Essay 3092

Quick cuts in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Motorola plans to eliminate 4,000 jobs by next year, adding to the 3,500 people laid off in January. It’s ironic that the company behind the Razr is cutting so many bodies.

• Young Jeezy was arrested for disorderly conduct at an Atlanta strip club. This satisfies the recommended daily allowance of rappers arrested for disorderly conduct at strip clubs.

Essay 3091

Essay 3090

This diversity ad is 100% stupid.

Essay 3089

Taking offense in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Martha Stewart is under fire for attempting to trademark the name “Katonah” for a line of home furnishings. Members of the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation and other Indian tribes claim it’s the name of a 17th-century chief. A representative for the Cayuga Nation said, “If it’s being done for profit, then of course it’s offensive. Of all the names in the world and all the words, why can’t she pick something out that’s not offensive?” A spokesperson for Stewart insisted the name was chosen to honor the people and community. Another Indian representative replied, “We trust that Martha Stewart intended no malice in seeking to have her corporation trademark the name of one of our great ancestral leaders, but for her to say she is doing so to honor him and our tribe is absurd, especially when it is being done solely for profit.” Stewart is probably handcrafting a special peace pipe right now.

• Miami Beach cops are wondering, “Where you at?” in regards to rapper and Boost Mobile endorser Fat Joe. The police arrested a suspect who allegedly shot and killed two men during a Memorial Day fight on South Beach, and Fat Joe may be a witness. Perhaps authorities will use the new Boost Mobile GPS service to locate the rotund rapper.

Essay 3088

Essay 3087

Leading a new conversation on diversity with the same old minorities—and no White folks in sight.

Essay 3086

Door Open for Whites at Black Colleges

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Michael Roberts has done more than study finance at historically black Benedict College. He’s played football for the college, joined a fraternity and proposed to his girlfriend.

Pretty typical, except that Roberts is one of the few whites who attend one of the nation’s traditionally black colleges.

“When I tell people I attend Benedict, they comment, ‘Well, you’re not black,’” Roberts said. “But it’s still a school, I’m still getting an education. You don’t have to be black to attend.”

Officials for the nation’s historically black schools say Roberts’ experience is not that unusual. White students are being actively recruited, and attracting them has become easier for a variety of reasons, including the offer of scholarships and lower tuitions than those paid at non-black schools.

Private, historically black schools cost an average of $10,000 less per year than their traditionally white counterparts, according to the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.

The head of the association says lower costs are not the only thing the schools have to offer. Whites who attend the schools are preparing for an “increasingly black and brown world,” said Lezli Baskerville, the association’s president and CEO.

“If you want to know how to live in one, you can’t grow up in an all-white neighborhood, go to a predominantly white school, white cultural and social events, go to a predominantly white university and then thrive in a world that is today more black, more brown than before,” Baskerville said.

White students say they’ve taken valuable experiences from their time at black colleges. Skin color, the students say, is much more of a factor away from the campuses than it is on them.

“You should get to know people based on who they are,” Roberts said. “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”

The first of what are now called historically black colleges and universities was Cheyney University in Pennsylvania, which was founded in 1837 so that blacks -- barred from attending many traditional schools -- could get advanced educations. Since then, more than 100 such institutions have been established in the U.S. and about 285,000 students attend the schools each year.

Lawsuits have forced many of the schools -- about half of them are public -- to diversify their student bodies, Baskerville said. In the 2005-06 school year, nearly 10 percent of their students were white, according to her association's data.

Scholarships, new programs and recruitment have attracted dozens of whites to schools such as South Carolina State University, where they account for around 4 percent of the student body, said university spokeswoman Erica Prioleau. The school has a minority affairs office for white students, similar to those found for non-white students at traditionally white schools.

A handful of whites attend Atlanta’s private Morehouse College. The school hasn’t been aggressively recruiting whites, so they make a “conscious decision” to attend, said Sterling Hudson, dean of admissions and records for the college.

Steven Schukei did just that. The Morehouse alumnus, who now works as a vice president in technology for New York-based investment firm Goldman Sachs, said he gained a perspective that he wasn’t offered while growing up and going to school in Nebraska, Colorado and South Carolina.

“There was always this sort of disjoint between what I thought I should be learning and what I actually did learn,” said Schukei, 30. “And I thought Morehouse would be an opportunity to expand my horizons and to see a different perspective on the world that we live in.”

Schukei remembers Morehouse as a “refuge from the rest of the world where what race you are doesn’t really matter.”

“Conversations that people typically wouldn’t feel comfortable having about race can happen on Morehouse’s campus where they just wouldn’t happen anyplace else,” he said.

Essay 3085

Childish behavior in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A study by pediatric researchers at the University of Washington shows about 40 percent of 3-month-olds watch up to 45 minutes of TV or videos per day. Parents are apparently allowing kids to watch for educational purposes. “I wouldn’t be so upset about this if I thought parents were doing it because they needed a break to take a shower or make dinner,” said a co-author of the study. “What I’m troubled by is the notion that parents think it’s good for their kids. … Yes, the baby is staring at the screen, but it’s wrong to think the child likes it. He or she has no choice in the matter. He’s hard-wired to pay attention to anything that is fast-moving, brightly colored or loud.” Jerry Springer must be extremely popular with the tots.

• The crazy kids at Conifer High School in Colorado sparked controversy by publishing their yearbook with photos of students smoking marijuana and chugging booze. The idiot student editor said she regrets not balancing the party shots with pics of non-drug users. But she probably couldn’t find any sober students on campus.

• A new British study shows teens with larger allowances are more likely to become problem drinkers. Somebody should create an international exchange program with Conifer High School.

Essay 3084

Essay 3083

Océ takes cliché to a higher level.

Essay 3082

Two letters from Adweek.com, followed by comments from MultiCultClassics…

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Letters: Debating the Merits of Reviving

The Iconic Uncle Ben

Just saw [Barbara Lippert’s] Critique of the Uncle Ben’s character icon update [“Uncle Ben’s Problem,” April 9] and had to write to applaud your insights. What we see happen frequently with clients is the temptation to contemporize a venerable brand icon by somehow making it witty, hip or trendy. We call it “putting sunglasses on or turning the baseball hat around backwards.”

There are countless examples of classic, timeless characters who have undergone similar makeovers only to end up just feeling wrong to us for all the reasons you outline in your article—the deep emotional resonance these characters have with the audience. By ignoring that, or not working within that story framework, such endeavors feel sure to miss the mark.

There is some clever conceptual thinking in this new Uncle Ben’s campaign to be sure, and perhaps the subsequent advertising will go a step further to unpack some of the heavy baggage Uncle Ben carries as well. For example, how did he get from the rice field to the boardroom? What is the story here? Clearly there is one, and with a lot of emotion surrounding it.

It’s a common reaction for clients to want to avoid the inherent conflict and emotion in some of these highly charged icons (by subtly subtracting poundage, as you say in relation to Aunt Jemima, or removing a kerchief as if we didn’t notice). What marketers often fail to understand is that, in the world of story, conflict is a source of energy. If the conflict is embraced, the story can get a big boost of energy and authenticity. Otherwise, the energy tends to leak out.

Here’s hoping that Uncle Ben gets the respect he deserves, and in a way that realizes his potential as a true, dimensional character.

Amy Hassler
Business Development Manager
Character LLC
Portland, Ore.


Barbara [Lippert] makes a slightly off-based assessment of the use of “Uncle.” Her claim is that Uncle was used because the honor of Mr. was denied. My understanding has been the opposite. Mr. was often a cold and formal term blacks used toward whites, while Uncle referred kinship and familial bonding.

Nick Peterson
Assistant Dean of Admission
Franklin & Marshall College
Lancaster, Pa

-----------------------------------

Nick Peterson makes a slightly off-based assessment of Lippert’s assessment. Peterson is not entirely wrong with this statement: “Mr. was often a cold and formal term blacks used toward whites, while Uncle referred kinship and familial bonding.” Among Blacks, for example, it’s not uncommon to refer to a close family friend as your “Auntie.” But the Uncle Ben context derives from the historical way Whites referred to Blacks.

The Museum of Public Relations in New York presented an online retrospective on Moss H. Kendrix, a public relations pioneer who influenced the ways that Blacks are portrayed through advertising. Here’s a quote from the retrospective regarding Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima:

“Many African Americans object to the term “Uncle” (or “Aunt”) when used in this context, as it was a southern form of address first used with older enslaved peoples, since they were denied use of courtesy titles.”

Here’s another quote on the subject from Wikipedia:

“In years past in the American South, whites commonly referred to elderly black men as ‘uncle,’ though they were not blood relations. The practice was considered patronizing and demeaning and largely has been discontinued.”

Sorry, but you appear to be incorrect, Mr. Peterson.

[Click on the essay title above to view the Moss H. Kendrix retrospective.]

Essay 3081

Essay 3080

Patriotic and patronizing.

Essay 3079

From The New York Times…

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At BET, Fighting the Rerun

By GERALDINE FABRIKANT

Last week, executives from Black Entertainment Television walked through the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, laying out the plans for the annual BET Music Awards on June 26. The broadcast has become the highest-rated award show on cable, topping the MTV Music Awards, ESPN’s ESPY Awards and the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards.

This year’s host is Mo’nique, a popular comedian who is the host of “Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School,” a reality show that draws a large African-American audience. But “Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School” isn’t on BET. Instead, it has become a big hit for VH1, a cable channel that, like BET, is owned by Viacom.

Mo’nique’s presence on the BET podium illustrates one of the channel’s persistent struggles. Despite being the first and certainly the largest African-American cable channel, BET has developed few of its own marketable stars and virtually no breakout programs. It relies instead on reruns, movies and music videos for the bulk of its lineup.

BET’s chief executive, Debra L. Lee, has tried to reverse that trend, this year increasing the channel’s production budget 50 percent and plunging into original programming with 16 new shows planned for the new season.

“What we have found over the years is that acquired and licensed programming has not done as well as we would have liked,” Ms. Lee said. “It was very clear that we had to invest more in original programming.”

Ms. Lee joined BET in 1986 as general counsel and vice president, working closely with its founder, Robert L. Johnson. She was named president and chief executive when he left the network in 2005. Although she did not have direct programming experience, the programming department had reported to her since 1995. A calm, businesslike executive, she quickly brought in a team to “take BET to the next level,” she said in a recent interview at Viacom’s Manhattan headquarters, where she commutes from BET’s Washington offices.

Ms. Lee’s attempts to remake BET come at time when all cable channels are contending with an increasingly tough landscape as the battle for market share among the mature networks intensifies. BET’s ratings were strong in 2006 but tumbled in the first quarter of this year.

And while the channel has had some success with original series like “American Gangster” and “Lil’ Kim: Countdown to Lockdown,” they have been overshadowed by some recent hits on other Viacom cable channels. These include Comedy Central’s “Chappelle’s Show” and VH1’s “Flavor of Love” and two spinoffs: “I Love New York” and “Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School.”

[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]

Essay 3078

We value diversity. But not original copywriting and art direction.

Essay 3077

The Wall Street Journal is relaunching its famed Creative Leaders Challenge, proclaiming “you have the unique opportunity to honor an influential member of the advertising community by nominating your own Creative Leader for the series.” Based on the website, the contest seems challenged to identify any non-White candidates. Females are in short supply too.

Scrolling through the list of past honorees reveals the stereotypical lineup of Old White Men, with rare sprinklings of White Women and International Non-Whites. Caroline Jones, formerly of Mingo-Jones Advertising, appears to be the sole Black person to win the contest (Jones took the prize in 1990).

Given the boom in Latino marketing, with shops recording unprecedented growth, you’d think the segment would merit at least one entrant. Don Coleman of GlobalHue managed to score victories in the two largest account moves this year—Wal-Mart and Verizon. A truly unique vote should be cast for Patricia Gatling of the New York City Commission on Human Rights for her work with Madison Avenue executives.

Click on the essay title above to learn more.

[Thanks to Bill Green at makethelogobigger.blogspot.com for spotting the contest.]

Essay 3076

Using contrived stock photography in diversity ads: priceless.

Essay 3075

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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War on drugs kills blacks

By MONROE ANDERSON

I have two T-shirts that date back to last century. Both are black and white. One has a silhouetted head of an African-American man within the cross hairs of a gunsight. Underneath the head is a big, contrasting stencil that reads: “Endangered Species.” The second T-shirt repeats “Endangered Species” 16 times as alternating black, then white, banners. Dominating its center is a similar silhouette caught in similar cross hairs.

Although I’ve owned the two tees for 15 years, they’re like new. I’ve worn them only three or four times each. The stares I get from some who see me in my shirts take me out of my comfort zone. The looks that aren’t blank strike me as either too approving or too ill-at-ease. But between the warm weather and the cold-blooded murders of Tramaine Gibson and Blair Holt, I’ve felt the urge to take my T-shirts out of storage and start spreading their message.

Gibson, a married father of two young children, was shot to death last week during a stickup at Illinois Federal Service Savings and Loan because he didn’t know the combination to the vault. He was 23. Holt, a high school honor student, was shot to death 17 days ago on a CTA bus, protecting a female classmate from a gun-wielding teenager. He was 16. So is his alleged shooter.

Their front-page tragedies put faces on debilitating statistics. Black American males between the ages of 15 and 24 have the highest firearm homicide rate of any demographic group in our nation. Ten times more black males are shot to death in that age range than white males. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 52 percent of this nation’s gun-murder victims are African American, even though we represent less than 13 percent of the total population. If all Americans were killed with firearms at the same rate as African-American males between the ages of 15 and 24, there would be more than a quarter of a million gun murders in the United States annually.

Make no mistake about it: This is still that same sad story of black-on-black crime. But the magnitude is new. I attribute it to the “war on drugs.” Two decades ago, Congress went on a “get tough on drugs” rampage. The results have visited devastating collateral damage on the African-American community. Black men have unfairly and disproportionately been targeted as enemy combatants in this trumped-up war. A black man is 13 times more likely to go to state prison than a white man.

And while drug use is consistent across all racial groups, blacks and Latinos are much more likely to get busted, prosecuted and given long sentences for drug offenses, according to the latest report by Human Rights Watch. That explains why African Americans, who make up 13 percent of all drug users, are 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those sent to prison.

Time served for petty crime helped cultivate a criminal culture in too many black communities. The residue is seen and heard in hip-hop music. It’s studied in school test scores. It’s reflected in the demise of the black family unit. Right now, there are more than 1 million African-American men in prison; more black men are in jail here than the rest of the world combined. Ex-cons bring lessons learned in prison back to the community.

So, exposure to thug thought cultivates thug culture, leads to the thug life and ends in thug deaths. Most times that means one thug killing another. But increasingly, the good ones, the Tramaine Gibsons and the Blair Holts, fall victim.

One of my sons could be next -- or one of yours. We need to stop this cancer from further spreading. We need to scale down the raids and scale back the sentencing on nonviolent offenses. We need to put our energies into educating to prevent incarcerating.

So this time I won’t be putting my T-shirts away. I need to wear my alarm on my chest. That’s one small way I hope to make others aware of what’s going on. I’ll think of others.

Essay 3074

Legal beefs in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s are suing Jack In The Box, charging the fast feeder with running misleading advertising. Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s claim new commercials imply their Angus burgers are made from cow anus. “They’re not being funny,” said the chief executive of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. “They need to stop misleading people about what Angus beef is.” This guy needs to get his head out of his anus.

• Fired Wal-Mart marketing executive Julie Roehm continues her desperate legal battles with her former boss, now charging the retailer’s CEO with breaking the corporate ethics policy. Wal-Mart fired Roehm for reasons including having an affair with co-worker Sean Womack—a no-no in the company policies guidebook. But Roehm claimed the CEO accepted trips and deals on yachts and jewelry from vendors. The “boss-broke-the-rules-too” excuse seems like a desperate legal tactic. In the end, it looks like Roehm is going from Womack blower to whistle blower.

• Rapper MIMS was a no-show at an event in Chelsea, prompting the promoter to file a $7.5 million civil-rights suit claiming the artist blew off the gig because she’s a woman. The promoter charges MIMS didn’t arrive “because of his discriminatory attitude” toward women, and he “has promoted and traded upon a pattern of conduct involving the belittlement and degradation of females as ‘bitches’ and ‘hoes.’” The woman must be using the same legal counsel as Julie Roehm.

• A New York high school student was charged with a hate crime for removing a Sikh student’s turban and cutting his hair. The two students had been arguing when the accused kid dragged his victim into the bathroom and forcibly performed the haircut. '”The defendant is not accused of some schoolhouse prank, but an attack on the fundamental beliefs of his victim’s religion and his freedom to worship freely,” said Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown. What happened to the good old days when students only gave wedgies and dunked heads into toilets?

Essay 3073

This SunnyD ad deserves an A—for asinine.

Essay 3072

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

------------------------------------

Community approach helps promote healthy choices
Research project on deadly breast cancer among black women reaps understanding

BY SARAH GEHLERT

One of the biggest health-care problems confronting this country is the disparity in health between racial groups. The diseases blacks and whites suffer as well as their responses to the same disease are often different. In many cases, researchers are unable to study those differences completely because distrust limits people’s interest in becoming involved in important medical research such as clinical trials.

We have found, however, that involving the members of the community as partners in research can make a big difference in overcoming this gap.

