Munroe Bergdorf: ‘Society is built on the foundations of white supremacy’
Comments she had made weeks prior to the campaign launch, in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one dead and 34 injured, surfaced. Bergdorf had taken to social media to sound off on what she and many others see as white people’s complicity in destructive racism.
“Honestly I don’t have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes all white people,” she wrote in a post on her private Facebook page, subsequently deleted by Facebook after being reported by multiple users.
She continued:
Because most of y’all don’t even realize or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of color. Your entire existence is drenched in racism. From micro-aggressions to terrorism, you guys built the blueprint for this s***. Come see me when you realize 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.
On Friday — nearly three weeks after she’d penned the missive and less than a week after the launch of the campaign — L’Or?al U.K.’s official Twitter issued a statement announcing the end of its partnership, citing unspecific “comments,” which many believe was a reference to the now-deleted post, the brand felt were “at odds” with its values.
She also addressed L’Or?al directly in the same post, writing this:
If you truly want equality and diversity, you need to actively work to dismantle the source of what created this discrimination and division in the first place. You cannot just simply cash in because you’ve realized there’s a hole in the market and that there is money to be made from people of color who have darker skin tones.
If L’Or?al truly wants to offer empowerment to underrepresented women, then they need to acknowledge ... 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 color were and still are discriminated against within the industry, not just see them as a source of revenue.
https://mic.com/articles/184189/model-munroe-bergdorf-called-out-white-supremacists-days-later-loreal-uk-fired-her#.uSiGwSCgE
Full interview:
https://www.channel4.com/news/munroe-bergdorf-society-is-built-on-the-foundations-of-white-supremacy
