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Brazil fashion show agrees to black model quota

by Roy C | May 22, 2009 at 06:01 pm

603 views | 48 Recommendations | 7 comments

This news, coming from Brazil, would substantiate what many more familiar with the world had said for many years: namely that discrimination existed everywhere and often in the very places that, on the surface, appeared to be the most accepting.

Beyond that, what personally I had seen my own wife's experience as an African-American woman in show business, was that some of the discrimination and racism existed in the least expected areas, such as the world of fashion, the cinema, places full of educated people who were sophisticated and professed themselves as being beyond past prejudices.

Further, our own experience was that many of the countries most critical of the US for its apparent racism, were, in fact, among those who failed to live up to their professed ideals.

Sometimes we derived this impression from our own experiences and sometimes anecdotally from our friends and acquaintances from different countries.

My wife experienced more incidents of racism in three years in Rome in the late '80s then in a decade in Los Angeles. Italians were very surprised, but we were only a bit surprised.

In the '70s in San Francisco, the top modeling agencies had only one black model. There were emerging trends.

Givenchy, one of the greats from the world of French haute couture, was a pioneer in using black women and used all black models in the '70s and '80s. Then there was a sudden drop-off in the use of black models in the '90s that, personally, I have never understood.

Latin America's top fashion event, the Sao Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW) to be held in Brazil next month, has agreed to boost the number of black models on its catwalks after being targeted by anti-racism campaigners.

Under the terms of the deal, signed Thursday with prosecutors in the state of Sao Paulo, the number of black and indigenous models have to meet a set quota, otherwise fines could be levied against labels taking part.

"The management of the SPFW is going to indicate to all the labels that at least 10 percent of the casting has to be composed of black, African-descendant or indigenous models," it said on its website.

The move came after the prosecutors threatened legal action against the SPFW's organizers unless they increase the number of black models.

In the last SPFW, in January, just eight of the 344 models were black.

An anti-racism group, Educafro, last week warned it would hold a rogue black fashion event in front of the SPFW if the number of black models was not increased.

Advocates of the quota system say the fashion event should be more representative of Brazil's population.

According to official figures, just seven percent of Brazil's famously varied population consider themselves purely black -- but another 43 percent see themselves as mixed-race of African descent. The other 50 percent call themselves white.

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QueensHart

at 18:48 on May 22nd, 2009

My experience is also subtle and covert racism does exist not just in the USA!!

Amy Judd

at 21:14 on May 22nd, 2009

It just seems strange to me that they have to meet a quota at all - such a shame

Roy C

at 22:00 on May 22nd, 2009

Yes, you think that they would just realize that they had unconsciously (hopefully) done this and that the mentality would change in and of itself.

jazzyzazzy

at 04:29 on May 26th, 2009

Go into a mixed race kindergarden full of toddlers and watch how happily they play and comunicate together there is no racism between children until they get to big school.That is where it seems to start on the school playground.One World for all colour and creed is!So the racist are the losers in the end.

cyn.khoo

at 15:35 on May 27th, 2009

Racism is definitely everywhere; criticism of the United States for its racism is justified, but so would be criticism of any other country, such as Brazil. Even though they may seem like they have "overcome the racism barrier" (or any such other ridiculous phrase) just because they have citizens of all races, that's just how it looks on the surface. I think studies have shown that darker skinned people still/have always, on the whole, have/have had harder living conditions in Brazil (more unemployment, more poverty, etc.). Also, on a cultural note, there are a whole range of terms for people of different shades of skin colour in Brazilian Portuguese, but the term "assigned" to someone is also affected by factors such as social class, education, etc.--and the "lower" on whatever scale you are deemed to be, the darker the shade the term given to you signifies, and vice versa. That's pretty telltale.

Also, fashion and cinema as "the least expected" areas?! They're exactly where you can be certain to find things like racism, because those entire industries are 100% based on image, and image is based on North American, "white" ideals of beauty and norms (cf. the Dragonball Z and Avatar movies, which are based in Asian settings with Asian characters, but have all-white casts, or white actors/actresses in leading roles). A really good place to read and learn more about this kind of stuff is Racialicious blog, which examines "the intersection between race and pop culture". (They even have a series of posts called "The Brazil Files"!)

Roy C

at 16:50 on May 27th, 2009

Yes, but the most liberal and progressive people are in charge. Hollywood is more open than ever. My wife had to fight for the one black spot. Now there are many more shows and whole casts and real black movie starts such as Denzel.

This is far different than what I grew up with. Real progress has been made, but her in the US and in Brazil, of all places, to find that the progress once made has gone backward- that is a surprise. I do know that the elite of Brazil is more segregated than the elite here.

Thanks for your post and I will check out the links.

cyn.khoo

at 00:55 on May 28th, 2009

Hmm...perhaps more open than before, but that's a relative term and not necessarily equivalent to "open". So no doubt there has been change, but of course...as with most things, there's always room for improvement (like non-typecast shows and roles, more movie stars of colour, not just a couple well-known ones per ethnicity, and what about non-black PoC?).

Come to think of it, there's a post about this exact topic on the blog I referenced above: "Fade In Magazine Talks Racism in Hollywood"

It's funny though because what you said about liberal and progressive people being in charge (which I'm really not sure about--cf. Canadian and recent American federal govt, not to mention Prop 8) reminded me: I forgot to mention that I agreed with your original point that educated people etc. and a lot of people who consider themselves or are considered liberal, can also be more problematic/as much as part of the problem than they might expect when it comes to issues like these, sometimes without even realizing that they are.

Cool, hope you find them interesting!