In the spring of 2003, we appealed to black men and women in the South Side Chicago community to be part of a series of focus groups for a research project at the University of Chicago aimed at better understanding why black women develop breast cancer earlier than white women, and why this disease is so much more fatal to black women. Nearly 1,400 South Side residents responded to that call and their insights have guided our research at the University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research.

We want to thank those who participated in the focus groups. By going out in the community and learning the challenges people face, we have gained important perspectives from the people whose health we are trying to improve.

We wanted to know more about what conditions in neighborhoods “get under the skin” of African-American women to produce the factors that prompt genes to change in a way that brings on deadly breast cancer for black women. We heard many stories as we sat with men and women in church halls and community centers throughout the South Side.

We learned more about what goes on in neighborhoods that affects health in a good or bad way. We learned about neighborhood associations and organizations that protect health. We heard about the vacant buildings in their neighborhood where troublemakers lurk. We learned about the problems black men and women have dealing with the health-care system. And over and over again, we learned how racial discrimination is an unwelcome companion to black women’s everyday lives.

We heard about the people’s love for their children, and their concern that the youth in their community aren’t getting the right information, particularly at school, about ways to lead a healthy life. Instead of learning about their bodies and ways of staying fit, the students are learning about health by listening to lists of risky behaviors that they should avoid.

In all, we talked with more than 500 men and women in 49 small group gatherings. We invited them to a daylong South Side Breast Cancer Summit, which was held at the Metropolitan Apostolic Community Church in April 2005. We worked together to create an action plan, which we are now implementing.

One of our first goals from that conference has been accomplished: a DVD “Livin’ in Your Body 4 Life” on teen health that is now being shown in schools and churches and on cable television. Again, working with the community paid off. High school students helped us in the formatting of the project, in choosing the music and in deciding on ways in which the information was presented. The resulting program far exceeded anything we could have produced on our own.

But there is still much more to be done. The courageous black women and men who joined us as our partners in the fight against deadly breast cancer have shown us the way. We need to agitate at City Hall to get the abandoned buildings in neighborhoods torn down, we need to speak out against the causes of violence and support people in the community who are trying to end it, we need to insist on more safe spaces for people to gather and children to play. We must stay vigilant against the continued menace of racism. Together we can make changes.

[Sarah Gehlert is a professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and director of the University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research]

Essay 3071

On message with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Grey’s Anatomy star Isaiah Washington filmed a public awareness spot to make amends for his anti-gay slurs. “Words have power. The power to express love, happiness and joy. They also have the power to heal,” said Washington in the spot. “When you use words that demean a person because of their sexual orientation, race or gender, you send a message of hate.” Or a message of camaraderie to Michael Richards, Mel Gibson and Don Imus.

• Actress Keira Knightley won nearly $6,000 for her libel suit against a newspaper that made nasty remarks about her bony physique. One story showed the actress in a bikini with a headline reading, “If Pictures Like This One of Keira Carried a Health Warning, My Darling Daughter Might Have Lived.” Another piece highlighted Knightley’s denials of battling anorexia. The actress’ lawyer said, “[Knightley] found the suggestions all the more offensive as she has freely admitted publicly in the past that a member of her family suffered from anorexia and she is well aware of the devastating effects eating disorders can have.” Gee, Knightley seems a little thin-skinned.

Essay 3070

Essay 3069

Do you really want your State Farm Agent to jog with you?

Essay 3068

From The Washington Post…

---------------------------

Diversity Panel in Charles Gears Up
County Seeks Ways to Quell Racial Tensions

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer

As the population has grown in Charles County, so too have the tensions.

In recent months, the Southern Maryland community has seen an outbreak of racist graffiti. This comes after an unsettling incident three years ago in which 27 homes under construction were destroyed or heavily damaged in the largest arson fire in state history.

Now, Charles officials, hoping to get ahead of the tensions, have launched a Blue Ribbon Commission on Diversity to examine population changes and explore ways to unite residents across racial and socioeconomic lines.

“There are people who are coming into the county bringing in new ideas and perspectives, and they may be clashing with or not in sync with people who have lived here all their lives,” said county Commissioner Edith J. Patterson (D-Pomfret), who spearheaded the creation of the blue-ribbon panel.

The committee of 25 people from different ethnic and economic backgrounds met for the first time Wednesday.

Indeed, Charles has changed from its rural, heavily white roots. An influx of African Americans has driven nearly all of the county's population growth since 2000, according to U.S. Census estimates. Black residents, a number of whom have moved in from neighboring Prince George’s County, now make up about 34 percent of Charles’s 139,000 residents.

The growth has brought problems with it. Just last weekend, police found “KKK” spray-painted on a home shed in White Plains. That incident was preceded by a number of hate crimes in which “White Power” and other inflammatory and derogatory slogans were scrawled in paint on homes, public school buildings, playground equipment and a church in the past year. Some of the alleged perpetrators were teenagers seeking attention, police said.

And in perhaps the most stinging example, more than two dozen homes in the upscale Hunters Brooke subdivision, many of them bought by black families, were destroyed or damaged after being set on fire in December 2004.

Five men were charged in the arson and have been convicted. All five are white. One of them testified that he targeted the development because a large number of African Americans were buying homes there.

“I think that there were too many events occurring in Charles County,” Patterson said. “There just had to be a stop to this. … Some places don’t want to acknowledge that there are challenges and issues, but I think that we should be applauded for saying, ‘Yep, these are issues and we are doing something about it.’”

Commissioners President Wayne Cooper (D-At Large) added, “We’re not going to bring things to closure until we start addressing things head on.”

County leaders applauded U.S. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), whose district includes Charles, for helping the House pass legislation this month that would expand federal hate-crime protections and increase penalties for attackers. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill.

In Charles, the county commissioners recruited former New York congressman Major R. Owens (D), who as a leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus gained experience in addressing racial tensions, to lead the blue-ribbon commission and serve as an unpaid adviser.

Forming the committee is a “preventative social action,” Owens said in a telephone interview. He said the arson and hate crimes “had the seeds of something much worse,” and it is important that the government prepare for dramatic reactions from residents to the demographic changes.

“You can anticipate that there will be problems,” Owens said. “If you do anticipate it, why not prepare for it the way you do everything else?”

Owens added that Charles is “at a stage now where we should go beyond just the functions of government which deal with physical things like crime and fire and deal with the human elements there, which are in many ways more complicated, but if allowed to explode out of control, can create quite a number of problems for a locality for a long time.”

Alvin Cohen, 75, a retired college professor who lives in Waldorf, was appointed to the commission and said he hopes the group can address the tensions.

“The county is no longer rural,” he said. “It is no longer farming. It is no longer predominantly white. It is no longer just Methodist and Catholic. So there’s a tremendous amount of diversity. That creates some problems.”

Essay 3067

Paying the bills in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A judge ordered O.J. Simpson to hand over loot that a Florida lawyer was holding for him in order to pay Ron Goldman’s family for the $33.5 million wrongful death judgment. The Florida lawyer is probably holding about $3,500. Which would reduce the amount owed to roughly $33.5 million.

• Rapper Eve pleaded not guilty to DUI charges stemming from an April 26 car accident in Hollywood. The artist drove her Maserati into a concrete center median at 2:40 am with a blood-alcohol level of at least .08 and no proof of insurance. Gee, she must have been drunk when pleading not guilty.

• A millionaire couple in New York were charged with slavery for allegedly keeping two female Indonesian housekeepers confined for years. According to prosecutors, the women were beaten, burned with scalding water and forced to climb stairs as punishment for misdeeds. What’s the big deal? Naomi Campbell has done worse than that to hired help.

• WPP Group shareholders will pay $2 million in legal expenses for advertising honcho Martin Sorrell’s libel suit against Italian ad executives who allegedly called him a “mad dwarf.” What’s the big deal? Adman and blogger George Parker has called Sorrell far worse than that. Also, are the shareholders possibly named Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Happy, Sleepy and Sneezy—with Sorrell aka Grumpy?

Essay 3066

Essay 3065

This ad should have been flushed down the toilet in the concept stage.

Essay 3064

Carter News in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Former President Jimmy Carter backpedaled over his remarks that the Bush administration is “the worst in history” for its international relations (see Essay 3050). Carter now says the comments were “careless or misinterpreted,” and he explained, “I wasn’t comparing this administration with other administrations back through history but just with President Nixon.” The White House responded by declaring Carter as “increasingly irrelevant.” Sounds like the perfect slogan for the current administration.

• Jay-Z, aka Shawn Carter, was hit with a lawsuit from staffers at his trendy 40/40 Club, charged with skimping on pay. Guess the workers were hoping for a 50/50 split.

Essay 3063

The missive above ran in a recent Advertising Age Letters To The Editor section. Don’t mean to overreact, but in many respects, it spotlights the growing issue of ageism on Madison Avenue.

F. Stone Roberts is undoubtedly a well-meaning, upstanding citizen. But he also appears to be a standard prick, representing his peeps in stereotypical fashion.

Roberts is divisive, judgmental and condescending—displaying the arrogance that contributes to our industry’s global exclusivity. The defensive tone, probably fueled by paranoia, comes off as offensive. Roberts’ exposition is rife with “we” and “us” versus “they” and “them.” Whassup with that?

Roberts boasts the 4As committee of “CEOs and the ‘influential of the industry’” probes topics ranging “from the ever-evolving industry model to emerging digital media to diversity in the workplace.” Hey, somebody draft a memo when our leaders hatch directions and solutions for any of the listed subjects.

Roberts notes the absence of specific folks at “the big-boy table.” His revelation speaks volumes. Would anyone not resembling a “big boy” even feel welcome at the summit?

The labeling of Young Turks widens the generational gaps, especially when delivered with sneering sarcasm. Can’t imagine Roberts and his posse would appreciate being tagged as Old Guns or Elder Hacks by the professional community. One can only guess how minorities are addressed in these meetings.

Roberts insists that if the Young Turks “are contributing, it certainly isn’t obvious to anyone.” Not sure why the Old Guns make such proclamations, as if deciding their own ignorance must be shared by everyone. Maybe it’s time for them to quit playing with their 401k plans long enough to observe the landscape and use their collective voice.

Roberts closes by announcing, “It is time to let the Young Turks out of the cage, but it’s our job to make sure they don’t blow up the place.” An admission of segregation and oppression coupled with an invitation featuring dictatorial restrictions.

Bravo, Old Gun, bravo!

Essay 3062

Essay 3061

This ad is anything but cute. Mom’s right hand placement borders on, um, never mind.

Essay 3060

From CNN.com…

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Immigration anxiety is cultural

By Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Special to CNN

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- On Thursday, senators announced a rather remarkable bipartisan compromise on immigration reform that combines border enforcement, a guest worker program, a path to legalization for illegal immigrants, tougher employer sanctions, and an education/skills-based point system for future immigrants.

The same day, the Census Bureau reported what many Americans already know: The United States is becoming a Hispanic nation. Hispanics are the nation’s largest minority with 44.3 million people and they account for almost half the growth in the U.S. population. Meanwhile, since 2000, the white school-age population dropped 4 percent, and the white population shrank in sixteen states.

The stories are connected. Anti-illegal immigration crusaders claim their worries are entirely practical -- tied to border security or the cost of entitlements or the fact that illegal immigrants supposedly depress wages for the low skilled.

(That reminds me. Memo to the low skilled: “Grow up. Stop complaining. And go get more skills. Then you won’t have to suffer the humiliation of being driven out of the market by folks with a sixth-grade education who are here illegally and don’t even speak English.”)

But I digress …

As someone who has written about immigration for more than 15 years, and heard from hundreds of thousands of readers along the way, I can tell you that most of the anxiety over illegal immigration is cultural. People worry about changing demographics, the encroachment of Spanish, the fear that the country is becoming Hispanic-ized, etc. One sociologist called it “cultural displacement” -- the fear that your children will grow up in a world different than the one you grew up in, with fewer advantages, where they will have to work harder for what they accomplish.

One of the more fearful members of Congress is Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-California. Last year, while campaigning, he told a largely white audience near San Diego that if we don’t end illegal immigration, one day our children would live in a world where instead of electing to take Spanish in high school, they’ll have to take Spanish. Bilbray now heads the House Immigration Reform Caucus. That’s where members of Congress come together at regular meetings and complain about illegal immigration while counting the campaign contributions they collect from businesses back home, many of which undoubtedly profit from hiring illegal immigrants.

Last week, Bilbray popped up on one newscast after another and milked his 15 minutes. He opposes the Senate plan, which he calls -- wait for it -- amnesty. But, like most of the critics, he offers no alternate piece of legislation to solve the problem over which he claims to be worried sick.

The Senate compromise isn’t perfect. But it’s bold and thoughtful, and it’s a start. It also did something that’s very significant -- dividing traditional allies and uniting traditional adversaries.

If the deal crumbles, we’ll return to the status quo. Illegal immigrants will still come to the United States do jobs that Americans won’t do. And employers will still hire them. Nothing will change. No one will be punished or held accountable. There’s a word for that. I know -- wait for it: amnesty.

[Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a member of the editorial board of The San Diego Union-Tribune and a nationally syndicated columnist.]

Essay 3059

The casting in this Lunchables ad makes it look like a diversity recruitment message.

Essay 3058

Essay 3057

For the Latino market, Mickey D’s (or is it Miguel D’s?) positions its Southwest Salad as having 400 years of history. Wonder if the menu item will last even 400 days.

Essay 3056

From The New York Times…

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Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplace of Hip-Hop?

By DAVID GONZALEZ

Hip-hop was born in the west Bronx. Not the South Bronx, not Harlem and most definitely not Queens. Just ask anybody at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue — an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx and hard along the Major Deegan.

“This is where it came from,” said Clive Campbell, pointing to the building’s first-floor community room. “This is it. The culture started here and went around the world. But this is where it came from. Not anyplace else.”

O.K., Mr. Campbell is not just anybody — he is the alpha D.J. of hip-hop. As D.J. Kool Herc, he presided over the turntables at parties in that community room in 1973 that spilled into nearby parks before turning into a global assault. Playing snippets of the choicest beats from James Brown, Jimmy Castor, Babe Ruth and anything else that piqued his considerable musical curiosity, he provided the soundtrack savored by loose-limbed b-boys (a term he takes credit for creating, too).

Mr. Campbell thinks the building should be declared a landmark in recognition of its role in American popular culture. Its residents agree, but for more practical reasons. They want to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places so that it might be protected from any change that would affect its character — in this case, a building for poor and working-class families.

[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]

Essay 3055

Um, not too sure about the name of this new product…

Essay 3054

From The Los Angeles Times…

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L.A. gang members go union

A rising number of gangbangers are moving into well-paid futures as members of the region’s building trade unions.

By Sam Quinones, Times Staff Writer

Shortly after his release from prison four years ago, Julio Silva entered the apprenticeship program in the Ironworkers Union Local 433 in La Palma.

To his alarm, he learned that ironworkers called all first-year apprentices “punk.”

He had been an East Los Angeles gang member, a drug user, and a car burglar in and out of jail. In that world, a “punk” was someone’s prison sex slave.

But Silva tried not to let it bother him. The more he worked at his new job, the more his skills improved. Ironwork became the one legal thing he had done well. It also paid $29 an hour, plus benefits.

Glimpsing a future, Silva’s desire to do drugs was replaced by his determination to master the use of sleever bars and spud crescents.

After Silva’s first year on the job, the ironworkers simply called him Julio.

“I never thought my history would allow me to have something more than $7 an hour,” said Silva, 37. “I don’t see this happening nowhere else but in the union. It’s given me the best opportunity of my life.”

Silva is among a large and growing number of Southern California gang members who have joined building-trade unions over the last decade as construction work has boomed. These good-paying jobs were once reserved for those with family connections, as fathers recruited sons.

But today, beset by nonunion competition and an aging membership, unions have stepped up recruitment in minority enclaves where many young men have criminal pasts. Now homeboy recruits homeboy.

[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]

Essay 3053

From The New York Daily News...

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Thugs make a killing at society’s expense

By Stanley Crouch

When we look back on this era of especially muddled thinking we will celebrate Harlem’s Geoffrey Canada for not being afraid to step out by himself and pin the tail on the donkey of hip hop for aiding and abetting the criminal culture that oppresses so many so-called minorities in our country.

I was most impressed when Canada came out against the way that hip hop celebrates those who refuse to inform on criminals, otherwise known as snitching.

Kansas City journalist Jason Whitlock says of this trend that the most popular hip-hop recordings now promote what he calls “prison values,” or the criminal vision that comes from the dark world behind bars, where the siren song of those who make the streets so mean was once heard most clearly and influentially.

As Canada told Anderson Cooper on television recently, advocating the refusal to cooperate with police is saying something very destructive to black youth.

“It’s like we’re saying to the criminals, you can have our community. Just have our community. Do anything you want, and we will either deal with it ourselves, or we will simply ignore it,” Canada said.

If one looks at the level of urban oppression that is shown in the national rise of homicides committed with guns, Canada must be taken seriously. The black and Latino victims constitute the largest numbers of the murdered. The epidemic rise of murders with firearms in Newark prompted James Ahearn to write, “Typically, shooter and victim are both black, male, young, with arrest records, uneducated, with dim life prospects. The killers act with careless indifference to the enormity of what they have done, or to the likelihood that they in turn will be cut down, in retribution.”

