According to StereoHyped, Behnaz Sarafpour used one black model; Rodarte used one; Jill Stuart used 4, up from zero last season. Calvin Klein used one. Monique Lhullier used none. Reuters reports that Vivienne Tam also used none.

After writing about this subject repeatedly, it's still shocking to see a post by a commenter on StereoHyped which reads: "Please explain to me why this is such an important issue?" It's incredible that people really don't get it. Having only white models on New York Fashion Week runways sends a dangerous message: That there is only one high-fashion "look," and it is to have pale skin. During Fashion Week, reporters come from around the globe, photographers take pictures that are seen in hundreds of countries. New York is a cosmopolitan city where it is unacceptable to tell a woman you're not going to hire her because she is black. And yet, for the past few years, that's exactly what has been happening in the fashion industry. In New York.

So, are things slowly getting better? "Visually on the runways, it has improved," model mogul (and organizer of the "Absence Of Color" summits) Bethann Hardison tells Reuters. "But the results are still racist. [Designers] choose the same white and never go towards the brown or the dark."

Fashion Week Features Few Black Runway Models [Reuters]
Black Model Watch: Spring '09 Fashion Week [StereoHyped]

Earllier: Fashion Week Runways Were Almost A Total Whitewash

Maybe Levitt's intentions are good. He wants everyone to make money! The money they deserve! But we are not robots. We have personal experiences and idiosyncrasies that may or may not be relevant to our intelligence and/or work ethic. Some of it is beyond our control. For instance: "sounding black." Does Barack Obama sound black? Does Jesse Jackson sound black? Does Oprah? Did Martin Luther King? Even more troubling is this passage:

Investing in the ability to not "sound black" looks to have a huge return — roughly of the same magnitude as getting one more year of schooling… There may be personal costs associated with being black and not sounding black. But these costs would have to be pretty large. (When I have Asian Ph.D. students go on the job market in the United States, I tell them that I think there is rampant discrimination against non-English speakers and encourage them to adopt Americanized first names for the job market. Very few of my students choose to do so — either a testimony to the identity cost of pretending to be someone you aren’t, or possibly their lack of faith in my assessment of the amount of discrimination.)

Adopting an Americanized first name? Does playing into xenophobia render it ineffective? Would Levitt also suggest a woman named Shaniqua Keisha Jones change the name on her resume to S.K. Jones? (Probably!) Here's the problem with that: It's demeaning and patronizing. Some might argue you "do what you have to do" to get a foot in the door. But if you're intelligent and hard working, shouldn't your resume get you in the door no matter what name is at the top? No, you're saying. The world doesn't work like that. But couldn't it be said that the more HR people who encounter intelligent, hardworking people with names like Shaniqua Keisha Jones, the more people will stop pre-judging people with names like Shaniqua Keisha Jones. Ditto "sounding black," having a southern accent or a clearly Asian name. Deleting these things could be construed as self-hate, denial or disingenuousness. Is it better to be sneaky, calculating and take a "by any means necessary" approach in the workforce? Is "sounding black" something people need to apologize for? Do the people who "sound black" need to "invest in" the ability to sound more white? How best to bust a stereotype? By playing into it? Or defying it?

How Much Does It Cost You in Wages if You “Sound Black?” [NY Times]