L’Oréal are right to drop Munroe Bergdorf over race comments

Beauty brand L'Oréal made a laudably progressive move this week when they brought British model, DJ and trans activist Munroe Bergdorf on board as part of the brand's #allworthit campaign, which was intended to promote diversity and appeal to the brand's wide and varied consumer base.

L’Oréal confirmed on Friday it has dropped Bergdorf after her attempts to clarify earlier comments she made in which she used the term “All white people are racist” and said “Honestly I don’t have the energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people . . . 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.”

Bergdorf originally made those comments in response to the recent violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which featured Nazis and white supremacists publicly representing distasteful, racist ideology with a gall and openness that should be deeply concerning for everyone.

Though the original post was deleted, today Bergdorf attempted to clarify her comments but only succeeded in doubling down on the very problematic generalisations contained in them: “When I stated that ‘all white people are racist’, I was addressing that fact that western society as a whole, is a SYSTEM rooted in white supremacy – designed to benefit, prioritise and protect white people before anyone of any other race. Unknowingly, white people are SOCIALISED to be racist from birth onwards. It is not something genetic. No one is born racist.”

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There are large numbers of people on social media defending Bergdorf’s position. They are well intended, but ultimately wrong.

What Bergdorf is doing is criticising one form of identity politics by making a sloppy simplification from a position of a different identity politics. The problem here is the use of identity politics at all. In taking a structural approach to this issue, in line with increasingly popular but very shaky postmodernist and intersectional theory, Bergdorf is merely using the same method of thinking as white identitarians and supremacists, which is to classify whole swathes of varied individuals into groups and decline to acknowledge their fundamental diversity.

Colonial history should be learned by all and is a horrific reflection of the worst aspects of human nature. This is true. It is also true that “white people” are not a homogeneous group to be generalised about if basic accuracy is in any way relevant to one’s thought process.

It could also be considered that race – whatever the term means, and that is becoming increasingly blurred in discourse – is, though certainly a relevant determinant in current political attitudes and issues of injustice, not necessarily the only one, and rather too broad a term.

It takes but a brief look at history to see the horrific oppression and exploitation of the Chinese by the Mongols, or the Japanese in China, or the Poles by the Soviet Union.

Race is one important lense through which to view history, but if it is the only one used, the resulting picture will become far less nuanced and accurate.

Also worth considering is the extremely logically shaky problem of seeing current generations of people as having some (even if diluted) form of causal responsibility for actions they had no part in and may not necessarily have benefited from.

When we look at everything in systematic terms, we ironically fail to acknowledge diversity within groups. It is possible to recognise the structural problems within our society without using them as an explanation so far-reaching as to blot out human agency and variation, serving only to present a monocausal picture of where current social or political problems find their genus.

Bergdorf’s method of assessing the world results, in practice, in making sweeping judgments on individuals we meet, and minimising their agency by categorising them as part of my group, or external to it.

This theory is a shabby pseudo-Marxist reading of history, which replaces the concept of class with that of race. To what extent should we hold modern Italians responsible for the wrongdoing of the Roman Empire? We do not seem to consider them responsible today. What year did the responsibility cease to exist or the question cease to become relevant?

In postmodern thinking, where truth is relative to outlook and subjective experience is prime, it makes sense that the definition of racism is necessarily filtered through the lens of power structures.

It is argued that only white people can be racist because theirs is the systematic power to back up their bigotry and historical advantage has coded those with less melanin – regardless of their individual background or culture – to be rooted in the bedrock of a prejudiced system which favours them.

This definition sadly excludes a broader and more useful one, that of a bigoted, prejudiced opinion which refuses to acknowledge the full humanity of an individual, or indeed of a group of individuals, on the grounds of race, or perceived race.

Bergdorf, whose person is her brand, was hired by L’Oréal to reflect the brand’s values in an attempt to sell their products. Aggressive and logically unjustifiable generalisation on the basis of race do not reflect their values, so while Bergdorf is free to express her no doubt well-intended but very divisive and bigoted opinion, L’Oréal are right to elect not to promote her, or indeed to associate with her at all.

Championing diversity precludes the concept of original sin based on skin colour, and it is precisely a loathing of this form of thinking and correlated events which prompted Bergdorf to make her comments in the first place.