This correction appeared in yesterday's New York Times:
An article last Sunday about the fashion industry's
reticence to use black models referred incorrectly
to a black woman in a maid's outfit pictured in the
September issue of Italian Vogue. She was, in fact,
a maid at the hotel where the pictures were taken,
and was included, the Vogue photographer said, because
of her attractiveness and her ability to underscore
the pictures' theme of a stereotypical rich white woman
who hires ethnic servants; the black woman was not a
model dressed as a maid.
So the Times assumed that the photographer was using a black model to
stereotype blacks as maids when in fact he was using a black maid to
stereotype whites as the employers of black maids.
How insensitive!
