Despite the fact I’m supposed to be on vacation right now, I had to stop what I was doing when I read about the audacity of some of these brands. Okay, you may be saying, “Jamé, what are you talking about?” Well, model Adut Akech recently gave an interview to Australia’s Who Magazine ahead of Melbourne Fashion Week, in which she discussed people’s views of refugees and people of color. Of course, that seems like a great opportunity to not only learn, but to be educated on politics, culture, and of course, race.
However, things went awry when the publication printed a photo, not of Akech, but of another model.
Akech has since taken to Instagram to call out the mag, saying:
“Not only do I personally feel insulted and disrespected but I feel like my entire race has been disrespected too… This is a big deal because of what I spoke about in my interview. By this happening I feel like it defeated the purpose of what I stand for and spoke about. It goes to show that people are very ignorant and narrow-minded that they think every black girl or African people looks the same.”
Apparently, Who Magazine has apologized to her directly, but I still have questions, comments, and concerns. First of all, hiring Black editors has always centered around the work that I do. It makes zero sense to me that brands, teams, and agencies still have entire divisions that have no people of color, edit teams that still have nobody “of the culture” at its gates. Now, I don’t necessarily believe that ONLY Black people can create PoC-centric content, but I do believe that at the root of misidentification is subliminal racist and discriminatory practices.
Akech continued on this note, saying, “I’ve been called by the name of another models who happens to be of the same ethnicity,” she wrote. “I find it very ignorant, rude and disrespectful towards both of us simply because we know that this doesn’t happen with white models. I want this to be somewhat of a wake up call to people within the industry it’s not OK and you need to do better.”
