You’d think by now in 2020 that we’d be smart enough to maybe not do blackface or brown face. But alas, here we are with a fresh scandal where Bon Appetit boss Adam Rapoport is in some hot water after an old brown face photo has resurfaced and resulted in allegations of racism, which in turn caused even more controversy after a number of BIPOC chefs called the show out for its race problem and not being paid properly compared to their white colleagues.
Best get comfortable because this is quite the wild ride.
Speaking of racism, the GOAT team dive into the whole Lea Michele scandal on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
So this whole scandal began when a screengrab of a now-deleted Instagram post of Adam Rapoport and his wife dressed up as Puerto Ricans started going viral on Twitter.
It’s not a good look back then (the post was from around Halloween 2013) and it’s definitely not a good look now. What makes it worse is the number of people who actually liked this offensive photo of the Bon Appetit boss doing brown face.
Unsurprisingly, this old photo of Adam Rapoport in brown face caused a lot of backlash and allegations that the Bon Appetit editor-in-chief is a racist, all of which is made worse due to the racial tensions going on around the world at the moment.
Amidst the backlash, a number of recognisable BIPOC Bon Appetit employees spoke out about this controversy surrounding their boss, including associate editor Christina Chaey, research director Joseph Hernandez, writer Jesse Sparks, and contributor Priya Krishna, and former employee Alex Lau.
This whole Adam Rapoport/brown face scandal gets even worse after Sohla El-Waylly, one of the best chefs at Bon Appetit, shed subsequently some light on the lack of payment for BIPOC chefs and how it ties into Condé Nast’s (the parent company of Bon Appetit) race problem.
Taking to her Instagram stories, Sohla writes how she was hired as an assistant editor on a mere $50K ($71K AUD) salary to assist “mostly white editors” with much less experience than her. She then reveals how she’s “pushed in front of video as a display of diversity” and doesn’t get paid any money for her on-camera appearances (nor do any of the people of colour in the videos) while her white coworkers do.
Sohla finishes her post by demanding Adam Rapoport’s resignation from Bon Appetit while calling on Condé Nast to fix its race problem by making sure BIPOC are “given fair titles, fair salaries, and compensation for video appearances.”
This last sentiment was subsequently echoed by a number of Bon Appetit chefs.
Following all these revelations about Bon Appetit‘s inequality and race problem, and calls for Adam Rapoport’s resignation, Condé Nast has issued out an official statement (via Variety) claiming that Sohla’s allegations of white editors and chefs being paid for their on-camera work while people of colour are not are untrue.
As for the cast and crew of Bon Appetit, Molly Baz, Carla Lalli Music, Andy Baraghani, Claire Saffitz, Alex Delany and Brad Leone have all refused to participate in any new videos until the pay problem is resolved. Some of the cast have appeared in videos that have yet to be released but they’re demanding for those to not be aired.
With all that’s going on around the world, it’s truly disappointing to hear about all the inequality going on behind-the-scenes at Bon Appetit, especially since it’s become the go-to comfort watch for many people.
But this sort of thing needs to be called out. Having a diverse cast of chefs on-camera is a start but the off-camera stuff needs to also be up to scratch, and it starts with treating all the BIPOC chefs at Bon Appetit as equals on all fronts.
UPDATE
Well, it seems like whole Bon Appetit controversy is had some big consequences already because Adam Rapoport has stepped down from his role as editor-in-chief.
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