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Kanye West’s Casting Call For Yeezy Season 4 Raises Eyebrows

By Chanel Adams
Published on: 04:28 PST, Sep 4, 2016

Kanye West revealed his upcoming casting call for Yeezy Season 4 fashion show and people are not happy. The rapper took to Twitter to make the official announcement on Saturday afternoon, Sept. 3.

The casting call will take place on Sunday, Sept. 4 at Jack Studios in Manhattan from 11a.m. to 5 p.m., reported Pitchfork. However, West stated that he’s looking for “multiracial women only” and has asked that aspiring models should not wear makeup, instead “come as you are.” Below, you can read Kanye West’s tweet addressing the casting call.

The Yeezy Season 4 fashion show is set to debut on Wednesday, Sept. 7 during the first week of New York Fashion Week. The show’s location and time has yet to be announced on the CFDA Fashion Calendar.

Of course, Kanye West’s casting call has Twitter outraged, according to BET. The “Famous” rapper has addressed that he only wants mixed race women. Black Twitter has expressed their outrage, arguing that West is only looking for light-skinned women and will exclude any dark-skinned women at the casting call. Meanwhile, others have argued that “multiracial” could be an ambiguous term for a woman is of mixed race, regardless of their skin color.

“50 million of U.S. whites have a black ancestor. Some also have Native American ancestry. We’re all ‘mixed,'” one wrote.

“Did this post say multi-racial? Aren’t we all muti-racial considering our blood line isn’t pure tf / does it matter if he meant mixed or not? We are all transcendent from slave masters. We are mixed,” added one who appeared to be defending West.

“Now imagine if a white singer said ‘WHITE WOMEN ONLY?'” another angry user asked.

Some were even confused how West would determine if someone is “mixed race,” notes the Mirror.

“So like….how is he determining this? Is there a board to verify they multiracial?” one asked.

West has not yet responded to the backlash and it’s unlikely that he will. He is not the only artist in recent months to receive backlash for a racially insensitive casting call. Back in May, Nick Jonas found himself in hot water with Black Twitter when a casting call of his was posted on ActorsAccess.com and asked for “stunning female models” that looked like “the kind of girls Nick Jonas would have a crush on,” reports Seventeen.

But, that’s not all. The casting call then asked for models who are “mainly Caucasian” but have “an ethnic flare, like Indian or South American.” The announcement even said they were looking for someone who’s young and beautiful like Emily Ratajkowski.

Audrey Alford, the artist director of Ivy Theatre Company, noticed the casting call and announced it on Twitter, calling out both Nick Jonas and the casting director, Amy Gossels, for perpetuating the “ethnic but not too ethnic” beauty standards while crushing the hopes and dreams of women of color who adore Nick Jonas.

Audrey then received an email from Gary Marsh, founder of ActorsAccess.com, threatening legal action for her posting the casting call on Twitter. However, the casting call has been since removed from the website.

Whether or not Nick Jonas was directly involved with the creative input of this ad, it’s still not a good look for the singer. Jonas has never commented on the matter. It should also be discussed that casting call ads such as these have racially insensitive language.

He could very well debut new music at the Yeezy Season 4 show, seeing how his last shows went. At the Yeezy Season 3 show, the hip-hop artist premiered his latest album, The Life of Pablo, which first sparked controversy with the album’s opening track, “Famous.” For his Yeezy Season 1 collection, West debuted “Wolves,” while he premiered “Fade” during his second collection.

[Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Yeezy Season 3]

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