Racist Or Not? Celebrities In Trouble Over Skin Color

Kylie Jenner

“Kylie Jenner Does A Black About Face” was TMZ‘s headline for this very dark photo of Kendall Jenner, which she captioned, “What I wish I looked like all the time.”

When she caught backlash from fans, Jenner deleted the pics, reuploaded them and wrote, “This is a black light and neon lights. People lets all calm down.”

Kim Kardashian

Remember this Love cover? Some fans said that Kim simply looked “unrecognizable.” Others pointed out that Kim looked, well… black. Do you think the look was intentional?

L’Oreal

L’Oreal found themselves in a bit of hot water in 2008 when they were accused of lightening Beyoncé’s skin to send a “fairer is better” message to customers and fans.

Was this just a trick of lighting? Or did L’Oreal take things too far?

Lil Kim

Lil Kim’s face has changed so drastically over the years that her looks get almost as much attention as her music.

But Lil’ Kim says that, despite the controversy, she’s not done yet. In a Hot 97 interview Kim had this to say:

“People think I did it because I had low self-esteem but that wasn’t the case. I think that I did it because I was a little too vain at the time. I’m a perfectionist…There are still some things I have to fix.”

Dencia

Cameroonian singer Dencia is very controversial thanks to her her skin-whitening cream, Whitenicious, her “white means pure” comments, and her ghostly pale skin.

When Cosmo Said RIP To Black Model Trends

Cosmopolitan never made it clear whether they were saying that dark skin, black models or black hair “needed to die,” but after considerable controversy over an article that labeled the beauty trends of black models as ones that need to die, they took the offensive pictures down.

Kendrick Lamar

One activist seemed particularly angry at the shade of Kendrick Lamar’s fiancée’s skin saying,

“Well, well, well would you looky here. ANOTHER FAKE CONSCIOUS MUTHER F-KER EXPOSED. I will never support him nor his music with one dime of my money and encourage all dark skinned women not to either!”

Do “consciousness” and skin color go hand-in-hand? 

Vijay Kaling

The brother of comedienne Mindy Kaling has caused some major controversy over his new book, which details his decision to pretend to be a black man so that he could use affirmative action to get into medical school.

Zoe Saldana And Cynthia Mort

Can a black woman put on black face?

Many Nina Simone fans were upset with director Cynthia Mort’s decision to cast Zoe Saldana — a light-skinned Afro-Latina woman — as Nina Simone in her biopic. Simone was a dark-skinned African-American woman from the South whose skin color and experiences helped to shape her music, her activism and her career. It also didn’t help that Saldana had to wear a prosthetic nose and dark makeup to look like the music legend.

Michelle Williams

In 2013, Michelle Williams angered fans with this cover for AnOther Magazine, which many called “red face.”

Is this racism or art?

Johnny Depp

Did you get a chance to see The Lone Ranger in theaters? Did you find Johnny’s red face disrespectful?

Nick Cannon

Nick Cannon says he’s 100 percent not sorry for creating this white character for his album White People Party Music.

Nick says he knew it would cause controversy and start an important conversation:

“It was one of those things. Naming my album title and doing the character, I knew it would spark controversy. But I felt like it was a conversation that is needed.

Without getting too serious, everybody’s really sensitive when it comes to race. That’s even one of the reasons why I did it. If you want to have that real conversation, it’s even funny they’re using this term white face, like I don’t know what that is.?

I know black face was a term created in 1869 to describe offensive minstrel shows. White face, if you look it up and google it, it’s a ski slope in upstate new York. This term that we have created, I was doing a character impression. Black face is about oppression. If you want to have that conversation, we can have that conversation.”

Snoop Dogg

Snoop took a page from Nick’s book and created his own controversial white character — for a laugh.

So the only thing left to say now is, “who wore it best?”