Sports Illustrated Sends Blacks to Back of Book (photos)

More than 70 percent of professional athletes are African American, but you wouldn’t know it by reading the latest issue of Sport’s Illustrated’s much ballyhooed swimsuit issue.

The 184-page issue,  the magazine’s most profitable, boasts 18 models, but only two are African American and you won’t see them until  page 140.

The magazine is one of the industry’s top sellers, averaging more than one million newsstand sales along with 3.2 million issues that go out to subscribers.

Needless to say, getting into the pages of the coveted issue is a career maker, and models such as Brooklyn Decker, this year’s cover, and Bar Refaeli, 2009’s cover model, became household names after appearing in the magazine.

Sports Illustrated has been publishing the swimsuit issue continuously since 1964, and Tyra Banks has been the only African American model to grace the cover. She first appeared in 1996, but shared the cover with model Valeria Mazza, who is white.

No two models since then have shared a cover. All have been white. Only one other issue, 1994’s, featured multiple models.  Kathy Ireland, Elle MacPherson and Rachel Hunter appeared together.

Tyra repeated on the cover solo in 1997, but the photo caused a controversy because of allegations that Banks’  hips were photoshopped to make her look slimmer.

In this year’s issue, Jessica White, 26, is one of two African American models. She’s an industry veteran, who was signed, at 16, by the IMG agency and has represented such brands as CoverGirl, Chloé and Gap.

She has also worked the runways for such top designers as Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta, Marc Jacobs and Tommy Hilfiger. Tyra Banks dubbed her “the model of her generation.”

Tyra Banks shares her first SI cover, 1996.

She first appeared in the swimsuit issue in 2003 and has appeared in every issue since. Besides modeling swimsuits, she was also featured nude in body paint.

Although she’s as much a veteran as Decker and Refaeli she’s only featured in three of 140 photos.

White is joined by Damaris Lewis, 19, who appears on page 178.

Lewis debuted in the 2009 swimsuit Issue. A Brooklyn native, she has appeared in ad campaigns for Yves Sant Laurent and Victoria’s Secret’s PINK line.

This year, the magazine introduces six new “rookies” to the issue. None are African American. Sonia Dara, who is Indian, is the only minority. She’s also a Harvard student.

Some models appear in ads and on table of content pages early in the magazine, but the rookies lead off the photo feature starting on page 41. The lead model, Christine Teigen is part Thai and part Norwegian.

Decker’s spread begins on page 53 followed by a double page photo of Refaeli on page 55.

African-American models like Iman and Naomi Campbell broke through the race barrier long ago in fashion, but the under representation of minorities in modeling continues to be a contentious issue to this day.

In 2008, The Wall Street Journal did a major feature on the problem, noting what it called the “Thin White Line” in fashion.

And, Sports Illustrated isn’t alone in its oversight.  The most recent Vanity Fair magazine drew heat after publishing its Young Hollywood issue, which featured nine actresses on the cover.

Absent from the shoot were two of last year’s breakout stars, Gabourey Sidibe, from “Precious” and Zoe Saldana from “Avatar,” both of whom are African American.

Since Sports Illustrated covers an “industry” that makes its living off of black athletes, you would think it would go out of  of its way to make sure its best-selling issue was more representative.

Well, there’s always next year.

To see the issue online go to Sports Illustrated.

Check out this Year’s SI African American models. Click on photos to enlarge.