The Spectator The independent student newspaper of Valdosta State University
Written by: Lia Armistead, Asst. Sports Editor
Racism is a topic that is tender to bring up. However, in a recent article that Cosmopolitan published on its online magazine, racism was definitely prevalent.
The article discussed recent trends that were either “gorgeous” or “need to die. ” The 21 trends that were considered “gorgeous” had white models showing the trend.
However, those trends that “need to die” had women of color.
According to Buzzfeed, the article received more than 80,000 across the Internet due to the controversial photos.
Racism is already a difficult and argumentative subject to discuss. The fact that such a huge and popular magazine, both online and in print for women of all races, published such a discriminating article is unacceptable.
Whether it just so happened to be that those trends that “need to die” were trending with women of color, the magazine should have recognized this and found a way to integrate women of color into the “gorgeous” trends and vice versa.
The title “trends that need to die” is just as harsh as the racism that Cosmo published in its issue.
Anyone that saw their picture on a website under “trends that need to die” would feel offended, no matter what color their skin is
Ha! The very name of the magazine, Cosmopolitan, should tell you that the magazine is not to blame for the results of their poll. In fact, I’m reasonably certain that its editors share your disappointment with the poll’s results. People around the country voted on fashion trends as they thought best, with the freedom to make whatever choice they wanted to make. And Ms. Armistead doesn’t like the results. What does that tell us?
Well, one thing it tells us is that some people may be all for democracy—as long as they like the results. And freedom is, to such people, a wonderful thing, on the condition that nobody offends them by expressing “unacceptable” preferences.
The political Left will say exactly what I did in my previous paragraph when it suits them—when the preferences they want others to accept are the ones they’re trying to promote. For example, if someone is disrespecting homosexuals, the Left says we should be more tolerant. But when someone says that he considers the women of his own race to be prettier than others, the Left says that his speech is “unacceptable” (that it should not be tolerated).
What the Left can’t comprehend is that nobody owes the Left support simply because the Left thinks itself righteous. There’s no law or contract that says I have to do, to say, to think only what Leftists approve of. Or… is there?
On second thought, there are such laws. There shouldn’t be. But those laws do exist, and they compel me to sacrifice some of my constitutional rights. I must, for example, either give up my right to do business, or else I give up my right of free association: the civil rights laws say that I cannot have both of those rights.
When did the civil rights laws, which are Acts of Congress, gain a legal standing superior to the Constitution? Well, there’s a theory that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause empowers the civil rights laws, so that they match the First Amendment’s legal priority, in which case Congress can press its legislative finger on whichever side of the scales it chooses.
But the Equal Protection clause only says that THE LAWS can’t discriminate. It does not say that I may not. I don’t make laws. I have preferences, and I make choices. Extending a constitutional limit to the power of the federal government upon private enterprise is an extension, an interpolation, that need not have been made, which was made only because the political left wanted it to be. Politics (from the Left) has indeed subverted the rule of law.