Lack of Diversity Among Rockettes

An opinion piece in the The New York Times called out the lack of diversity among the Rockettes. The Rockettes and the Christmas Spectacular show are a longstanding tradition of Christmas time in New York City. Ginia Bellafante points out that despite its longevity and prominence in New York, the show is still overwhelmingly white with a white audience and stated: “there were more camels on stage than black women.” She points out statistics from the Rockettes that only 10% of women in the group are women of color and points out that the founder of the group Russell Market had very racist views and wanted the group to look homogeneous aka white and even prevented a woman from tanning to maintain this look. Bellafante also ends the piece by pointing out the sexism in the group as instead of mentioning Jennifer Jones becoming the first black Rockette, the history page of the group discusses the group appearing in a commercial promoting L’eggs pantyhose.

This piece was really well-done and really uses the Rockettes group to illustrate how ingrained white supremacy and heteropatriarchy are in society. The fact that in the 21^st century the group still has very little diversity shows how many of the attitudes of its founder are still present in the group. Representation is important and in such a diverse place like New York City, it is a shame such an important Christmas tradition does not reflect the diversity of the city or the United States.