All-White Diversity Philly Magazine Cover: You Can’t Photoshop This
What do you get when a magazine runs a cover story about diversity in Philadelphia’s public schools and the photo of cherubic elementary school kids on the cover includes nary a brown, black, beige, tan, yellow, red, brindled, or burnt umber face—just seven cheerful white kids sitting on a low-slung brick wall, their iPhones and credit cards well intact? This despite the fact that the school they attend is 60 percent non-white?
What you get is a social-media cluster mess of gigantic proportions. According to said cluster mess, there are a lot of people with their dashikis, chopsticks, and ponchos in a twist. Look for Al Sharpton and the folks from Black School Kids Matter to be picketing Philadelphia magazine’s editorial offices any moment now.
The editor of Philadelphia (we won’t mention his name because he’s probably gotten enough death threats already) manned up and said he wasn’t going to blame “the process”(usually the first refuge of decision makers with their appendages caught in a wringer). He bravely said he was the sole person to blame.
Was he though? We suspect he’s protecting somebody, namely the unnamed intern who was under his desk giving him a kiss when he chose the cover photo. He should just put her business in the street, send her back to Bryn Mawr, and challenge any other editor to choose a photo with his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and he’s about to climax so hard he’s afraid he’s going to give the intern a severe case of whiplash. Epic fails deserve epic explanations.
