A Muslim journalist was misidentified as a different Muslim woman in Vogue, and her post about it is heartbreaking
Although American society is (slowly) becoming more inclusive, discrimination and misrepresentation still happen daily for people of color. Recently, Muslim-American journalist Noor Tagouri discovered she was misidentified as a completely different Muslim woman in profile in Vogue, and her experience was caught on camera. On January 17th, Tagouri shared a video to Instagram that showed her excitedly opening the magazine to her photo. She showed off the picture of herself dressed in Givenchy to a friend, laughing with delight—until she noticed that the caption referred to her as “actor, director, and model Noor Bukhari.”
In her Instagram post, Tagouri wrote that she was “heartbroken and devastated.”
"My name is Noor Tagouri, I’m a journalist, activist, and speaker," she wrote. "I have been misrepresented and misidentified MULTIPLE times in media publications - to the point of putting my life in danger. I never, EVER expected this from a publication I respect SO much and have read since I was a child."
She continued:
“Misrepresentation and misidentification is a constant problem if you are Muslim in America. And as much as I work to fight this, there are moments like this where I feel defeated.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BsvNDpxBEbZ
Shortly after Tagouri shared her post, Vogue posted an apology to its Instagram page.
"We were thrilled at the chance to photograph Tagouri and shine a light on the important work she does, and to have misidentified her is a painful misstep," the magazine wrote. "We also understand that there is a larger issue of misidentification in media—especially among nonwhite subjects. We will try to be more thoughtful and careful in our work going forward, and we apologize for any embarrassment this has caused Tagouri and Bukhari."
As HuffPost notes, Raw Story mistakenly used photos of Tagouri in a 2017 news story about Noor Salman, the wife of the Pulse Nightclub shooter. At the time, she said in a Newsy video: “I immediately felt a fear that I would be associated with the terrible suffering he caused in Orlando.”
According to CNN, Tagouri recently produced a docuseries about the U.S. sex trade. In 2016, she became the first woman in hijab to be featured in Playboy. As Tagouri wrote in her post, misidentifying people of color is not only disappointing, it can have very real—and even dangerous—consequences. We hope Vogue uses this as a learning moment, because this was, quite simply, unacceptable.