As they display the gilded imbecility of “bling” while riding in the most expensive cars and living in gated communities, the rappers who promote the idea that informing to the police is some sort of sin have become another menace to society.

They have expanded upon their identities as buffoon thug minstrels so that they could now easily be considered the most dangerous Uncle Toms of the moment.

This may be hard for those who can never accept the idea of black people having anything at all to do with their group’s oppression. The young are dazzled by the vulgar finery of the rappers while the black middle class is overly impressed by the riches of these young men.

Once again it is obvious that the civil rights establishment has fallen asleep at the wheel by failing to stand up for the rights of those they purportedly represent. The civil rights establishment should be no more concerned about being called old-fashioned than those whom Southern white racists accused of being “outside agitators” during the 1960s.

Ironically, what we now have is an urban version of the Southern violence that gave such a bloody reputation to the members of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizen’s Council. Gangs like the Crips and the Bloods are exactly the same — ever ready to murder and intimidate the witnesses to their crimes.

Albert Camus once wrote that he preferred to look his fate in the eyes. For too many in the black lower class, their fate is to be murdered, mutilated and brutalized by contemptuous street gangs and by the criminals who have been made into an elite by the worst of hip hop. It is time for all of us to look that fate in the eyes and move to change it by whatever means are as legal as they are necessary.

Essay 3052

Essay 3051

Pimp My Infant—the morons at Munchkin actually trademarked BLING™

Essay 3050

Trash talking in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Former President Jimmy Carter called the current administration “the worst in history” in international relations. “I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” said Carter. “The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me. … We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered. But that’s been a radical departure from all previous administration policies.” Carter appears to be launching a pre-emptive war of words.

• A lawmaker in Massachusetts is introducing legislation to protect fat and short folks. “This is one of the last physical aspects of people that you can acceptably laugh about,” said the Massachusetts Democrat. “You can be a shock jock on the radio and talk about fat people for a solid week, and no one would ever think of having you lose your job. It’s still acceptable.” The proposal applies mostly to the workplace, but also deals with landlords and real estate. This could mean trouble for Donald Trump and his constant trashing of Rosie O’Donnell.

Essay 3049

Your eyes will think it’s a shitty ad. Your stomach will turn.

Essay 3048

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Playa hatin’

Why do women take it when Hip-Hop insists on ‘keeping it real’?

BY AMY ALEXANDER

Here is a cultural paradox for you: Young, smart, seemingly self-confident women of color who put up with even the most raunchily misogynistic rap and hip-hop music. We're all familiar with the commercial and cultural trajectory of the music and how, since its emergence in gritty New York neighborhoods 25 years ago, it has become a global phenomenon, generating billions of dollars in sales and spawning fashion, linguistic and sociopolitical trends that have entered the mainstream.

Along with all the bling and snap, the rise of the Hip-Hop Nation also has earned negative attention for its more unsavory behavioral byproducts, including violence in the name of “keeping it real” and a normalization of a “get rich or die trying” ethos.

But more troubling than the mainstreaming of violence and acquisitive values has been the rise in misogynistic attitudes among performers and their acceptance by fans of both sexes, according to Pimps Up, Ho’s Down, by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting.

Director of African-American and diaspora studies at Vanderbilt University, Sharpley-Whiting argues, with mixed results, that a general coarsening of hip-hop culture -- in its lyrics and the videos and marketing built around the music -- claims women as its biggest victims. She observes that some of the women who subscribe to the culture do so willingly, even as they are denigrated and abused onstage and off. It is not a new observation, but in this slim volume, she gets at the heart of the paradox.

“As much as the sexploitation of young black women is necessary to the ‘keep it real’ mantra of hip hop artists, corporate bottom lines, and marketing strategies, we must acknowledge our own role in this troubling relationship.”

Sharpley-Whiting tosses off an incendiary notion that requires more exploration than she provides: Young black women you see shaking their nearly naked rumps in all those videos or who serve as groupies to male rappers or who appear in increasingly popular underground hip-hop porn films are willing, if misguided, participants in their own debasement.

They are not alone, Sharpley-Whiting argues, in falling into the cesspool of rot that is laying waste to many aspects of American pop culture. It’s just that few of them believe they have other options for artistic or commercial success, and fewer still see themselves as taking part in third-wave feminism, the “sex-positive” movement that has made public displays of sexuality more acceptable for white women. In stating her case, Sharpley-Whiting cites a wide range of sources, from the black intellectual Frantz Fanon to journalists Greg Tate and Stanley Crouch to Pamela Des Barres, author of I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie. But, like many academics who write about pop culture, Sharpley-Whiting fails to connect with readers in clear, layman’s language:

“And even more mind-bending than the length, girth, and bland performances of the churlish cabal of male hip-hop stars are the motivations articulated by the women in ‘Groupie Confessions,’” she writes, all but defying readers to make sense of that sentence. The result is a frustratingly enigmatic discussion that encapsulates a grand theme without coaxing forth the emotional punch that might allow readers to grasp it.

Surprisingly, it is left to a rap performer to point out the paradox that underlies Sharpley-Whiting’s premise -- how successful, “respected” black women like Oprah Winfrey, Condoleezza Rice and Halle Berry exist on the same continuum with Karrine Steffans, author of the best-selling roman a clef, Confessions of a Video Vixen, and her numerous nubile counterparts who are seen shaking their moneymakers in videos.

In a 1989 interview, former 2 Live Crew frontman Luther Campbell said, “Traditionally black people are really conservative. They’re more conservative than whites are, in my opinion. … With this whole tradition of sexuality (in hip-hop) most black people are nervous about that.”

So how do black female hip-hop consumers reconcile their love of the genre? And what can be done to bring them to a healthier place, in terms of their own self-image and to erase their vulnerability to hip-hop’s less savory side? Sharpley-Whiting doesn’t have the answers, and maybe no one does, but at least she’s put the discussion on the turntable.

[Amy Alexander is a free-lance writer. This review first appeared in the Washington Post.]

Essay 3047

Method to the madness in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Method Man was busted for smoking and possessing marijuana after a cop pulled him over for an expired car sticker. The arresting officer caught the rapper with two blunts and about 28 grams of dope. Doesn’t that stuff come standard with rapper rides?

• NBC announced its prime-time fall lineup for next season, and “The Apprentice” was not on the list. Donald Trump responded by telling NBC he’s quitting and “moving on from ‘The Apprentice’ to a major new TV venture.” Um, somebody explain to Trump that you don’t quit after being fired.

Essay 3046

Massachusetts: Committed to Diversity. But not committed to competent art direction.

Essay 3045

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Frivolous ad trivializes heart-rending decision

BY PATRICK T. MURPHY

For the past two years, I have been hearing divorce and domestic violence cases. Divorce lawyers sometimes get a bad rap. However, I have been impressed by most of the lawyers who have appeared in front of me. Most attempt to shepherd their clients through difficult and painful times with minimum stress and rancor while charging a reasonable fee. Most.

Recently two divorce lawyers sponsored a billboard in Chicago that gained nationwide notoriety. The billboard gave the names and phone number of the attorneys and stated: “Life’s short. Get a divorce.” The billboard contained two enormous photographs -- one of a nearly naked young woman with apparently surgically enhanced breasts and one of a nearly naked young man with an apparently steroid-enhanced body.

Some critics have inferred that the message of the billboard was: Get a divorce, and if you hire these lawyers you most certainly will end up with a much more exciting companion. And I suspect that the subliminal message had this or some equally sleazy message. But anyone who actually believes this drivel deserves the lawyers, and their spouse is most certainly better off without him or her. The real problem with this frivolous ad is that it trivializes one of the most painful and momentous events in the lives of many people.

Often couples find that they cannot continue in the relationship. They grow apart. Finances, children, in-laws and debt pick people apart. Arguments increase. Words become vicious. Children cower in corners. The pain becomes overwhelming, and the parties must separate and divorce, for their own sanity and that of their children.

Recently, I dealt with the case of a wonderful young couple and their five beautiful and intelligent children. Divorce was inevitable. But the children were torn, as were the parents. The kids obviously want their parents to stay together and to be happy, but at some level recognized that this was impossible. One child, a 10-year-old boy, wished to live with his dad although he loved his mom and wanted to see her. The others were ambivalent but wanted to remain together.

The parents desperately loved all their children. In the end, one will become the residential parent while the other will visit three or four days every two weeks but miss much of the excitement that goes with having the children every day. And even the residential parent will suffer by not having the children on a daily basis.

The parties will also have to sell their home because neither can afford to keep it up without the assistance of the other. Nothing frivolous or trivial here.

Every day, men and women step up in front of me with tears welling up in their eyes, even sobbing, while becoming divorced. They are recalling the courtship, the first kiss, the wedding day, the news of the first pregnancy, the sacrifices to purchase the first home, the day one of them lost a job, the serious illness suffered by one of the kids, the great report card, the day the son got suspended for fighting in school, the picnic in the park, the trip to Disneyland, the cold nights in a warm bed together. In most divorces, there still is a great deal of love, appreciation for what was and warmth for the other party.

Yes, there are the recriminations, pettiness, jealousy and hatred. But most frequently, the good and the bad emotions are all swirling around together. And that is what creates the pain and misery in even the most inevitable of divorces.

Most who are muddling through a divorce need the help of an attorney dedicated to his or her needs and sensitive to his or her pain. The billboard in question did little for the dignity of the divorce bar. Worse, it gives those going through divorces little confidence in finding an understanding attorney to help them through this most complex and emotional of times.

Patrick T. Murphy is a judge in the Domestic Relations division of the Circuit Court of Cook County and hears divorce and domestic violence cases.

Essay 3044

From The Chicago Tribune…

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Racial demons rear heads

After months of unrest between blacks and whites in Louisiana town, some see racism and uneven justice

By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent

JENA, La. -- The trouble in Jena started with the nooses. Then it rumbled along the town’s jagged racial fault lines. Finally, it exploded into months of violence between blacks and whites.

Now the 3,000 residents of this small lumber and oil town deep in the heart of central Louisiana are confronting Old South racial demons many thought had long ago been put to rest.

One morning last September, students arrived at the local high school to find three hangman’s nooses dangling from a tree in the courtyard.

The tree was on the side of the campus that, by long-standing tradition, had always been claimed by white students, who make up more than 80 percent of the 460 students. But a few of the school’s 85 black students had decided to challenge the accepted state of things and asked school administrators if they, too, could sit beneath the tree’s cooling shade.

“Sit wherever you want,” school officials told them. The next day, the nooses were hanging from the branches.

African-American students and their parents were outraged and intimidated by the display, which instantly summoned memories of the mob lynchings that once terrorized blacks across the American South. Three white students were quickly identified as being responsible, and the high school principal recommended that they be expelled.

“Hanging those nooses was a hate crime, plain and simple,” said Tracy Bowens, a black mother of two students at the high school who protested the incident at a school board meeting.

But Jena’s white school superintendent, Roy Breithaupt, ruled that the nooses were just a youthful stunt and suspended the students for three days, angering blacks who felt harsher punishments were justified.

“Adolescents play pranks,” said Breithaupt, the superintendent of the LaSalle Parish school system. “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”

Yet it was after the noose incident that the violent, racially charged events that are still convulsing Jena began.

[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]

Essay 3043

TGIF MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• The New York Post reported fired shock jock Don Imus is trying to get back on the air. Imus’ lawyer is seeking to use the threat of a lawsuit to compel CBS to reinstate the radio personality. CBS allegedly won’t budge, and the company is prepared to counter any legal action Imus initiates. Now this is a showdown between pimps and hos.

• Paris Hilton’s jail sentence was cut in half after she was given credit for good behavior. If Don Imus consults with Hilton’s lawyer, he’ll be back on the air tomorrow.

• Applebee’s has cut trans fats out of its menu. “After extensive testing with our guests, we found that our foods cooked in zero trans fat oil still have the great taste out guests have come to expect from Applebee’s,” said the company’s chief executive officer. “In some cases, the oil even enhances the flavor of the menu item.” Now let’s see if the restaurant chain can cut the lame advertising.

Essay 3042

Essay 3041

Diversity—many viewpoints with a singular vision. Inspiring many diversity ads with a singular layout.

Essay 3040

From The Chicago Tribune…

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FROM SOCIETAL CRITIQUE TO SOCIAL EMBARRASSMENT

Feeling betrayed by hip-hop

By Lolly Bowean, Tribune staff reporter

When I was growing up, there was never a time in my life when hip-hop music wasn’t in the background.

During my childhood in Queens, New York, the music was everywhere: blaring from the radio, being performed in the parks and perfected on street corners as wannabes faced off in freestyle battles.

Most people of the hip-hop generation have stories about the time they were first moved by the music. Or the time they started their own group or started to jot down their own raps.

For me, the music was about freedom. It was about disenfranchised, voiceless people making themselves heard through a new medium. The music gave us a way to earn respect creatively by playing with words and sounds.

Before newspapers, magazines and news broadcasts were intensely reporting on violence, injustice, teenage pregnancy and domestic abuse, rappers were spittin’ about it. They were telling deeply personal stories in a clever way.

One rhyme would decry social injustices and express the rage resulting from living in violent surroundings with no access to economically sustaining work. Other rhymes would celebrate dance moves or brag about cheap sneakers worn with so much style.

The music combined sounds from old soul music and beats for a new creation. It was layered and offered multiple meanings.

Artists told us to keep rising to the top, to keep your head up and told witty stories that made us move.

For me it was oh so poetic.

“I live by the beat like you live check to check.”

-- OutKast, “Elevators,” 1996

The music made me groove and pop and jerk my body to the sounds. What it didn’t do was make a lot of money.

Soon, though, the music became consumer driven, and the scene exploded. Everybody, it seemed, wanted a piece of hip-hop. But the songs that were topping the charts weren't the ones my friends and I could relate to. They were fictional -- songs about taking drugs, killing each other, celebrating the so-called ghetto and thug life.

And women were “bitches,” “hos,” “tricks” and “golddiggas.”

The music that had once built us up was now tearing us down.

I felt betrayed. I cut it off -- never bought another recording.

As the music began selling, major corporations were taking notice. The artists who penned rhymes about the fall of a drug dealer were barely heard from again, but the ones who tossed gyrating, half-naked women into their videos were being used to promote products. They had the ears of corporate boards and marketing executives.

Like so many others, I was disgusted by it -- not just by the music, but by the way it was being embraced and financed.

Still, I couldn’t help but be impressed that a former drug dealer who couldn’t find corporate employment some 10 years ago had somehow become the head of a major entertainment company. And that guy from the block was now promoting his own fashion line and calling the shots.

I wondered, why does their success have to come from portraying negative stereotypes and glorifying poisonous images? Why do women, especially black women, have to be the steppingstone to financial well-being?

In private conversations, my female friends and I would complain about the trash on the radio. We’d mock the lyrics and joke that any song with “booty” or other derogatory descriptions of women was destined to be a hit.

But I never spoke out publicly about what I heard and saw.

“What you gonna do when you have to face the manifestation of the words that you put in space?”

-- Talib Kweli, “Where Do We Go?” 2002

When I was in Paris in 2001, a young, white Parisian told me he was tired of “American gold-digging bee-yau-tches.” It was a line he stole directly from the music.

At that moment it dawned on me that this image of black women was being broadcast to the world -- and the world was buying it. I wondered, what is so moving about women getting slammed and drug dealers, pimps and criminals being glorified that makes people pay to hear it?

Though by then we knew rap music was mainly being consumed by suburban white kids who wanted a window into another world, I couldn’t understand why people would rather invest in and promote this view of gritty, urban life rather than work to change it.

“It’s like a jungle sometimes.”

-- Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, “The Message,” 1982

I shook my head when radio personality Don Imus tried to blame the music for his use of racist and sexist terms. But I’m glad that the incident expanded the public conversation about hip-hop's portrayal of women, with prominent voices such as hip-hop magnate Russell Simmons and Oprah Winfrey joining the debate.

I’ve had to reflect about my own conflicted relationship with the music and culture. One minute I’m celebrating an artist for selling a clothing line for $500 million, the next I’m cursing at the radio.

I can’t support the music, but I also can’t let it take the fall for society’s ills.

Hip-hop music is not the reason Imus called the Rutgers University women’s basketball team what he did. If we are serious about changing how women are perceived and portrayed, the discussion has to go beyond one music genre. We’ve got to examine why consumers slap down their hard-earned money for such images. The conversation has to include more than Simmons, Winfrey and the academics who have been shouting about these images for years.

As they say in the lyrics: Check yo’ self.

I know I have.

Essay 3039

The MultiCultClassics Monologue of today…

• Singer R. Kelly likened himself to great figures in history during an interview with Hip-Hop Soul magazine. “I’m the Ali of today. I’m the Marvin Gaye of today. I’m the Bob Marley of today. I’m the Martin Luther King, or all the other greats that have come before us. And a lot of people are starting to realize that now,” proclaimed the accused child pornographer. “So I have to walk with a certain humility. I have to walk with love in my heart for those that hate me. I have to. I have to get out and touch people in order for me to continue to feel the pulse of the world.” Just don’t touch another minor, dude.

• Ike Turner was arrested then released when the cops realized they had made a mistake by busting the singer for an invalid warrant. He’s the Ike Turner of today.

