People Magazine, Gwyneth Paltrow and White Nationalism: A response to Concerned "Negroes"

Will You Please Let White Folks Have “Gwyneth Paltrow”? A Response to Black Folks and the People Magazine’s “World’s Most Beautiful Woman”

Dr. Matthew C. Stelly

Some of my friends, male and female, who are supposed to be conscious and aware, have been calling me about the fact that People magazine’s “Sepcial Double Issue” recently named Gwyneth Paltrow as “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman.” Their concerns were that it was just another case of People magazine being “racist” and naming white people for everything. They cited “The World’s Sexiest Man” being given to the likes of Brad Pitt, Mel Gibson, Ryan Gosling and so on. These are their concerns.

What was my response? I said, “so what? It’s just in time for “Iron Man 3. The people who run Hollywood are the same ones that impact upon these magazines and own these television stations. She’s a member of that clique. It’s about racial preservation. Grow up.” I saw the magazine. Under her name it stays that she has a “timeless look.” Really? Let’s see her in five years (or less) when she – like others of her ilk – start turning into pink raisins. White women still wonder how black women stay so youthful looking and have gotten to the point where they refuse to try to guess the age of black women (“Black don’t crack,” they say).

But, back to the subject.

It’s called People magazine and as an historian and a scholar, I know that when whites say “people” they really mean “white people,” just like when (white) men write about “mankind” they also include women. It’s all between the lines but they seem to see the importance of promoting their race, naming them the experts, giving them awards and acting as if they invented the air. So the question I had was “why is this the case”?

Then it came to me.

People magazine promotes white folks for white folks because they have so little respect for people of color, that they know that most black, brown, red and yellow people won’t have the guts to say anything because of people of color work for THEM. Nobody can say Gwyneth Paltrow is not nice looking. But she’s nice looking for a white girl. Blonde, pale and boney – that’s apparently how white men like their women. And as such, they have the right to glorify and pay homage to that aesthetic. It’s THEIR magazine and THEIR market. Why are black people so upset about these and past selections?

Look at what white folks have to cover up: white government created the worst deficit in history, white boys are the majority of mass murderers, white women are behind the billion dollar prostitution industry, white priests are the majority of child molesters, white women marry outside of their race more than other women do (with Asian women a close second), white men started and got this country involved in every single war, white folks are ripping off the Medicare system, more white folks are on welfare than black folks, more white folks steal money than black folks, and white folks make movies that show other folks how to attack America and make bombs.

White folks insult other racial groups than any other group, white folks crash more planes than anyone else, white folks show their ass on movies and television than anyone else, more white kids have ADHD and cerebal palsy than black kids, more white men are rapists than black men, white men created legalized racial separation in the United States, white men were behind the Tuskegee experiment regardless of who carried it out, white cops were the reason for the majority of the 1960s riots, white men were behind the creation of AIDS, white men have destroyed more nations in the name of “democracy” than any other group.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. As a scholar I’ve studied it, but we have to realize that if I know it, then THEY knew it long before. What’s the best way to take attention off of your own crimes? To point to something “good” that you’ve done. When South Africa decided to change its ways (thanks to black people), the first thing the new government did was relax the anti-miscegenation laws. Those are laws that prevented the mixing of the races. So they allowed black men to date and marry white women.

When this country decided to pretend to desegregate, one of the last laws that fell was the race-mixture laws. A justification for segregation was “the key to the classroom is the key to the bedroom.” So in trying to show “change,” here came those in power marching out their women as a decoy. During the 1960s it was the same thing: black power was offset by placing white women in the Black Panther Party and of course they fell for it. Whenever things get bad, here they come marching out the snow bunnies. It’s working on the middle eastern men, many of them with high ranking officials that are marrying American white women. Movies are being shipped out all over the world featuring scantily clad white girls in the name of “fashion.”

In the name of “feminism” the white woman plays into the system’s hands. She wears 8-inch heels that she can’t run in, micro-miniskirts that she can’t even sit down in, low cut blouses that she’s not even comfortable in and of course, her man telling her what the “ideal weight” is, which in turn, gives her health problems galore. She’s the system’s tool and in many cases, may not even know about it.

Gwyneth Paltrow? People magazine? Brothers and sisters, this is their system at work. This is how they do it because one-on-one, they can’t kick our asses. I’ll put the average sister up in a boxing match against the average white dude any day. I guarantee: he will get his ASS kicked. That’s how we do it.

Unfortunately, the struggle is not a one one one slugfest. It’s an institutional arrangement that pits hordes of them against one or two of us – like they do our children when they lock them up in order to make money for themselves. Like they do our adults when they segregate us and then feed our children genetically altered food that makes them obese and sickly. The media (the Fourth Estate) has its own role and that is to serve as a smokescreen for the real problems of the day. The progressive thinking black people that phoned me to tell me about the People Magazine decision could have been using that time exposing the abuse of Community Development Block Grants, the uselessness of the NAACP, racial zoning, or the manipulation of black communities by Arab and Korean business persons.

More power to People Magazine. Maybe this will make Ebony, Essence and others more relevant and responsive to black people’s needs instead of drinking the warm spit of white advertisers. Until then, shut up complaining when white folks do what they do in the name of racial preservation.

We should follow suit.