As you may have heard, a whole lot of companies are taking this moment

[conuly]

to change their racist branding or, for companies such as Band-Aids and Capezio, to adding an appropriate range of skin tones to their products.

This is long overdue, of course, and I'm more than a little disappointed that they're not saying that more loudly. "Oh, wow, look how time flies. Yes, we know the right time to do this was - what, 50 years ago? Longer? - uh, a really long time ago, but we're getting around to it now!"

The lack of honesty galls.

Comments

[siderea]

Re Capezio: yes and no. Capezio didn't make pointe shoes for the more highly melanated because ballet, as a social institution, was incredibly racist, and deterred what few black girls ventured into the study of ballet from progressing to the point one goes en pointe (around age 13 or so). It has just been in the last two decades that the walls of racial exclusion have started coming down in ballet. Misty Copeland started climbing the ranks around 2000, and was named a prima of ABT in 2015, and Michaela dePrince became famous as a student in 2011 when she stared in a documentary. Last Christmas the New York Ballet had it's very first black Marie in the Nutcracker. The walls have been finally, finally falling, and in response there has been a flood of little black girls into ballet classes.

And now they're getting to the point they're going to need toe shoes.

Capezio is not selling dancewear for darker-skinned dancers because they are woke. They're not even doing it as a publicity stunt. Capezio has had it brought to their corporate attention that there's now a market for those products, and enough of them will move that it's worth their while to manufacture and sell them.