• Sears Chairman Edward Lampert now predicts the retailer will stage a turnaround, but it will take three years. Guess consumers can continue to shop at Wal-Mart and Target until the Sears revival happens. Sears is, um, the Sears of today.

• The Census Bureau reported minorities in America surged beyond the 100 million mark, now accounting for one-third of the country’s population. “Immigration is making a much bigger contribution than natural increase,” said one expert. “As well, the fertility rates of the immigrants are higher than the fertility rates of the native-born groups.” Sounds like Sears has a potential growing customer target.

Essay 3038

Essay 3037

This diversity ad appears to diss other diversity ads—yet still manages to look exactly like the majority of diversity ads.

Essay 3036

The story below appeared in The Wall Street Journal—and is immediately followed by commentary from MultiCultClassics…

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Diversity Programs Look to Involve White Males as Leaders

Goal Is to Get Efforts More Into Mainstream, Create ‘Sustainability’

By ERIN WHITE

As a white male, tax partner Keith Ruth was surprised last year when he was asked to help lead PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s diversity efforts. Some employees questioned his qualifications. But Chris Simmons, PwC’s chief diversity officer, insisted. “A lot of the people we want to hear the message are white males,” Mr. Simmons says.

The unusual tactic -- enlisting white males to foster diversity efforts -- is gaining currency at U.S. companies. White men run the diversity programs at big employers such as Coca-Cola Co. and Southern Co.’s Georgia Power unit. Coke last fall brought in a consultant to talk to employees about “engaging white men in diversity efforts.” PwC and others have given white male managers part-time assignments to promote diversity alongside their regular jobs.

It’s part of an effort to get diversity programs off the sidelines and into the mainstream of the business. Having a white man champion diversity efforts -- particularly one who works in operations rather than human resources -- can help bring other white males on board, the theory goes.

Too many diversity initiatives make white men feel defensive, says Frank McCloskey, a white male operations veteran named Georgia Power’s first head of diversity in 2000 after the company was sued for allegedly discriminating against blacks in hiring and promotion. He believes firms must engage white men to change the company culture.

When Mr. McCloskey was appointed, 63% of Georgia Power’s employees were white men. “How can we ever create sustainability if you don’t have 63% of your work force feeling that there’s something in it for them?” he asks.

At PwC, Mr. Simmons, who is black, heads a diversity program that includes mentoring, conferences, and one-on-one talks between partners and staffers who are women or minorities. Mr. Simmons comes from operations rather than human resources. Most recently he oversaw PwC’s mergers and acquisitions. In July he will become managing partner for the region around Washington, D.C. The firm’s new diversity chief will be tax partner Roy Weathers, who is also black.

Mr. Simmons became diversity chief in 2004 with a directive from PwC U.S. Chairman Dennis Nally to shift diversity concerns from a “side topic” to an integral part of operations. About the same time, the firm named diversity leaders for each of its four business units. These are senior executives with other jobs, who also are charged with integrating diversity concerns into routine business decisions, such as client assignments and promotions.

None of the diversity leaders was a white man. But Mr. Simmons believed that white men might pay more heed to diversity concerns if they hear them from a white man. “We really have to get away from this model of it just being white women and minority people,” he says.

Mr. Simmons approached Mr. Ruth, an enthusiastic supporter of a tax group employee-diversity council. Mr. Ruth, who grew up in rural Georgia, was running PwC’s tax practice for the southeast U.S. Mr. Ruth spent three weeks reading books Mr. Simmons recommended, including “It’s the Little Things: Everyday Interactions That Anger, Annoy, and Divide the Races,” by Lena Williams.

After the appointment was announced, Mr. Simmons says a few employees asked why he had placed a white male in the role. “I said it sends the message that we think all kinds of people can be committed to diversity,” he says.

Early on, Mr. Ruth asked the tax practice’s regional leaders to periodically review client assignments to make sure projects were being distributed equitably. He also ordered a review of performance evaluations to make sure women and minorities received sufficient feedback and career advice. He asked the other regional leaders in the tax practice to form employee-diversity councils like the one he had helped run in the southeast. And he is organizing a conference focused on career issues for women.

Mr. Ruth says he has learned from the job, too. Through one-on-one talks with younger accountants, he realized that minorities sometimes lack the alumni network that can help advance careers. “It’s little things like that which I don’t think most partners knew,” he says.

For his part, Mr. Simmons says Mr. Ruth has been “bringing some people into the fold that I probably would have a harder time” reaching.

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White men running diversity programs could be a brilliant idea. But to make it really effective, such a move should include certain requirements.

First, the White man must clearly articulate why diversity is imperative. Any candidate who could not deliver a coherent perspective would immediately be enrolled in mandatory cultural and sensitivity training—and not permitted to return to the work force until he demonstrated enlightenment.

Second, the White man would be charged to show regular and measurable progress. Compensation and continued employment would be tied to the results. In other words, if the White man failed to achieve success, he would be terminated.

Third, the White man would receive official evaluations (at least every six months) by superiors, peers and minority employees. The minority employees would be permitted to submit anonymous criticism in order to encourage openness and honesty sans the threat of retaliation.

Fourth, the appointment would not be a part-time gig. Let’s be honest, the typical White man needs full-time focus on the job.

Finally, the White man would directly report to a minority boss. Sorry, White men can’t be trusted to handle diversity responsibilities without qualified supervision.

Essay 3035

From USA Today…

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Student settles discrimination case with Hawaiian school

HONOLULU (AP) — A private school system has reached a settlement with a white student who was denied admission because he isn’t a Native Hawaiian, ending a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The settlement between the unidentified student and the Kamehameha Schools system ends the four-year-old lawsuit. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

The student, who has since gone to college, claimed that the 120-year-old Kamehameha Schools violated civil rights law by excluding applicants who cannot prove Hawaiian ancestry.

The school, which has 6,700 students at schools on three islands, admits qualified Native Hawaiian students, with non-Hawaiians getting in only if openings are available. But only one in eight eligible Hawaiian applicants is admitted, effectively excluding non-Hawaiians.

A sharply divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the admissions policy on an 8-7 vote in 2006.

John Goemans, a lawyer for the student, acknowledged the settlement came late in the process but said his client wanted to resolve the case.

“What counts is the best interest of our client,” Goemans said. “And at this point, our client is satisfied. This does not affect the constitutionality of the program.”

J. Douglas Ing, chairman of Kamehameha Schools Board of Trustees, said dismissal of the case preserves Native Hawaiians’ political status as an indigenous people.

It also recognizes the federal government’s “obligation to the native people of Hawaii and provides judicial support for programs that serve to promote and improve the well-being of the Hawaiian people,” Ing said.

Kamehameha was established under the 1883 will of Hawaiian Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop as part of a trust reported to be worth $7.7 billion last June 30. The trust reported spending $221 million on education. Part of the schools’ mission is to counteract historical disadvantages Hawaiians face in employment, education and society.

Essay 3034

Daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. Dies

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ATLANTA (AP) -- Yolanda King, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s eldest child who pursued her father’s dream of racial harmony through drama and motivational speaking, has died. She was 51.

King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, Calif., said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center. The family did not know the cause of death, but relatives think it might have been a heart problem, he said.

“She was an actress, author, producer, advocate for peace and nonviolence, who was known and loved for her motivational and inspirational contributions to society,” the King family said in a statement.

Born on Nov. 17, 1955, in Montgomery, Ala., Yolanda Denise King was just an infant when her home was bombed amid the turbulent civil rights era.

She became an actress, ran a production company and appeared in numerous films, including “Ghosts of Mississippi,” and as Rosa Parks in the 1978 miniseries “King.”

“Yolanda was lovely. She wore the mantle of princess, and she wore it with dignity and charm,” said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, One of her father’s close aides in the civil rights movement. “She was a warm and gentle person and was thoroughly committed to the movement and found her own means of expressing that commitment through drama.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton said he expressed his condolences to her brother Martin Luther King III on Wednesday. Sharpton said Yolanda King was a “torch bearer for her parents and a committed activist in her own right.”

“Yolanda never wavered from a commitment to nonviolent social change and justice for all,” he said. “She was the first daughter of the civil rights movement and never shamed her parents or her co-activists.”

Yolanda King founded and led Higher Ground Productions, billed as a “gateway for inner peace, unity and global transformation.” On her company’s Web site, she described her mission as encouraging personal growth and positive social change.

She was also an author and a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference -- which her father co-founded in 1957 -- and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The flag at The King Center, where she was a board member, flew at half-staff on Wednesday.

Yolanda King was the most visible and outspoken among the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s four children during this year’s Martin Luther King Day in January, the first since the death of their mother, Coretta Scott King.

At her father’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, she performed a series of solo skits that told stories including a girl’s first ride on a desegregated bus and a college student’s recollection of the 1963 desegregation of Birmingham, Ala.

She also urged the audience to be a force for peace and love, and to use the King holiday each year to ask tough questions about their own beliefs about prejudice.

“We must keep reaching across the table and, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, feed each other,” she said.

When asked by The Associated Press at that event how she was dealing with the loss of her mother, she responded: “I connected with her spirit so strongly. I am in direct contact with her spirit, and that has given me so much peace and so much strength.”

Survivors include her sister, the Rev. Bernice A. King, and brothers Martin Luther King III and Dexter Scott King.

Funeral arrangements would be announced later, the family said in a brief statement.

Essay 3033

Essay 3032

Unlocking talent. Unleashing success. Unbelievably contrived.

Essay 3031

From The Chicago Tribune…

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Whites not immune to racial hostility
Insults from black students spur lawsuit

By Kathleen Parker

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- In a new twist in American race relations, a federal court has ruled that a white teacher in a predominantly African-American school was subjected to a racially hostile workplace.

The case concerned Elizabeth Kandrac, who was routinely verbally abused by black pupils at Brentwood Middle School in North Charleston.

Their slurs make shock jock Don Imus look like a church deacon.

Nevertheless, despite frequent complaints, school officials did nothing to intervene on Kandrac’s behalf, arguing that the racially charged profanity was simply part of the pupils’ culture. If Kandrac couldn’t handle cursing, school officials told her, she was in the wrong school.

Kandrac finally filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and subsequently brought a lawsuit against the Charleston County School District, the school’s principal and an associate superintendent. Last fall, jurors found that the school was a racially hostile environment to teach in and that the school district retaliated against Kandrac for complaining about it.

The defendants sought a new trial, but U.S. District Judge David C. Norton recently affirmed the verdict. However, he did not support the jury’s findings of $307,500 in damages for lost income and emotional distress.

Although Kandrac clearly suffered -- she was suspended from her job shortly after a story about her EEOC complaint appeared in the local newspaper, and her contract was not renewed -- her case didn’t meet evidentiary requirements for damages.

The judge said a new trial would have to determine damages, but the school district and Kandrac settled for $200,000.

While the dollars-and-cents issue may have been of paramount importance to school and district officials -- and would have lent heft to the verdict -- the more compelling issue for pupils, parents and society is the idea that a particular group of people can be allowed to behave in a grossly uncivil and threatening way by virtue of their racial “culture.” The key legal question was whether a school could be held responsible for pupils’ behavior. In this case, the black children of Brentwood had been given a pass for their behavior.

Defense attorney Alice Paylor told jurors that the kids heard this same language at home and there was “no magic pill” to make them behave.

Paylor is probably right about that, though a magic paddle might have worked wonders.

Back in the day, if a pupil had talked the way these did, he or she would have received a well-deserved thwack, been suspended and sent home to face the wrath of a parent. That process likely would have put a swift end to the tribal tyranny now often tolerated in the service of self-esteem.

Let’s be clear: What these children called this teacher is beyond reprehensible and could be only be construed as hostile and threatening.

Here’s a sample: white b----, white m----- f-----, white c---, white a------, white ho.

Other white teachers and pupils corroborated Kandrac’s account, including a male war veteran who testified he would rather return to Vietnam than to Brentwood.

Kandrac’s attorney, Larry Kobrovsky, argued that the repeated use of “white” made these slurs racist in nature. But school officials insisted that because black pupils were equally abusive to other blacks, the language wasn’t inherently racist.

Here’s what we know without question: If white pupils had used similar language toward black pupils and teachers, the case would have been plastered on the front page of the New York Times until heads rolled.

A black Kandrac would have a million-dollar book deal, a movie contract and hundreds of interviews to juggle. Her oppressors and those who passively facilitated her abuse would have been pilloried by the media -- their faces all over the evening news -- while Revs. Al and Jesse organized protests.

But a white Kandrac -- who faced a daily barrage of insults, who had books and desks thrown at her and her bicycle tires punctured -- was treated like an incompetent wimp. She was just a lousy teacher out for money, the defense attorney said.

Though Kandrac lost her job, the real losers are the children deprived of an education by the actions of a tyrannical few. And the worst racists are those teachers and administrators who denied these empowered brats the expectation of civilized behavior.

May the rest of America now be emboldened to act decisively in the interest of students who want to learn.

[Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist.]

Essay 3030

From AdAge.com…

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Digital Media Needs Older Professionals

Success in Interactive Industry Is Not About Age

By Leslie Laredo

There is a tremendous amount of ageism in our industry. Don’t get me wrong: There are many talented and knowledgeable younger people in our industry, but we need many more people to meet the demand of the interactive-advertising industry, and writing off people older than 40 or 50 is a grave error.

I know a very experienced interactive sales pro who is out of work, and despite dozens of interviews, he believes he isn’t hired because he is over 50. Someone once told him that he would not be able to relate to the young media buyers on whom he’d be calling. I know many others like him, too. But I also have heard many success stories from professionals age 40 and older who have changed their careers, finding new love for their work in interactive media.

My personal and professional experiences make me a credible commentator on ageism in the digital world: I sold local video text ads in 1982, then spent six years selling for Prodigy, then was engaged in a few other online stints before starting Laredo Group 10 years ago. I have a great perspective from the more than 16,000 media professionals whom we have trained.

More important, perhaps, is that I admit to being a member of AARP. I love my job and love the industry and all the great people I am privileged to have met and to have worked with over the past three decades. I really feel much younger than my age, and I am grateful that I have my health and can travel and work as hard as I do.

That said, here’s what I’ve come to believe about older professionals working in digital media:

1. They’re very savvy. Our ages would keep us from being hired as employees by many companies in our industry, but we are more wired than almost any 20-something. In our home, we have a wired and wireless LAN, a Slingbox, SqueezeBox, PlayStation 3 and multiple TiVos. The Slingbox software is on our laptops and Treos; we even have broadband access (Verizon VCast and soon MediaFLO) on our other mobile phones. So, like many others, our age is not indicative of our interactive-advertising IQ.

2. They can help meld assets. Media companies have to do a better job of making their assets seamless and synergistic to their communities without destroying their brands, and it will take experienced (read: older) editorial and publishing people to accomplish this.

3. They’re ready to learn. Interactive professionals are a very privileged subset of the media community. The rest of the media world is far behind us. I am disappointed in how traditional-media companies have not done the most basic things (such as invest in training) to help all of their employees -- regardless of age -- understand the profound and extreme change the media world is undergoing.

4. They excel at client relations. We need to rewrite the rules of buying and measuring media in the world of multitasking, engagement and technology-driven creative. We need more time to discuss and understand what clients need and how to execute against those objectives. And yes, this exchange has to happen without the bad practices on both sides of the table of changing meeting times, keeping people waiting, not returning phone calls. Practices that young people are -- with all due respect, and based on dozens of first-hand experiences -- far more prone to than seasoned professionals.

5. They’re role models. I don’t believe traditional measures that come from a world in which media was created and trafficked within silo organizations can work today. The faster the silos break down on both sides of the equation, the better clients are served. We need updated professional development and college curricula, and we need to reach out to the colleges with this new view of the media profession, so that more young people will want careers in interactive advertising. Then at least the young people that are hired will be better prepared and more likely to become seasoned professionals that much sooner.

6. They’re more than their age. Age is a state of mind, and so is the hiring and training of people -- regardless of age. I have met 75-year-olds who think and act and adapt to new things like 35-year-olds, and I have met 25-year-olds whom I respect because of their knowledge, maturity and perspective. I’ve also met some who, despite their youth, don’t seem to have, or are able to get, even the first clue about what new media is all about.

Essay 3029

From The New York Daily News…

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It’s open season on hip hop’s thug

By Stanley Crouch

I recently participated in a “town meeting” at John Jay College with students, faculty members, media professionals and law enforcement executives inspired by the “60 Minutes” segment “Stop Snitchin.’” That report looked at black community attitudes toward the police, police conduct in the black community and the influence that certain hip-hop artists have on discouraging black people from cooperating with the police.
In the report done by Anderson Cooper, Geoffrey Canada smacked the problem right in the face.

As a Harlem community worker with 20 years of experience dealing with and nurturing young people, Canada said that the message coming out of hip hop was deadly and irresponsible. The lyrics imply that cooperating with the police is being an Uncle Tom. Canada found this reprehensible and said that it amounted to saying to criminals that the community was theirs to have.

Prof. Douglas Thompkins began the discussion by pointing out that, no matter what the history of police community relations had been, he saw that the black community needed to change its attitudes because losing the rule of law means that black people live in subhuman conditions in their own communities and those inhuman conditions were created by violent criminals.

There were many of the usual explanations for crime, such as slavery, poverty and police harassment that came from the audience of students and from some John Jay professors, but the panelists — with one exception — did not give in to the regular line of excuses. Almost everyone rejected the idea that black or Latino criminals were helpless victims buffeted around by external influences. They made choices; they had to be accountable.

