New York Fashion Week, which just concluded, celebrates designers of color like Jason Wu and Tracy Reese, and the crowds are pretty mixed. But the runways are pretty homogenous: About 4 out of 5 runway models are white. Why?

Observers cite a range of reasons, including a sort of racial and class coding that gives preference to young, white girls at the expense of non-white ones. The end result is that white models almost invariably dominate the pages of high-end magazines, as well as ad campaigns for premium products. More in this episode of Micropolis.