Jenice Armstrong: P.Diddy stirs a firestorm

HAD I BEEN even the least bit interested in auditioning to be in the newest ad for Ciroc vodka featuring P. Diddy, it wouldn't have mattered. I didn't meet the qualifications.

And it wasn't because I'm a middle-aged newspaper columnist.

Actually, the reason's much darker.

An e-mail casting call was specific about the shade of black women that producers were interested in hiring for the $35-an-hour gig. They had to be "light skinned."

Yep.

It may be the Age of Obama, but this kind of racial preference persists. Under race, the e-mail listed "white, Hispanic or light skinned African American." No Michelle Obama look-alikes need apply. And no Angela Bassetts, Oprah Winfreys or Alfre Woodards, either.

As you might imagine, this hasn't been going over well with Diddy's fan base. The blogosphere has brutalized him over it. "Diddy disses dark skinned women," one headline reads.

Diddy, or someone posing as him, apparently tried to head things off with a blast on Twitter last week and a link to photos of the entertainer with women of different complexions. "ATTN MISINFORMED BLOGGERS! Here R just a few pics frm my last3 CIROC+IAM KING campaigns feat. women of all shades!"

I don't believe Diddy, aka Sean Combs, knew about the casting call. "He knows better," agreed Rick Jones, a booking agent with the Atlanta-based Imperative Talent Management, which was involved with the casting. "We've gotten a ton of calls and hate mail and all kinds of things."

I'm not surprised. The skin-color thing among African-Americans is the proverbial genie in the bottle. And it's hard to tamp down the Spike Lee "School Daze"-style jiggabo vs. wannabe carrying-on that gets stirred up once it's released. All these years after the divisions first started on slave plantations, the subject of light-skinned privilege is still a touchy subject. The wounds from the two-tier system that developed as white slave masters gave better jobs to their offspring still exist and are perpetuated, often by blacks themselves. What brown-skinned woman hasn't heard the back-handed compliment, "You're pretty to be a dark-skinned girl."

I was reminded of how much work still needs to be done in terms of teaching kids about self-acceptance, while watching a piece yesterday on "Good Morning America," which revisited a decades-old landmark experience with black children and dolls. During the 1940s, 63 percent of the black students surveyed preferred the white doll. Most also said the white doll was nicer. Fast forward. Six decades and one black president later, there has been improvement - but not much. This time around, 42 percent of the black children preferred the black doll.

"Black children develop perceptions about their race very early," Harvard professor William Julius Wilson told "Good Morning America." "They are not oblivious to this. There's still that residue. There's still the problem, the overcoming years, decades of racial and economic subordination."

And it gets reinforced by images that surround them - by music videos, by TV commercials and by color preferences they witness in their own families and in social settings.

But back to the Diddy affair, Black Planet posted a release from Ciroc saying: "CIROC Vodka has nothing whatsoever to do with this inappropriate and offensive casting call, which was done without the brand's knowledge or consent. We are currently investigating how this occurred. CIROC Vodka has created a brand that defines sophisticated celebration for all consumers, and in no way condones this practice."

The rest of the cast and crew shouldn't, either. *

Send e-mail to heyjen@phillynews.com. My blog: http://go.philly.com/heyjen.