Racism: An Unseen Thread in Fashion and Work

The Colors of Racism Racism in the dictionary is defined as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. Since the 1600’s, when African-Americans were brought to America, there has been discrimination ever since. Although in today’s modern society, there is a diverse amount of cultures combined together, racism is still showing through everyday activities including fashion and work. Fashion is dressing a certain way to express how a person really is. Imagine coming from African descent and using a hairstyle to represent your culture, and the results are being judged and told that they are probably some

The problem with this is that these unique designs are often inspired by different cultures. “There is still an issue of ignorance in our fashion world… I don’t even like to use the word racism — [they’re] ignorant. They just don’t want to budge. They just don’t want to change their ideas or be more open-minded, to just [book] a beautiful girl regardless of creed or color” (Campbell). Most of the time the new designs that are incorporated as the new trend of the year, are influenced by different cultures. Bryce Covert in the article, The Fashion Industry’s Race Problem: Models of Color Rarely Get Hired claims that it is rare when models of different races get hired. Covert supports his claim by telling how, many big fashion industries did not hire women of color at all. Furthermore, he said that 82.7 percent of the models were white. Black models were hired for just 6 percent of the “looks” presented to the audience. Latina models made up just 2 percent. The author’s purpose is to point out how even though fashion influenced by different ethnicities it is still modeled by people who do not belong to that certain culture. The author writes in formal tone for everyone involved or interested in fashion. This type of scenario shows how racial

From the time of slavery up to now, race has been the element that gets between better opportunities. America is said to show equal opportunity for all, yet there are still signs of inequality within society. African Americans, Hispanic/Latino descent usually works minimum-wage jobs. “The income of 2.1 million African-American families (26 percent) was below the poverty level” (Mujahid). This proves how African-Americans are not given the same opportunities of employment, which takes away their chances to be successful in life and stand where they vision to be. Yolanda Spivey in the article, this woman got a lot of job offers when she pretended to be white, asserts that racism in the job market is real. Spivey supports her assertion by doing an experiment where she changed her name to Bianca White, to see if people had a different response. The author’s purpose is to show how racism still is a big part of the American culture so that people open their eyes to the true reality of many cultures when it comes to job opportunities. The author writes in a formal tone for all audiences. This experiment showed how it limits people from great opportunities. Furthermore, the internet often allows the world to see what the expectations for people depending on their color are. This is evident because it shows how society only has one image in their head when it come to the word