Thompkins has credibility. He served 18 years in prison and was the leader of a Chicago street gang. He understands that police overreaction or excessive force is something that must be factored in and protested against. Thompkins said that when refusing to cooperate with police became synonymous with minority identity, that attitude brought a kind of hell to the black and Latino lower-class communities. In summarizing, John Jay Prof. David Kennedy felt that we are on the verge of a new kind of civil rights movement in which the people oppressed by crime move to liberate themselves by reprimanding the police whenever they resort to excessive force.

But that is only one part; the other is that they make it clear to criminals that they are not going to be protected by the community which they are busy destroying at every opportunity. While the worst of hip hop is not entirely responsible for negative attitudes toward cooperating with the police, it has become a part of the problem.

Kennedy saw that discussion as the beginning of the new era in which everyone has to take responsibility for the degree of crime that takes place in lower-class communities and move to make whatever changes are possible. Those possibilities are numerous and I think we will begin to see them take place sooner rather than later.

Essay 3028

A McMultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Mickey D’s is launching a campaign to encourage folks to consider a career with the fast feeder. The QSR industry has a high employee-turnover rate of about 130 percent. A McDonald’s officer said, “We think working at McDonald’s is a tremendous opportunity, that this is a great place to work. You can start as a crew person like I did.” “The world identifies who we are, and many times they don’t do it correctly,” said another McLifer. “This is our attempt to let people know the opportunities that are here.” Gee, maybe they should hire McRecruiters to scout the top business schools.

• The Justice Department announced youth gangs are contributing to a nationwide increase in crime, and unveiled plans to spend nearly $50 million to fight gangs and guns. Maybe they could hook up with Mickey D’s to offer McCareer alternatives to crime.

Essay 3027

Essay 3026

Merrill Lynch literally toots its own horn on diversity.

Essay 3025

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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It’s all there in black and white
TV/FILM WRITERS | WGA survey says white males still rule Hollywood

BY GARY GENTILE

LOS ANGELES -- Despite gains by women and minorities in recent years, most people who write TV shows and movies are still white males, according to a study released last week by the Writers Guild of America.

Writers between the ages of 41 and 50 are the highest paid, although writers under 40 are being hired at a much faster rate, according to the study commissioned by the WGA, west.

Women TV writers have virtually eliminated the gap in median earnings with their male counterparts. That gap stood at nearly $10,000 in 2004 but narrowed to about $300 in 2005, the last full year for which data was available.

In films, however, the gap has doubled.

The study showed that women earned $40,000 less than males in 2005, up from $20,000 in 2004. Women writers’ share of overall industry employment remained flat at 25 percent in 2005.

The data for the “Whose Stories Are We Telling?” study came from employment files, including reports of earnings, maintained by the WGA to determine member dues. The data was analyzed by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

There are some gaps in the data.

TV salaries, for instance, only include the first $5,000 per week, thus excluding higher-paid staff. The information also includes only WGA members, thus excluding people who work on reality TV shows, animated shows on cable TV, comedy-variety shows and much of feature film animation.

The study showed that in 2005, the minority share of TV employment was 9 percent, a one percent drop from 2004. The guild said it feared the gap could widen with last year’s merger of the WB and UPN networks, which resulted in the cancellation of a number of shows featuring blacks and Hispanics.

In film, the overall share for minority writers remained unchanged at 6 percent, where it has been since 1999.

The pay gap for minority TV writers increased by $6,000 between 2004 and 2005 to $19,849. In film, it increased by $2,000 to $10,871. In 2003, minority writers actually earned more than their white counterparts, the guild said.

The outlook for older writers is more complicated.

Writers born after 1962 became the majority of all TV writers in 2005, the study showed. At the same time, writers between the ages of 41 and 50 were the highest paid TV writers.

Older writers are the highest paid in the film industry, although 55 percent of film writers in 2005 were between the ages of 31 and 40.

The WGA said it released its study in hopes of influencing employers as they ready their fall TV schedules.

Essay 3024

Here’s a belated Mother’s Day review.

KFC presents 0 Grams Trans Fat as if the Colonel’s created a new consumer benefit—versus the reality that the change is an almost moral/ethical obligation, as well as a legal mandate in certain areas.

Essay 3023

The 1940s advertisement above is outrageous enough in its original state. Below is the MultiCultClassics update.

Essay 3022

There’s something disturbing about these ads—besides the misspelling of disability in the headline.

Essay 3021

From The Chicago Tribune…

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Attempting to put a racial slur in its place

By Rebecca L. Ford

The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why
By Jabari Asim
Houghton Mifflin, 278 pages, $26

As hard as it might be for some to believe in this era of MTV, BET and VH1, neither rappers, hip-hop musicians nor stand-up comics invented the n-word. The first recorded use of the word in North America was in Jamestown in 1619, according to “The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why,” Jabari Asim’s insightful new cultural survey of the history of the word that has hurt and haunted the country for 400 years and counting.

For most of its long and painful life, the word “nigger” has been the blood-soaked weapon of racists, whether in pinstripes, poodle skirts, or sheets. It was never a term of endearment, as some of its proponents claim it to be in the clubs and street corners of today. It was vile and destructive, sparking lynchings and scarring souls. Decent Americans never allowed the word to pass their lips, at least not outside the privacy of their homes.

But these are confusing cultural times, especially when it comes to the use of this word. It seems everyone is using it, from black rappers to suburban white kids, who are the majority of rap-music buyers.

With this book, Asim, deputy editor of The Washington Post’s Book World and syndicated columnist on popular culture, hopes to put the word back in what he sees as its rightful place: locked away behind closed doors.

Presciently timed, “The N Word” is no polemic. It is a lesson in American history and a reasoned argument for self-censorship. The book traces the labyrinthine path of the word through American popular culture. Asim follows a thread that links the Jamestown reference to the present. This common cord connects Thomas Jefferson and George Jefferson, Mark Twain and Malcolm X, Uncle Tom and Sweet Sweetback to the comics and rappers who use the word today for fun and profit.

Asim isn’t arguing for the word to be banned. He regards the right of free speech as sacred, even when that speech is toxic. But he does want the entertainers who throw the word around so casually and the young people who admire and emulate them to understand the role it has played and continues to play in American life.

“For much of the history of our fair Republic, the N word has been at the center of our most volatile exchanges,” he writes. While other derogatory epithets for blacks “have been largely replaced by such ostensibly innocuous terms as ‘inner-city,’ ‘urban,’ and ‘culturally disadvantaged,’” the n-word “endures, helping to perpetuate and reinforce the durable, insidious taint of presumed African-American inferiority.” Within this context, “The N Word” also discusses blacks’ adoption of the epithet to describe themselves, an increasingly popular habit among younger African-Americans. “Are they in fact removing the word’s power to harm,” he asks, “or merely succumbing to an immense, inscrutable, and bizarre failure of the imagination?”

There are a few places in polite society where the n-word is acceptable, Asim writes: the realms of art, scholarship and journalism, because these fields require critical engagement of the word. But in his view, it has no positive role to play beyond those worlds:

“My concern is with the public square, where I believe the N word and other profane expressions have no rightful place. … But my obligations to others regarding civility and decency end at my doorstep. … Conversely, if you are white, [how] you refer to me … when you’re at home is of little consequence to me.”

Asim is not stationing himself as the constable of political correctness. He is “willing to acknowledge a distinction between private speech and public behavior.” Still, Asim longs for the n-word to disappear, especially from the vocabulary of young blacks:

“I imagine a way of life derived from our purest, wisest, fiercely loving selves. I dream of a world where [the word] no longer roams, confined instead to the fetid white fantasy land where he was born.”

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Rebecca L. Ford is a Chicago lawyer.

Essay 3020

From AdAge.com…

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Get Connected With Latinos in Nuevo America

Interacculturation: Blended Cultures Fuel Mainstream

By Cynthia Mcfarlane and Laura Semple

“Futbol surpasses baseball as the Official American Pastime”

“Study Finds that 70% of U.S. Children Now Speak English and Spanish”

“Sales of Tortillas Outpace Sales of White Bread in the U.S.”

These are a few news headlines we may see sometime in the future. Seem far-fetched? Considering that the third one is a fact right now, perhaps not.

Word of the day
The term interacculturation may not be immediately familiar to many client-side marketers, planners or account directors, but it should be. And as time ticks on it will need to be, given the explosive growth and increasing influence of Latinos and other groups within the United States.

A common assumption is that Latinos (and others) who live in this country long enough will eventually leave their traditions behind to embrace American culture, even if it takes a generation. Although this might seem accurate on a small scale, what happens at the macro level is much more dynamic. When a new culture is introduced into a host culture, each will inevitably affect and influence the other. One culture’s art, ideas and traditions will acculturate the other. The result is a constantly evolving mainstream society that is fueled by interconnected cultures.

This is what interacculturation is all about. It’s powerful, relentless and happening right now. In the case of Latinos, they are coming out of la casa, loud and proud -- and bringing their culture with them. The resulting impact they are having on the American mainstream is incontrovertible. The details may raise questions and perhaps even controversy among some. Reality and change are rarely met with universal acceptance.

The following are highlights from a paper on the subject our shop recently authored. It might help shed more light on why we are starting to see things like Hispanic-market advertising in English and general-market advertising in Spanglish.

A powerhouse
Latinos, the largest minority in the United States, drive interacculturation. Not only do Latinos influence mainstream culture, they lead the charge to a new, multicultural America -- a Nuevo America. Latinos are the powerhouse in Nuevo America because of two important factors: a fast-growing population and increasing spending power. A renewed sense of pride in their heritage is further fueling the scope of their influence.

Hispanics living in the U.S. today constitute approximately 15% of the country’s total population. By the year 2020, one in five Americans is expected to be of Hispanic origin. In addition, 2007 marked the first year in which Hispanics controlled more disposable personal income than any other minority group. With buying power of $863 billion, Latino consumer choices greatly influence the overall economy.

But this is only part of the equation. There are many factors unique to U.S. Latinos that strengthen their culture and help grow interacculturation. For instance, it’s easy for Latinos from countries geographically close to the U.S. -- Mexico or the Dominican Republic, for example -- to visit their homelands. This allows them to keep up with the trends in their countries of origin and bring them back to the U.S.

Additionally, the growing size of this mobile demographic contributes to the creation of Latino communities and neighborhoods where values, stories and traditions are continuously shared across generations. Cellphones, the internet and other new technologies keep cultural communities alive by allowing people to share, learn and revel in their culture. Increased Latino-relevant media, in both Spanish and English, also promotes the fertility of Latino culture.

Latino youth
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of today’s U.S. Latinos is how young they are. The median age of Hispanics is 27 -- a full nine years younger than the non-Hispanic median age of 36. In fact, 20% of Americans under the age of 18 are Latino.

As the leading force of the largest minority, Latino youth are at the forefront of the Nuevo America, actively advancing not just Latino culture, but American culture. They consider themselves the fuerza invincible, or the invincible force.

In late 2005, Conill conducted in-depth, in-home ethnographic research among young Latinos, ages 18-30, living in Los Angeles, New York and Miami. The youth in these microcosms shared similar values and attitudes as Latinos living in macro-America.

Interestingly, many of those values and attitudes differ from, and in some cases oppose, their parents’ traditional values and attitudes. Young Latinos respect traditional Hispanic culture, but also feel free to question it and adapt it to their own realities. They are the Nuevo Latinos. They are bilingual. They are bicultural. They are many times multicultural. And they revel in it.

Freedom of youth
Young people have always been integral influencers of mainstream culture. And Nuevo Latinos are especially powerful as they expand their sphere of influence. Through their actions, young Latinos are signaling to their perhaps more acculturated parents, as well as recent immigrants, that it's possible to live and breathe comfortably as Latinos in America. What’s more, Nuevo Latinos are likely to have friends from a wide array of ethnic backgrounds. Those friendships prove that new cultural mores (it’s OK to embrace your unique culture passionately) travel swiftly between cultures. The effect for marketers? Nuevo Latinos aren’t bound by a traditional set of ideas and they aren’t limited to a single source of information.

What’s at the root of all this Latinization? Attitude.

Latino culture is sensual. It heightens all five senses and gives a new and immediate vitality to almost everything with which it fuses. That sensual quality revitalizes mainstream trends, making them new and exciting.

Marketers in Nuevo America must become experts in uncovering interacculturation insights and applying them successfully to communications. It is also important to recognize that some ideas transcend culture and connect with people of multiple backgrounds and ethnicity. Marketers like Toyota and McDonald’s have done this well in some of their recent advertising.

Latin allure
Interacculturation is evident every day in both obvious and subtle ways: “Ugly Betty,” “Mind of Mencia,” “Dora the Explorer,” “Handy Manny.” In addition, mainstream artists like Justin Timberlake and Beyonce are recording in Spanish. Once you open your eyes, you’ll notice how Latinos seduce America.

As Latinos confidently expose, extend and preserve their own culture, other cultural communities will certainly follow. Clients expect their agencies to be experts in understanding the key influences and trends of American culture. We must master our understanding of how cultures adapt and influence each other. In other words, we must master our understanding of interacculturation.

In the end, marketers who understand interacculturation and who embrace its lessons will be hailed as the innovators in our emerging mainstream. More important, they will be in a much better position to uncover the insights needed to foster true relationships with their audiences.

Six Shortcuts to Making the Connection With Latinos

1. Realize that the Latino and general markets are constantly affecting one another. Welcome ideas that speak to a multicultural audience.

2. Understand that the Latino market cannot be emotionally accessed as one, lumped segment of broad-ranging stereotypes. There are myriad subcultures within the Latino market that directly influence mainstream subcultures. Don’t be daunted by these complexities.

3. An effective Latino marketing strategy goes beyond in-language to in-culture communications. If your Latino strategy is based on adaptation and language translation, it’s not nearly as effective as it could be.

4. Actively seek out cultural influencers. Latinos are influencing the mainstream through major shifts as well as more subtle infusions. Understand their potential power to influence your brand and product portfolio.

5. Get out there and talk to your Latino consumers. Ask how they influence their non-Latino friends, co-workers and other peers. Make a genuine effort to listen to their responses and use contextual and analytical clues to uncover the insight behind the insight. This is where the emotional impact hits hardest.

6. Don’t be fooled by feelings that the rise of Latino presence in mainstream American culture is a just a fad. The critical mass and continued growth of the U.S. Latino population assures that it is not. Nuevo American Interacculturation will continue to grow more evident every year. Recognize and embrace it or risk being left behind.

Essay 3019

Misfortune cookies in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• More shock jocks were axed for racist remarks. CBS Radio terminated the hosts of “The Doghouse with JV and Elvis” in response to their on-air prank involving crank calls to Chinese restaurants (see Essay 2044). CBS Radio should have tucked the morons’ pink slips in fortune cookies.

• Avoid pickup games with The Game. The rapper was arrested for allegedly pulling a pistol on another player during a basketball game. He got game — and firearms.

• Texas suburb Farmers Branch approved the nation’s first anti-illegal-immigrant law, prohibiting landlords from renting to most illegal immigrants. “It says especially to Congress that we’re tired of the out-of-control illegal immigration problem. That if Congress doesn’t do something about it, cities will,'' said one City Council member. However, legal experts claim local efforts like this rarely pass on constitutional levels, and opponents are already seeking a restraining order to stop enforcement of the new law. “There is significant frustration, so that’s what's driving it,” said an immigration expert. “But the simple fact is they cannot do too much other than impress upon the Congress the need for immigration reform.” Hasta la vista, change agents.

• Legislation was introduced to have the U.S. Mint produce coins commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. The coin would be released in 2014 with a $10 surcharge to raise money for the United Negro College Fund. Or maybe it could be distributed to Blacks in lieu of reparations.

Essay 3018

May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. Which explains this peculiar ad from WellPoint.

(Click on the essay title above to learn more about Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month.)

Essay 3017

Rats on the air in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• The Rev. Al Sharpton and fired Don Imus producer Bernard McGuirk held a heated debate on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity and Colmes” show. McGuirk’s rants included calling Sharpton a “crude … opportunist, a race-baiter.” McGuirk admitted that “these words did hurt these girls,” but he added, “until you, Reverend Al, got involved, they probably never would have heard of it. They would have probably never, quote unquote, got scarred for life until you got involved for your own self-serving interests.” Not sure why McGuirk would think keeping the original remarks confined to Imus’ racist audience lessens the offense. Additionally, McGuirk should thank Sharpton for providing him with media attention, as most people would never have heard of him until the racist incident.

• The militant Mickey Mouse wannabe is back on a Hamas-run children’s TV show, only days after the Palestinian information minister said the program would be suspended (see Essay 3008). Guess the character has more political power than folks realized.

• Police are searching for actor Tracy Morgan after a Miami DJ charged that Morgan grabbed her arms, kissed her and put his head in her lap after an appearance at a local radio station. The female DJ also said Morgan appeared to be drunk. Um, isn’t that a given with any episode involving Morgan?

• Research conducted by the Imperial College in London shows thin people may actually have fat problems. Internal fat around organs like the heart and liver could be as dangerous as external fat that is evident in body bulges. A professor from the studies remarked, “Being thin doesn’t automatically mean you’re not fat.” This kind of discovery will only drive Nicole Ritchie more insane.

