Covergirl which is a drugstore makeup brand has been trying to include people from different religion, gender, etc. They hired Charles James who is a gay and a Muslim youtuber Nura Afia. While the company was incorporating people from diverse group in their company, their first spokesmodel Charles not only once but many times had tweeted racist things. One recent one is “I can’t believe we’re going to Africa today omg what if we get Ebola? ‘James we’re fine we could’ve gotten it at chipotle last’ ” and ended it with an upside down smiling emoji which he used to be sarcastic. This had created a lot of news. The brand instead of making him apologize, uploaded a picture of him with Zendaya who is a black women to show that he’s not racist as he is friend with her. Soon those pictures were taken off because people could see what they were trying to do and weren’t really pleased. People said they were trying to show “I can’t be racist I have a black friend”.
His tweet was showing what he thinks of Africa. Even though WHO has declared Africa is now free from Ebola, he posted it to show that how he being an American is worried that going to an underdeveloped continent like Africa has nothing but diseases like Ebola. He was going for a school trip to Africa and for him Africa and sees the trip as if it is like a field trip where you have to be prepared to diseases and living in bad conditions. Not only that, his apology says how well he knew Africa as in his apology he wrote Africa as a country. Accusing him for not knowing about Africa would be wrong but his tweet about Ebola was unacceptable. Ebola which is a deadly disease and making fun about is very insensitive.
Reference: Larbi M. (2017, Feb 21). CoverGirl’s response to their first male model’s racist tweet is incredibly cringe. Metro. Retrieved from http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/21/covergirls-response-to-their-first-male-models-racist-tweet-is-incredibly-cringe-6462698/
Poedamcron. (2017, Feb 18). A play in four acts. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/poedamcron