Munroe Bergdorf was L’Oreal Paris‘s first transgender model to feature in a UK campaign – the consciously diverse #allworthit campaign for the cosmetic giant’s True Match foundation.
Unfortunately, she also had the nerve to directly address racism in a public post on Facebook, which has seen L’Oreal drop the 30-year-old model and DJ as an ambassador.
The Facebook post has since been deleted, but the Daily Mail purports to have published its text. They say Bergdorf wrote the following, after seeing the horrific events in Charlottesville, Virginia:
Honestly I don’t have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people.
Because most of ya’ll don’t even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour. Your entire existence is drenched in racism. From micro-aggressions to terrorism, you guys built the blueprint for this shit.
Come see me when you realise that racism isn’t learned, it’s inherited and consciously or unconsciously passed down through privilege.
Once white people begin to admit that their race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth… then we can talk.
Until then stay acting shocked about how the world continues to stay fucked at the hands of your ancestors and your heads that remain buried in the sand with hands over your ears.
While this is probably some fairly confronting stuff for many, it’s also widely accepted theory on how racism and colonialism function. Thanks to the way our society has been constructed, whiteness brings with it a hefty dose of privilege and bias that have to be actively unlearned.
As hard as it is to hear, every white person benefits from a long history of atrocities committed by white colonialists against brown and black people around the world. That history isn’t finished either, as is clearly evidenced by the domestic terrorism that occurred in Charlottesville.
But this is not the kind of diversity campaign L’Oreal is trying to run, apparently. They responded to news of Bergdorf’s post with this:
L’Oréal champions diversity. Comments by Munroe Bergdorf are at odds with our values and so we have decided to end our partnership with her.
— L’Oréal Paris UK (@LOrealParisUK) September 1, 2017
Bergdorf has since followed up the initial (deleted) post with a clarification of her words, and a condemnation of her former employer for dropping her so quickly and unceremoniously after their attempts to capitalise on her status as a trans woman of colour got a little too Real for them, saying:
The irony of all this is that L’Oréal Paris invited me to be part of a beauty campaign that ‘stands for diversity’ […]
If L’Oreal truly wants to offer empowerment to underrepresented women, then they need to acknowledge THE REASON why these women are underrepresented within the industry in the first place. This reason is discrimination – an action which punches down from a place of social privilege. We need to talk about why women of colour were and still are discriminated against within the industry, not just see them as a source of revenue.
She’s also asking her followers to boycott L’Oreal, telling them, “This makeup brand cares about nothing but MONEY.”
Aside from that initial Tweet, L’Oreal have remained silent on the incident. We’ll keep you posted.