Essay 3016

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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It’s tough defending gangstas

RAP MUSIC | Execs react with silence in face of protests against offensive lyrics

BY MARCUS FRANKLIN

NEW YORK -- Facing fierce criticism of sexist and depraved rap lyrics, top music industry executives planned a private meeting. They would discuss the issue, they said, and '”announce initiatives” at a press conference afterward.

That was three weeks ago. The press conference was canceled, without explanation. And ever since, music’s gatekeepers have been silent.

Leaders of the four major record companies, which control nearly 90 percent of the market, may fear cracking the door to censorship. Others say the record chiefs are “scared to death” of further damaging sales in an industry already hobbled by digital downloading -- or that they choose to remain in the shadows rather than protect “indefensible” lyrics.

Or perhaps they are leery of stepping into a racial minefield: While black rap artists recite those lyrics, the top execs are white -- like the man who ignited the controversy, radio host Don Imus.

“They want this whole thing to go away and keep doing what they’ve been doing, which is selling records,” said Don Gorder, chair of the Music Business/Management Department at the Berklee College of Music.

While industry leaders remain reticent, others are speaking out:

Ebony magazine pulled the rapper Ludacris from its June cover. Verizon dropped pitchman Akon after he simulated sex with an under age fan onstage. Chart-topper Chamillionaire says his new CD contains no curses or n-words. Percy “Master P” Miller, founder of No Limit Records, says he’s starting a new label for “street music without offensive lyrics.”

“I was once part of the problem and now it’s time to be part of the solution,” Miller said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who protested outside major record labels last week, is planning to lead busloads of protesters to music executives’ homes in the Hamptons over Memorial Day weekend.

“It’s indefensible,” Sharpton said of why the record executives keep silent. “They’re hoping it’ll go away. We’re not going anywhere.”

The closest the industry has come to a public discussion is when Warner Music Group vice president Kevin Lilies appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show and acknowledged “there’s a problem.”

Some say the executives’ refusal to engage in debate is tinged with race. The top music executives are white men, observed Lisa Fager, who co-founded IndustryEars, a think tank focused on the media's impact on minorities and children.

“Nobody wants to put the white man’s face on things,” Fager said. “They don’t want to see the real person behind it.”

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Execs at 4 leading labels decline interview requests
The Associated Press’ requests for interviews about rap lyrics were declined at the four major music companies, although some have issued statements on the subject.

UNIVERSAL

On the label: 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg

Refusing to talk: chairman Doug Morris, president Zach Horowitz

Statement: Values artists’ rights to expression “even if that means some of their music will not appeal to all listeners.”

WARNER

On the label: T.I.

Refusing to talk: chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr., U.S. music chairman Lyor Cohen

Statement: Takes “issues regarding the role of women and minorities in society very seriously.”

SONY

On the label: Three 6 Mafia, Bow Wow

Refusing to talk: chairman Andrew Lack, chief executive Rolph Schmidt-Holtz

EMI

On the label: Chingy

Refusing to talk: chairman Eric Nicoli

Statement: “Where controversy occurs, we will be open to debate on the issues.”

Essay 3015

Essay 3014

The creative team responsible for this ad should retire early.

Essay 3013

From The New York Daily News…

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EXHIBIT A: RACISM

NEGATIVE IMAGES OF BLACKS REVEAL HATE'S LONG HISTORY IN AMERICA

By ERROL LOUIS, DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST

This weekend, an exhibit opens at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture that will shine a penetrating, much-needed light on our nation’s shameful Jim Crow era, the period after the Civil War when demeaning and degrading caricatures of blacks were a staple of American culture.

For the first time in its 80-year history, the Schomburg will exhibit dozens of racist images and artifacts that were plastered on everything from toothpaste tubes and movie posters to children’s books, postcards and paintings.

The hard-hitting exhibit, “Stereotypes vs. Humantypes,” couldn’t arrive at a better time, given the current national battle to halt a rising tide of commercialized cultural contempt aimed at black Americans by everyone from hip-hop minstrels to hate-spewing nitwits like Don Imus.

The mad swirl of grotesque, popeyed subhumans so popular in the 19th century bear an unmistakable resemblance to today’s parade of cartoonish pimps, strippers and gunmen used by Madison Avenue to sell sneakers, CDs, movies and booze.

But in a stroke of genius, the Schomburg curators set aside a room next to the virulent, dehumanizing images and stocked it with pictures and paintings from the same period — the 1890s through the 1950s — depicting blacks getting married, gathering in church, marching for civil rights and generally living every dimension of the American Dream.

The juxtaposition makes clear that the depiction of blacks as less than human was always a conscious choice that could — and can — be rejected. The exhibit’s most moving images are those of black families who chose to sit for portrait photos less than a generation after slavery’s end, projecting grace and dignity even as the country was flooded with caricatures.

“At first blush, you look at this stuff with a certain sense of disbelief, then a kind of rage,” says Howard Dodson, the Schomburg’s director. “Then you realize these are figments of white imagination.”

According to Dodson, the use of black caricatures like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben to sell pancakes, rice and other products is key.

“These caricatures actually become brands, so customers don’t have to look at people as individuals — you just see the skin and hair and the reaction is automatic,” says Dodson. “Interestingly, things don’t change until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when companies discover that black families represent a growing market themselves, who obviously would not buy such images.”

What images we will or won’t buy remains the question of the hour, which Dodson poses by placing a mirror at the end of the exhibit. Visitors are invited to look at one last image and ask themselves what kind of person they — and the rest of the world — see.

Essay 3012

From Salon.com…

Essay 3011

My Oh My, What A Wonderful MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• The Walt Disney Company continues to consider re-releasing “Song Of The South,” but California civil rights leaders won’t make it easy. According to a report from DiversityInc., a group including L.A.-based NAACP leaders is asking Disney to add a disclaimer explaining why the depictions of Blacks are considered racist—plus, describe the social climate in which the movie was created. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, explained, “Because it does promote racially offensive stereotypes … it would be socially irresponsible [to re-release the film] without a disclaimer that puts the film in context, not with these times but those times.” We’ll bet Disney won’t do Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.

• A study in Sweden shows today’s 4-year-old Swedish girls are six times more likely to be obese than 20 years ago. “This indicates that there is a relatively recent change in our lifestyles that is behind this,” said the lead researcher for the study. “But it’s difficult to say what that is.” Um, Barbie toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals?

• Jennifer Lopez has allegedly received death threats from animal rights wackos for wearing fur. One writer promised “to kill her in public, just like the slaughtered animals whose fur she wears.” J Lo’s probably looking for a bullet-proof mink vest now.

Essay 3010

Essay 3009

Kuku Coco Butter—At last, an antiperspirant designed just for Black women…?

Essay 3008

Ratting out the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• According to the Palestinian information minister, a Mickey Mouse wannabe appeared on a children’s TV show telling Palestinian kids to fight Israel and strive for worldwide Islamic domination. “You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists,” said the character on a recent episode. “We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers.” Wonder if the show will introduce militant Mouseketeers.

• O.J. Simpson’s lawyer insists his client was kicked out of a restaurant because of race (see Essay 3005), and the attorney intends to pursue the matter and possibly sue the restaurant. The lawyer warned, “[The restaurant owner] screwed with the wrong guy, he really did.” Sounds like the perfect defender for Simpson.

• Singer Akon apologized for performing a raunchy dance with a 14-year-ol girl during a concert. “It was never my intention to embarrass or take advantage of my fans in any way, especially those under the age of 18,” said Akon. R. Kelly wondered why the apology was necessary.

Essay 3007

Essay 3006

“It’s A Feast For Your Eyes” does not apply to this layout.

Essay 3005

Cutting the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• O.J. Simpson was tossed out of a Louisville steakhouse because the owner didn’t like him. “I didn’t want to serve him because of my convictions of what he’s done to those families,” said the owner. “The way he continues to torture the lives of those families … with his behavior, attitude and conduct. … I didn’t want that experience in my restaurant. … [The attention Simpson receives] makes me sick to my stomach.” Plus, it’s probably unnerving to be around O.J. with so many steak knives nearby.

• Paris Hilton is seeking a pardon from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, hoping he’ll keep her out of jail. “I don’t think the Founding Fathers had Paris Hilton’s driving conviction in mind when they enacted the cruel and unusual punishment provision of the Constitution,” said a Loyola Law School professor. Hilton’s petition starts with some serious ass-kissing: “Let me first begin by saying that I grew up as a child enjoying all of your wonderful films. You really are the truly great action hero for our time. You are doing a great job in the great state of California.” Don’t look for the Terminator to come to the rescue on this one.

• Cracker Barrel is pulling hamburgers from hundreds of its restaurants after a patron cut herself on a piece of metal in a patty. Usually, Cracker Barrel customers only receive cutting remarks from racist employees.

Essay 3004

Essay 3003

Looks like nobody showed up for the family reunion. Or maybe Doubletree didn’t want to pay talent costs.

Essay 3002

From The Chicago Tribune…

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Obama’s protection reveals ugly ‘secret’

By Leonard Pitts, a syndicated columnist in Washington

Not Rudy Giuliani, who is a supporter of abortion rights.

Not Tom Tancredo, who is a hard-liner on immigration.

Not John Edwards, who is a critic of the war in Iraq.

Only Barack Obama, who is black.

No other presidential candidate, no matter his or her polarizing positions, has felt it necessary to seek protection from the Secret Service. But last week we learned that Obama has sought and will receive that protection, the only candidate ever to do so this early in the process. Only one other candidate even has a Secret Service detail: Hillary Rodham Clinton. And that’s because she’s a former first lady.

You know who else required early protection? Jesse Jackson, when he ran for president in 1984 and '88.

Neither Obama’s campaign nor the Secret Service will comment on precisely what went into the decision to assign a detail to the senator, beyond saying it was based on no specific threat. But one need not be a seer to divine the reason. Put it this way: The darker the candidate’s skin and the more serious his candidacy, the earlier he seems to need protecting.

All of which adds a telling dimension to the ongoing debate about Obama and blackness that has percolated for months beneath the surface of his candidacy.

On the one side, you have earnest white people insisting that, because his mother was white, Obama is not really black, but “biracial.”

On the other side, you have earnest black people insisting that, because his heritage does not trace to slavery, Obama is not really black enough -- that is, not black in a cultural sense.

Apparently, however, he is both black and black enough for whatever individual or individuals unnerved his handlers enough to seek Secret Service protection.

That’s a truth that cuts the clutter.

In a sense, the fact that we have the luxury of debating “what” Obama is testifies to the racial progress this nation has made. Once upon a time, nobody had to debate. Back before Colin and Cosby and Condoleezza, before Air Jordan took wing and Johnson made Magic, before Oprah was America’s favorite sister girl and Martin spoke of dreams, back when a Southern restaurant caused an international incident by refusing service to an African diplomat -- back in the day, there was no need of abstract rhetoric on what black is.

You knew. The world made sure of it.

If we have moved beyond that day, if we are proud to think ourselves more enlightened now, it is nevertheless naive to believe the naked meanness of that day has wholly disappeared.

It is fashionable now to speak of systemic racism and the need for black folk to take a greater hand in their own salvation. Those discussions are valid. But it is also occasionally instructive to remember that old-fashioned mean-as-a-snake, thick-as-a-brick hatred is still alive and well and living in the U.S.A.

Sometimes, it lolls in the shade of the intellectual cover provided it by the likes of Rush Limbaugh.

Sometimes, it is dressed in suit and tie and sounds reasonable when told by the likes of David Duke.

Sometimes, it is sung in wobbly adolescent voices by the likes of Prussian Blue.

And sometimes, it just rears up on its hind legs and brays that it will commit violence rather than accept a black man as its president.

We like to pretend this bile is not still in us. We like to pretend we are beyond it. Then the man who could be our next president must ask to be protected from those who think him too dark for the job.

Something to remember next time you are tempted to debate what black is. The world still has ways of making you know.

Essay 3001

From The Chicago Tribune…

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Racial profiling myth continues to live on

By Steve Chapman

We’ve all heard of the offense of “driving while black.” But not everyone has heard the good news: It doesn’t exist anymore. According to an authoritative report, black motorists are no more likely than whites to be pulled over by police. So how has that study been greeted? As proof that police racism is still a powerful force.

It’s a widely accepted article of faith that cops systematically engage in racial profiling against dark-complexioned folks. Yet this is the second consecutive survey from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics—using information supplied not by police but by citizens—that finds law enforcement to be admirably colorblind when it comes to routine traffic enforcement. Not a puny achievement, but one that was overlooked by people straining to find lingering discrimination.

The complaint is that though they get stopped at the same rate as whites, minority motorists are more likely to get unfavorable treatment during the stop. According to BJS, 3.6 percent of whites are searched, compared with 9.5 percent of blacks and 8.8 percent of Latinos. African-Americans are more likely to have force used against them and to be arrested. And they more often feel their treatment is unwarranted.

What can we make of these figures? Not what is claimed by critics like those at the American Civil Liberties Union, which labeled the disparities “disturbing,” and columnist Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, who detected “powerful evidence that racial profiling is alive and well.” Some people get their exercise jumping to conclusions.

The researchers at BJS tried to discourage snap judgments. “The apparent disparities documented in this report do not constitute proof that police treat people differently along demographic lines,” they warn. “Any of these disparities might be explained by countless other factors and circumstances that were not taken into account in the analysis.”

Plenty of other elements could generate these divergent patterns. Why would black drivers be arrested more often? Maybe because African-Americans commit crimes at a far higher rate and are convicted of felonies at a far higher rate. In 2005, for instance, blacks were nearly seven times more likely to be in prison than whites.

Those disparities are bound to affect the outcome of traffic stops. Most blacks, like most whites, are not crooks. But since the average black driver is statistically more likely to be a criminal than the average white driver, he’s more likely to have an outstanding arrest warrant—which the police would find when running a computer check of his license. A computer check that turns up a long rap sheet will probably induce the patrol officer to ask for a look inside the trunk.

A motorist of felonious habits is also more likely to have illegal guns or drugs on board. If the contraband is visible to a traffic cop, or if it shows up in a search, the driver can expect to be arrested. Not to mention that the vehicle itself may turn out to be stolen.

Given the racial gap in crime rates, it would be a shock if traffic stops didn’t generate more searches and arrests of blacks than whites. Even in a world where cops are completely free of racial prejudice, that is exactly what you would expect. There is a similar difference, after all, between the sexes—males are nearly twice as likely as females to be arrested during a stop. Is that because cops are sexists? No, it’s because men commit more crimes.

Trying to find “compelling” evidence of racism in this data is a fruitless task. Robinson makes much of the fact that blacks who are stopped are more likely to be sent on their way without any corrective action, even an oral warning. That, he says, “suggests there was no good reason to stop these people.” Or it might suggest that cops cut African-American motorists a bit more slack on petty issues, perhaps in the hope of improving their reputation.

Whatever they do, the cops can’t win. Blacks don’t get stopped more often? Big deal. Blacks have higher arrest rates? Proof of racism. More blacks are let off without a warning? More proof of racism.

And if fewer blacks were let off without a warning? I’ll let you guess how that would be interpreted.

Essay 3000

From USA Today…

--------------------------

Navajo Nation Faces Lack of Jail Space

By FELICIA FONSECA

CHINLE, Ariz. — With only about 80 jail beds on the sprawling 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation, authorities increasingly face a quandary when they catch a suspect: Who should be locked up and who let go?

The guy accused of beating up his wife? Of drunken driving? Of theft?

“What do you do when you don’t have jail bed spaces? It’s a revolving door, and it’s going faster,” said Dolores Greyeyes, director of the tribe’s Department of Corrections.

Last year, police on the reservation made roughly 39,000 misdemeanor arrests. Of those, some 36,000 were released early.

During sentencing, judges have to weigh the seriousness of the charges individuals face and consider what jail space will allow, said Mabel Henderson, program supervisor with the Corrections Department.

“Sometimes the court will look at the cases, and they say, ‘OK, we need bed spaces for more major offenses,’ so all the minor charges are, at that point, released,” she said. “They’ve seen a lot of these people that have been charged over and over that have come before their court, but they just can’t house them.”

Samson Cowboy, director of public safety at the tribe’s Crownpoint jail, said he believes the Navajo jails never were meant to house many criminals. People were supposed to follow the principle known as “k’e”—maintaining relationships through kinship and respect.

But the culture has changed, and there is more crime, he said.

“The whole Navajo Nation is denying we have an issue here, a whole societal issue,” he said.

[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]

Essay 2099

On the road with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• According to an analysis of the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances conducted by the Consumer Federation of America, Blacks pay more interest on auto loans than Whites—7 percent for Blacks versus 5 percent for Whites. “It’s hard to believe that any differences in creditworthiness explain all of these rate gaps,” said a spokesperson of the consumer federation. “They size you up, the car salesmen and finance and interest guys. They must think African Americans are more vulnerable to a markup.” Or an industry holdup.

• Sen. Barack Obama urged automakers to go greener. “So here’s the deal,” Obama told the Detroit Economic Club. “We’ll help to partially defray those health-care costs—but only if manufacturers are willing to invest the savings right back into the production of more fuel-efficient cars and trucks.” And then Blacks will pay more green than Whites for auto loans.

