fifth week passes and the girl comes off the recent interview tabs their numbers start to sink faster. The models who have come on and stuck around and in some instances have never left the countdown are mostly lighter skinned and in some cases they are white and this is not by my choosing because it’s all based on individual computers that visited the pages.

Another perspective on this topic is our black president who made it clear to the world that he has a white family. I used to bring up the political move by him to relate to the other side as just that, a chess move to cancel out the opposition. For those who didn’t know what was going down the other were trying to tell the people who vote that Obama was too foreign to become a president with what were a barrage of subliminal messages and direct messages.

Essentially his move worked and the majority of the people who ended up actually voting for the president were white. We are all happy he won but the majority of votes came from whites. It’s sad but these are the facts, facts hurt. So essentially it’s a good thing to be black it’s the best choice that was made for me before I was born. It’s another thing to have my own people praise me but who is going to invest in to my product? How are you going to position it to them without alienating your own people? (too much) If you can’t answer that then you are going to have a tough time to sell.
TekNiq

Popularity: 7%

• Tweet This
• Share on Facebook
• Digg This
• Bookmark
• Stumble
• RSS Feed