Series on Press and Minorities

I have been reading with great interest the Times series about American journalism’s shortcomings in dealing with minorities and its attempts to stop portraying nonwhites solely as demons and villains.

Exactly how fledgling these attempts still are became quite clear to me when I saw the article in the View section headlined, “The New Models: Nonconventional Looks Are in Vogue on the Runway and in Photo Layouts” (Dec. 14). The article presented the use of nonwhite models as representative of a transformation in the modeling industry, where now “the good, the bad, even the downright ugly” can walk designer runways and grace the pages of magazines such as Vogue, Elle and Mademoiselle. All-American good looks” obviously means white, and all the others, the author has implicitly called “the bad” and “the ugly.”

MURIEL C. McCLENDON

Los Angeles