• A woman in Ohio is dumping her beloved Starbucks after taking offense to a message printed on a cup. The statement read, “Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.” The woman said, “As someone who loves God, I was so offended by that. I don’t think there needs to be religious dialogue on it. I just want coffee.” What would Jesus drink?

• Energy drink Cocaine has been pulled from store shelves following concerns about its name. The Food and Drug Administration warned the company last month that its product name and marketing indicated it was illegally selling a street drug alternative and dietary supplement. The label and website touted the juice as “Speed in a Can” and “Liquid Cocaine.” The company plans to relaunch the product with a new name. Possibilities include “Canned Crack” and “Blow Beverage.”

Essay 2098

Essay 2097

Would the audience for Quilt magazine feel comfortable supporting a company that also promotes gangsta rap?

Essay 2096

From The New York Times…

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50 Years Later, Little Rock Can’t Escape Race

By ADAM NOSSITER

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Fifty years after the epic desegregation struggle at Central High School, the school district here is still riven by racial conflict, casting a pall on this year’s ambitious commemorative efforts.

In the latest clash, white parents pack school board meetings to support the embattled superintendent, Roy Brooks, who is black. The blacks among the school board members look on grimly, determined to use their new majority to oust him. Whites insist that test scores and enrollment have improved under the brusque, hard-charging Mr. Brooks; blacks on the board are furious that he has cut the number of office and other non-teaching jobs and closed some schools.

The fight is all the more disturbing to some here because it erupted just as a federal judge declared Little Rock’s schools finally desegregated, 50 years after a jeering white mob massed outside Central High to turn back integration.

In 1957, the fight was over whether nine black students could attend an entirely white high school. Now it is over whether the city’s black leaders can exert firm control over the direction and perquisites of an urban school district in the way that white leaders did for decades. When Mr. Brooks, who declined a request for an interview, cut 100 jobs, he saved money but earned the fierce ill will of many other blacks, who see the district as an important source of employment and middle-class stability.

Many whites, on the other hand, see the district, where issues of race have long been a constant backdrop, as a bloated bureaucracy, ripe for Mr. Brooks’s pruning. Where some blacks say Mr. Brooks disregards them and cozies up to the white business establishment, many whites say he is merely trying to stop white flight.

The bitter racial split has left some residents questioning the dimensions of advancement in the intervening years. There are no mobs in the street this time, but the undercurrents are nasty.

“We’re quite concerned about what kind of progress we have or haven’t made,” said Andre Guerrero, a white member of the Central High School 50th Anniversary Commission.

[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]

Essay 2095

Baring unbearable souls in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Naomi Campbell penned a diary during her community service sentence, and now the public will be able to share her trash-collecting trials and tribulations. “I find solace in sweeping,” revealed the temperamental supermodel. “I have no other responsibility. I have no phone. I have the time to think. Just have, you know, peace. … What I came to realize is that I had to surrender. … I’m such a controlling person, but I had to just let go and let something higher than me be in control of my destiny. You have to let yourself become vulnerable again. … Some people can handle a drink or a line of cocaine, but I’ve finally come to realize that, for me, it’s all or nothing — and it has to be nothing. And my life has changed since.” Somebody throw a cell phone at the woman.

• A new study showed 20 percent of toddlers under the age of 3 have a TV in their bedrooms. Plus, 43 percent of kids between the ages of 3 and 4 have TVs. “A lot of these parents are kind of checking out,” said the study’s co-author, a professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s not really neglect, it’s more like absentee parenting.” Or maybe the parents are too busy watching the TVs in their own bedrooms.

Essay 2094

Essay 2093

Since 2002, African-American hotel ownership has increased ten-fold. Which is good, but not good enough.

(This probably means there are now exactly ten African-American hotel owners.)

Essay 2092

From AdAge.com—click on the essay title above to view the accompanying video…

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Uncola: The Video History of a 7UP Breakthrough Ad

How Actor Geoffrey Holder Brought Down a Racial Barrier

By Karl Idsvoog and Bill Barre

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In the early 1970s, as part of its new “uncola” advertising strategy, the 7UP company had J. Walter Thompson produce a TV commercial starring actor, director and choreographer Geoffrey Holder as a Caribbean planter explaining the difference between cola nuts and 7UP’s “uncola nuts,” lemon and lime. The extraordinary performance of the Trinidad-born Mr. Holder made the spot one of the most remembered commercials of all time. But behind the scenes, the project also represented a dramatic change in the marketing culture of the soft-drink company -- the first time it allowed a person of color to be cast in its TV ad. Researched and produced by Bill Barre and Karl Idsvoog, both professors at Kent State University, this seven-minute program uses interviews with former JWT executives Charlie Martell and Jon Furr to tell the story of 7UP’s racial breakthrough.

Essay 2091

From AdAge.com, another story by Laura Martinez Ruiz-Velasco, formerly of Marketing y Medios…

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Latino Marketers and Agencies Set Out to Explore Virtual Worlds

Dieste, Vidal and Sprint Among Those Experimenting in Second Life to Connect With Tech-Savvy Consumers

By Laura Martinez Ruiz-Velasco

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Hispanic marketers and agencies are using Second Life to gain experience in creating virtual worlds to appeal to Latinos, who are more likely to play online games than their general-market counterparts.

Alberto Fulham, for instance, shows visitors around El Dorado, one of six “islands” acquired in Second Life by Vidal Partnership, the biggest independent U.S. Hispanic agency. A four-screen movie theater screens films, and sculptures by leading artists are on display.

Clad in tight jeans, running shoes and a colorful T-shirt, Alberto Fulham is an avatar created by Alberto Ferrer, managing partner-director of direct and digital marketing at Vidal. Soon El Dorado will open a café, host concerts, and exhibit art and photography from Latin American artists, part of Vidal’s goal to make El Dorado a place where visitors can indulge in all aspects of Latino culture, from film and theater to literature and food.

Virtual area precedes the real thing
Working with Vidal, Sprint last month opened in Second Life a virtual replica of the Sprint Center, an 18,500-seat arena that will open in the real world -- Kansas City, Mo. -- this fall. The virtual arena will feature concerts by Latin artists, including performances from the Sprint-sponsored reality TV series “Concierto Clandestino,” broadcast on NBC Universal’s Spanish-language network, Telemundo. Web users can visit a bar and lounge area, and a virtual Sprint store to see and learn about new phones.

“We were looking for an opportunity to amplify our Hispanic marketing efforts in an innovative way,” said Ted Moon, director-digital marketing at Sprint Nextel. “It’s not about just slapping our logo somewhere.”

This year Omnicom Group’s Dieste Harmel & Partners, Dallas, created La Ciudad, a Second Life space where Dieste hopes to greet visitors, show its creative work and perhaps generate new business. Most of the agency’s 250-plus staffers have created their own avatars for the site.

“We’re still trying to figure out [exactly] what to do,” said Aldo Quevedo, Dieste’s president-chief creative officer. “We have an Argentine copywriter who is a male stripper. He basically dances for money [in Second Life]. It’s hilarious!”

He said the agency is in talks with a “couple of clients” interested in pursuing a Second Life strategy.

Marketing to a ‘dog with wings’
Creating virtual worlds is enticing, but industry experts increasingly are skeptical about the actual value a marketer or agency can get from Second Life and unsure how many of the millions of registered visitors are regular users. “It’s impossible to know exactly who is in Second Life at any moment, but I’ve bumped into people speaking Spanish several times,” Vidal’s Mr. Ferrer said.

Most studies show the average Second Life user is about 32 and tech-savvy, but the rest is less clear.

“In Second Life, you can be a dog with wings,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer. “How do you market to a dog with wings?”

The best use of a virtual world so far in the U.S. Hispanic market isn’t in Second Life. It’s Toyota’s Mundo Yaris, or World of Yaris (MundoYaris.com), created by Publicis Groupe-owned Conill, the carmaker’s Hispanic agency. Conill tapped into Latinos’ penchant for web games with Mundo Yaris, a virtual futuristic city where young bicultural Hispanics were introduced to Toyota’s entry-level subcompact car -- a segment where Toyota was seen as more staid than its rivals -- and convinced them that Yaris is as much a trendsetter as they are.

As the hub of a campaign connecting online, TV and print, Mundo Yaris offered an online world of style and choices in creating music, film and art. The Yaris quickly jumped from unknown to the No. 1 entry-level subcompact car, with a 22% share of Hispanic car buyers in that segment.

Essay 2090

Kicking it with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Forget Starbucks and Red Bull. The hottest energy drink in Peru is frog juice, considered capable of curing asthma, bronchitis and sluggishness. Others even view it as “Peruvian Viagra” for increasing sex drives. If anyone decides to create an advertising campaign, Kermit and Miss Piggy are perfect spokescritters.

• CBS News.com is banning reader responses because stories about Sen. Barack Obama have been receiving too many racist comments. A spokesperson said, “We have our rules of engagement. … They prohibit personal attacks, especially racist attacks. Stories about Obama have been problematic, and we won’t tolerate it.” Look for Don Imus to add another charge to his upcoming lawsuit against CBS.

Essay 2089

Essay 2088

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Poster boy for a ghetto nation

BY DEBORAH DOUGLAS

My brain exploded again the other day. The detonator came in the form of a teenage girl walking down a city street with a cute waddling toddler. She was having a conversation with a boy on the other side of the street and the f-word figured prominently in her discourse.

It was a ghetto moment.

No, I was not in the ghetto; I was on my way to a hot restaurant for a night of sushi and fruity alcoholic drinks with my girlfriends. Besides, the ghetto is no longer a place in America; it’s a state of mind. If you think you haven’t been there, think again. Whether you are high class or middle class, poor or professional, white or yellow, we’ve become a ghetto nation.

The Chicago Bears’ top draft pick, Greg Olsen, took us there last week when his YouTube-posted, nasty, misogynist rap lyrics made headlines. As a member of the University of Miami’s 7th Floor Crew, Olsen rapped about “mutting” a woman, called her a ho, described his privates and a host of filthy acts. While his lyrics are no different than those of a lot of other rap songs, it makes you wonder why and when women became targets.

Author Jabari Asim puts some of the blame on the ‘80s era of Reagan Republicanism -- the “coarsening of American culture.”

Ronald Reagan “was able to distort the image of African-American women by painting them as welfare queens,” says Asim, author of The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why. “During the greed-is-good 1980s, our self-absorption became so great we became capable of degrading our peers and fellow citizens. … I call it the blind adoration of one’s own navel.”

Writer Cora Daniels nails it in her new book GhettoNation: A Journey Into the Land of Bling and the Home of the Shameless. For her, kids in her Brooklyn neighborhood playing cards outside on a school night instead of doing homework underscored the ghettofication of her world. But, she emphasizes, ghetto behavior is not limited to the folks commonly associated with the physical ghetto: poor people of color. It’s not just women afflicted by bad weaves or men wearing gold teeth or diamond grills. Ghetto nation is a place where the worst behavior is celebrated. In this values-free zone, you’re rewarded for devaluing education and a strong work ethic, disrespecting yourself and others, taking instead of giving.

“It’s not where you live, it’s how you live,” the Ivy League-educated Daniels told me in a recent phone conversation. “It’s a mind-set that celebrates the worst of us. There’s a lot of finger-pointing that goes on: ‘It’s only them.’”

Daniels defines the New American Ghetto as a place where “marriage” and “monogamy” are bad words. It’s a place where stripper-like dancing is celebrated as long as it’s on a video and the rapper who wrote the song got a “phat” record deal.

This new, commodified ghetto is inhabited not only by hip-hop stars, but by politicians, celebrities, pundits, athletes and anybody else who allows the narcissistic inclination to profit from the moment to overtake a sense of responsibility to self, family and society. Residents of the ghetto nation create, condone or ignore ghetto behavior. The ghetto is us.

Some of the ghetto’s most prominent citizens include:

Donald Trump. This flashy trash talker gives rap a run for its money; and the worst part is he means it. Making fun of Rosie O'Donnell’s girth, among other classless moments, was a cheap shot. Low blows are ghetto.

Rosie O’Donnell. By engaging in a shout-it-out free-for-all with the Donald, this famous celebrity mom didn’t model good behavior for her kids, our kids or anybody else. Because O’Donnell milked Trump’s vendetta for ratings on “The View,” she is ghetto.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He won’t take responsibility for the goings-on in his office, especially why eight federal prosecutors were dismissed in what looks like politically motivated firings. When a man won’t “man up” and be accountable for his actions or lack thereof, he is ghetto.

Busta Rhymes. Cowed by the rappers’ “no snitching” code of ethics, the entertainer has refused to cooperate with police in the fatal shooting of his bodyguard Israel Ramirez, though he and up to 25 other people witnessed the killing last year during a video shoot in Brooklyn. Moral relativity is ghetto.

Alec Baldwin. He’s ghetto because of the awful way he talked to his tween daughter Ireland a couple of weeks ago. Baldwin is the loudmouth ghetto parent who jerks his kid around, screaming profanities while onlookers stand by in shock.

Natalie Portman. This Harvard-educated actress is ghetto, Daniels says, because on a TV talk show, she promoted pole dancing as a great way to exercise. This once X-rated form of exhibitionism has been publicly celebrated by more than one female celeb and is now entrenched in mainstream culture.

Reality TV. From “Cheaters” to VH1’s “Flavor of Love” and its demon spawn “Charm School,” these shows glorify a voyeuristic, classless ghetto mentality. We’re ghetto for watching.

Anna Nicole. That whole “Who is her baby’s daddy?” freak show was ghetto with a capital “TO.”

Steve Bing. The millionaire filmmaker would not at first acknowledge paternity of his son with actress Liz Hurley. He’s also the daddy of a baby by another rich man’s wife.

A slippery slope
But are these people hurting anybody? Absolutely.

With the rise of the ghetto nation, we are on a slippery, downward slope to the end of decency and polite society. And for people who take this kind of behavior seriously, it’s the end of hope for a better life because they can’t fathom how adherence to a credible moral code or work ethic will work in their favor.

In America, Daniels points out, you can now buy pole-dancing kits for your kids, and pimp and ho costumes for Halloween. This is what the world has come to.

“It’s a part of a larger conversation about how Americans talk to each other,” Asim says from his home in Baltimore. “We’ve replaced constructive dissent with a culture of name-calling that does not move the country forward. Cora is talking about ghetto behavior; I’m focusing on ghetto language, unproductive language.”

Rush Limbaugh embodies the ghetto ethos, Asim says, recalling how the radio host once told a guest to take a bone out of his nose and call him back.

“That behavior is beneath the dignity of the American people and cannot be limited to any particular racial group,” says Asim, who also calls out right-wing pundit Ann Coulter. “Rush Limbaugh is a member of the white elite, yet his conversation rarely rises above the level of the playground. We have a moral obligation to be intelligent, to be compassionate. Both of those things have fallen by the wayside.”

Daniels adds: “Your silence is an endorsement. That is a basic level of how each of us is ghetto. Our expectations have gotten too low.”

Time to evolve
At least the Bears’ Olsen has apologized. And you’d like to think Olsen, with his all-American good looks (have you seen his mood-ring blue eyes and strong, dimpled jaw?) has grown up and out of this infantile, gimme-gimme, make-me-feel good way of relating to the world. He certainly has a lot at stake.

But now it’s time for the rest of America’s ghetto dwellers to evolve and for the rest of us to nudge public tastes back into a respectable, less cringe-worthy range more suitable for mainstream consumption.

So now you know.

If you’ve been bopping your head to catchy songs that denigrate women, you’re ghetto.

If, like Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, you resort to name-calling when you can’t intelligently wend your way through a debate, you’re ghetto.

If you think debauched behaviors such as overindulging in alcohol and sex, drugging and spewing sexually and racially insensitive remarks are easily cured by a quick stint in rehab (Britney, LiLo, Isaiah), welcome to the ghetto nation.

[Deborah Douglas is the Chicago Sun-Times deputy features editor. She is one of the Fearless Voices of Huffingtonpost.com.]

Essay 2087

The smoking section of a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Controversy continues to smolder over Camel No. 9, a new cigarette launched in February. The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company argues the brand is targeting women smokers, but critics insist the cigarette maker is actually after college students and teens. Company executives deny the charges, claiming the product was introduced in response to consumer requests. A spokesperson said, “We launched Camel No. 9 for women who were asking for a product that better reflected their taste preferences and style.” The folks at R.J. Reynolds appear to be smoking something besides Camel No. 9.

• Paris Hilton is heading for jail after being convicted of probation violations in connection with a drunk-driving episode. She’d better pack a few cartons of Camel No. 9 to use as barter.

• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is smoking over the LAPD’s use of force at an immigration rally. Cops bashed reporters and citizens with batons and fired rubber bullets into crowds with children. Villaraigosa declared, “Like every Angeleno I was deeply, personally troubled by the events of May 1st. … Those images hit me in the gut. … We don’t need a long and lengthy investigation to stand up and speak to the truth. What happened on May 1st was wrong, was wrong.” Or just another day for the LAPD.

• Sen. Dick Durbin insisted the decision to assign the Secret Service to protect Sen. Barack Obama “had a lot to do with race.” Durbin said, “I wished we lived in a country where that is not a problem, but it still is. … The fact that Barack Obama is such a highly visible African-American candidate, I think increases his vulnerability.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remarked, “I would just say this — the bipartisan leadership committee that makes this decision, it didn’t take long to decide that it would be important for Sen. Obama to have this security.” In other words, it’s no secret that racism requires a Secret Service response.

• As a former first lady, Sen. Hillary Clinton already has Secret Service protection. Which is good, since some nutcase from Louisiana State University threatened to kill Clinton during an upcoming visit to Baton Rouge, where she’s scheduled to speak at the National Conference of Black Mayors. Wonder if Hillary merits additional Secret Service protection, as her husband was occasionally referred to as the first Black president.

• The infamous KFC/Taco Bell restaurant in Greenwich Village that was shut down after a video showed scurrying rats will not reopen. A spokesperson claimed, “The lease was actually expiring and we just decided we are not reopening.” So the rats will have to go elsewhere to pick up their KFC/Taco Bell goodies.

• A lawyer for fired shock jock Don Imus is already arguing the impending lawsuit for contract payment from CBS. The lawyer insisted CBS and MSNBC had the option to edit Imus’ remarks, but their failure to do so shows the companies viewed the comments as routine. “That means CBS and MSNBC both knew the language that was going out, and both knew the language complied with [Imus’] contract. … It was consistent with many of the things he had done,” stated the lawyer. It’s safe to say that in the coming months, America will be seeing a lot of corporate pimps and hos in action.

Essay 2086

Essay 2085

From USA Today…

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Fewer Americans call themselves multiracial

By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

The share of Americans who identify themselves as multiracial has shrunk this decade, an unexpected trend in an increasingly diverse nation.

About 1.9% of the people checked off more than one race in a 2005 Census Bureau survey of 3 million households, a meaningful decline from two surveys in 2000.

“There’s no overall explanation” for the drop, says Reynolds Farley, a research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research who analyzed the trend.

The data show that the nation continues to wrestle with racial identity even in the face of growing diversity, he says. “We’re a society where we still basically assume everyone is in one race,” he says.

Multiracial groups fought that concept in the 1990s. The small but vocal movement gained momentum in 1997 after golfer Tiger Woods proclaimed his race “Cablinasian” — for Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian. The spotlight hit other multiracial celebrities, including singer Mariah Carey, actress Halle Berry and Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter.

Mixed-race Americans lobbied the government to stop requiring people to choose one race category on Census and other federal forms. The 2000 Census for the first time allowed people to check more than one race. About 2.4%, or 6.8 million people, did so in the full Census.

The numbers were likely to rise as more children were born to mixed-race parents and multiracial organizations sprouted on college campuses. The opposite happened.

The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey of 3 million households a year shows a clear trend, Farley says. In the 2000 ACS, 2.1% checked more than one race. The drop to 1.9% in 2005 is “a slight decrease but statistically significant,” Farley says.

Jungmiwha Bullock, president of the Association of MultiEthnic Americans, is not surprised. Some believe that identifying more than one race negates racial identity, she says. “To say you’re black and Asian doesn’t mean you’re not black,” she says. “I don’t say I’m half black and half Korean. I’m 100% black, and I’m 100% Korean.”

The Census numbers “clearly underestimate how many people are mixed race,” says Daniel Lichter, a professor at Cornell University who has studied intermarriages. “People aren’t willing to define themselves as such.”

Many multiracial people identify themselves as black if they grew up in a black neighborhood, he says.

“There’s a lot of pressure from society to choose one race,” says Sara Ferry, 28, a school psychologist in Philadelphia who has a black father and a Chinese-American mother. “That’s unfortunate.”

Essay 2084

Call of the Wild with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• “Can you hear me die? Good.” The government is studying using cell phones as detection devices against biological, chemical and radioactive attacks. A Homeland Security official said, “If it’s successful, it’ll change the way chemical, biological and radiation detection is done. … It’s a really, really neat thing.” Golly, it sounds totally awesome, dude!

• CBS plans to fight the proposed lawsuit from fired shock jock Don Imus (see Essay 2078). The company issued a statement that read, “We terminated Mr. Imus for cause. … Based on the comments in question and relevant contract terms, we believe that the termination was appropriate and CBS would expect to prevail in any attempt by Mr. Imus to recover money for his actions.” In other words, CBS has no intention of paying the old ho.

• Another hip-hop artist was charged with a DUI. This time it was rapper-actress Eve, who was arrested on April 26. Somebody ought to team her up with Busta Rhymes and a third rapper and call the act Run DUI.

Essay 2083

Essay 2082

Caressa Cameron claims, “I want my customers to know the facts about payday advances before they walk through my door.” Yeah, right. The payday advance industry was probably required to run this ad. Plus, Cameron needs serious help with her ‘do. And those are the facts.

Essay 2081

From AdAge.com…

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Edward Boyd, Helped Break Corporate Color Barrier, Dies

Led Sales Team for Pepsi That Transformed Image of African-American Consumer

By Kate Macarthur

CHICAGO -- Edward F. Boyd, one of the first African-American executives to break the color barrier, died April 30 in Los Angeles of complications from a stroke.

Mr. Boyd, 92, leaves a marketing legacy that set a standard of equality toward African Americans years before segregation ended and helped change the sales trajectory of beverage giant Pepsi-Cola.

“When I reflect upon people who have made a profound difference on our company, Ed Boyd’s name will be foremost among them,” Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo chairman-CEO, said in a statement. “His groundbreaking history with Pepsi and the powerful, lasting impact that Ed made on both our company and our nation speak for themselves. Every PepsiCo associate across the globe joins me in celebrating Ed Boyd’s amazing life and journey.”

Joined a struggling Pepsi
Born in 1914, Mr. Boyd left the National Urban League to join a struggling Pepsi-Cola in September 1947 at the behest of Pepsi President Walter Mack to create an all-black national sales team to sell the soft drink to African-Americans, at the time a $10 billion market. Though Mr. Mack described the job using a racial insult, Mr. Boyd accepted the post as assistant sales manager.

Mr. Boyd formed a team of a dozen men who traveled the country to sell and market the drink to stores, colleges, bars and restaurants. Despite the sales team’s charge to redefine the image of African-Americans in advertising from that of demeaning racial caricatures to one of middle-class consumers, the men faced Jim Crow discrimination and often stayed in family homes after being refused rooms by hotels. But Mr. Boyd and his team drove sales up by double digits, according to the marketer. One of the team’s 1949 ads featured 7-year-old child model Ron Brown, who later become U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Clinton. The team’s story is chronicled in a new book, “The Real Pepsi Challenge,” by Stephanie Capparell.

The team broke up in 1951 as several of the salesmen moved into regional corporate positions. Mr. Boyd that same year left Pepsi to join the Sherman & Marquette advertising agency, but his influence on the company and the industry persisted. In 1962, Harvey C. Russell, one of Mr. Boyd’s original team members, became the first black man promoted to VP at a major company.

‘Made a difference’
“Ed carried the dreams of future generations of African-Americans,” Donald M. Kendall, retired chairman-CEO of PepsiCo, said in a statement. “Jackie Robinson may have made more headlines, but what Ed did -- integrating the managerial ranks of corporate America -- was equally groundbreaking. Long before most companies came to see the power and potential of the black consumer, Ed put doors where previously only walls existed. He and his team made a difference and made us all better.”

In 1954, Mr. Boyd became a mission chief for the international aid agency CARE, later joining the Society of Ethical Culture in New York. In the 1960s, he worked for American Home Products’ Wyeth International to help the company to sell baby formula in Africa. A decade later, he worked in Washington with a computer-marketing firm and later set up his own market-research consultancy, Resources Management.

Mr. Boyd retired in 1981, splitting time between his homes on New York’s Upper West Side and an alpaca farm in Bethel, N.Y. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Edith Jones; and four children, Rebecca and Brandon of New York; Edward Jr. of Boulder, Colo.; and Timothy of Chicago.

Essay 2080

A cleaning business run by immigrants from South Korea (pictured above) is facing a lawsuit from a judge after allegedly losing his pants. The judge is looking to collect $65 million.

The cleaners should seek counsel from the Calgon guy, who would probably tell them, “Ancient Chinese Secret: When confronted by crazy-ass judge demanding trousers, strike opponent in the fucking balls.”

Essay 2079

Here are two interesting Letters to the Editor from the latest issue of Advertising Age.

It seems like O. Burtch Drake spends a lot of time defending himself and the 4As. What happened to the hiring of a PR firm to help counter all the negativity targeting Madison Avenue?

The second letter takes a snarky swipe at Donny Deutsch. Love the reference to “his well-known potty-mouthed putdowns of people and ideas.” A former Madison Avenue leader appears to be a mean-spirited, unprofessional tyrant. Imagine that.

Essay 2078

Brainteasers in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A new study showed consuming over 14 alcoholic drinks per week may shrink your brain up to 1.6 percent. This could explain the Miller Lite Man Laws campaign.

• Busta Rhymes was busted on a DUI charge early Thursday morning. It was yet another legal problem added to the rapper’s rap sheet. Plus, it may confirm the study findings regarding alcohol consumption and brain size.

• Fired shock jock Don Imus is preparing to sue former employer CBS. Imus argues his contract stipulated he would be warned before being axed for making dumb remarks, and he’s now seeking $40 million. Talk about a high-priced ho.

Essay 2077

Essay 2076

“I can’t wait to grow up so I can play whenever I want.”

We can’t wait for AARP to run a decent ad.

Essay 2075

Essay 2074

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Another march, another year, but still no reform
Yes we can change laws -- before the nation’s attention is lost

BY SUE ONTIVEROS

The focus of Tuesday’s immigration reform rally was in the signs.

Whether on printed placards or handwritten, the words “Keep Families United” and “Stop Raids Now” -- or some variation on those themes -- appeared repeatedly among the crowd.

This immigration march put the spotlight on the fact our country's current -- and very broken -- immigration system tears apart families when undocumented parents are deported or loved ones have to face long, complicated procedures to ever be allowed legal entry into our country. Supporters of immigration reform are pushing for a moratorium on raids and deportations until new legislation is hammered out.

Because this issue is so much a family one, once again whole families came together to make the trek from Union Park through downtown Chicago. Parents pushed strollers with babies who amazingly slept through the loud repeated cries of “Si se puede” (Yes we can).

Yet this march also appeared to draw a slightly younger crowd and one that seemed to be more Latino than last year.

And probably because there’d been so much criticism at the number of Mexican flags waving at last year’s rally, this year Old Glory was everywhere and in all sizes among the estimated 150,000 marchers. Red, white and blue balloons were released into the sky as supporters waited for the walkers from the south and north starting points to get to Union Park.

But this is the thing that bugged me about the rally. I had something to compare it to; last year I arrived there by L, this year I had to hop in a cab. The day was hotter and sunnier than last time. Shorts would have been a better choice than jeans this year.

What all that means is that immigration reform hasn’t moved ahead much. Another year, another march. Though reform supporters got out the vote and did a lot to help make the current Congress become one controlled by Democrats, those elected officials haven’t returned the favor with new and better immigration legislation.

The American attention span is quite fleeting. Before long immigration will be replaced on the radar by the next presidential election. So legal American citizens, it’s time to put the pressure on your elected officials if you really want change. Remember, as my favorite sign this year pointed out: “Your Vote is Your Voice. Your Vote is Power.” The other side will be pushing that sentiment; you better do the same.

Essay 2073

After playing patty-cake, maybe Grandma and grandbaby will crack open a six-pack of Budweiser.

Essay 2072

From The New York Daily News…

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The dragons among us are feeling the heat

By Stanley Crouch

After convincing so many that it was invincible to criticism and no more than a fresh voice of the street that was holding up a mirror and expressing unpleasant truths through its music and its poetry, the hip-hop dragon has begun to bleed. Profusely. It is easy to see how the Don Imus affair brought into question issues long avoided by the media and the civil rights leadership as well as the women’s movement.

While the contrast between actual black women and those presented as no more than sluttish sex toys in rap videos had seemingly bothered no one, we found that was not true at all. The dramatic contrast between the women’s basketball team at Rutgers and the kind of language Imus borrowed from the misogynist world of rap burst a boil.

Not only did filth flow out of this swollen sore; so did all of the suppressed or intimidated goodwill one would have hoped to see rise into view much sooner. But with black women in the lead this time and far from willing to shut up, the decrepit civil rights leadership and the media chimed in and would not back up.

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” devoted two solid hours to the subject last week, followed by Paula Zahn, who had already been on the case. Then Katie Couric, “60 Minutes” and the dragon slayer himself, Anderson Cooper.

On “60 Minutes” and CNN, Cooper did the most damage by getting the rapper Cam’ron to admit the actual truth while sitting there handsome and self-satisfied with his diamond earrings sparkling for the camera. Arrogant and charmless, he made it quite clear that he was much more interested in maintaining his thug image and making money than whether or not he encouraged self-destructive attitudes and homicidal actions among young people through his lyrics and videos.

The rapper couldn’t care less and, he said, neither did any of the big corporations promoting such products and ideas through their hip-hop lines. Material, I might add, that would be elevated if it were called slime.

Bad decision, homie: You let the world see what the real deal is and what those behind you believe in above all else.

Just as he admits to having sold drugs, Cam’ron appeared smug and happy about the millionaire status he has achieved through selling poison to his fans and helping to destroy the communities of some of his followers.

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons was, I’m sure, appalled after all that he has done over the past few weeks, tirelessly trying to present these men as “poets.”

Spooked, Simmons even tried a diversion last week by calling for voluntary censorship of three little words from recordings and videos. Sorry, mogul. As the hip-hop chat rooms and the e-mail responses to Cooper and Winfrey made clear: The public has seen and heard what is actually being sold and what its actual effects are.

Cam’ron’s apology, so well written by his publicist, won’t stop what he helped make more than obvious to all who are willing to look at the real truth that was exposed in his “60 Minutes” interview. The almost irrevocable force of democratic goodwill is picking up its pace and is speaking across all lines of color, sex and creed, as it always must. We can be sure of this: The dragons are now trembling inside of their gated communities.

Essay 2071

Driving Change with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• The Justice Department released a study showing cops search Black and Latino motorists more than White motorists. Blacks are three times as likely and Latinos are twice as likely to be searched versus Whites. “There are countless reasons or circumstances that could lead police to conduct a search after making a traffic stop,” said the study’s author. “There’s really no way for us to say this is clearly evidence of racial profiling.” The Justice Department, like Lady Justice, is blind.

• It’s May Day March Madness. Demonstrations for immigration reform are planned to roll out nationwide, as folks have organized marches, meetings and voter registration drives. “If we don’t act, then both the Democratic and Republican parties can go back to their comfort zones and do nothing,” said the director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “They won’t have the courage to resolve a major situation for millions of people.” A word of advice: based on the recent study released by the Justice Department, avoid driving to your local demonstration.

Essay 2070

Essay 2069

Essay 2058 presented a story from The New York Times on advertising to American Muslims. The piece was actually PR hype generated by self-proclaimed futurist Marian Salzman, executive vice president and director of strategic content at JWT in New York.

MultiCultClassics spotlighted Salzman in Essay 1034 after she authored an Adweek editorial schooling the masses on urban culture, displaying all the street cred of a typical Madison Avenue wigger. Salzman’s website, as you may recall, claims she “identified such trends as wiggers.”

The American Muslim market is Salzman’s latest hustle. And once again, Adweek provided her with a publishing pulpit.

Salzman proclaims, “Over the past year, we’ve become acutely aware that most brands and marketers are turning a blind eye to the multibillion-dollar American Muslim market. Maybe they don’t recognize that there is an opportunity. Maybe they harbor some of the anti-Muslim fears and prejudices that are so apparent in American media and public life. Maybe they are scared of offending American Muslims, or they fear that by embracing Muslim consumers, they will alienate non-Muslims.”

Maybe Salzman needs an education on American advertising. Most brands and marketers have been turning a blind eye to every minority in the nation. Sure, folks might claim that Blacks, Latinos and Asians receive targeted efforts. But even these segments are grossly underrepresented in the standard marketing plan—just as they’re underrepresented in the standard ad agency. Now Salzman recommends creating another segregated corporate ghetto. Brilliant!

Salzman stresses that “Marketers are consummate opportunists, constantly looking for new angles, new ways to sell products and new target markets to address.” Ditto revenue-starved dinosaurs like Salzman and JWT.

Salzman asks, “Why this group? Why not another growing niche consumer segment that may prove less challenging to understand?” Good questions. The woman has already demonstrated cultural cluelessness with more popular minority groups. Prospective clients ought to wonder why Salzman should be trusted with any non-White audience. Or for that matter, any White audience.

The whiz kid reveals, “Our research shows that while Muslims are actually more brand aware than the general population, they see themselves as largely ignored by marketers.” Yo, Marian, you can substitute “Muslims” with any minority label in that sentence and it still rings true.

Salzman closes by making an inane argument that marketing to American Muslims will ultimately build bridges across society’s multicultural landscape. Damn, she probably thinks she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for that brainstorm. If this woman only spent a minute examining her own field, she’d realize her hare-brained dreams have failed to play out in similar instances—at least 100 percent of the time. Hey, futurist lady, drop the crystal ball and gaze into the past and present.

Salzman needs to construct a bridge from insanity back to reality.

[Click on the essay title above if you want to waste your time reading Marian Salzman’s Adweek editorial.]

Essay 2068

This ad for SunnyD deserves a D. On second thought, give it an F.