Does this mean Wells Fargo hopes to embrace diversity someday?
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Essay 4124
Round 2: Bart Cleveland vs. Hadji Williams at adage.com’s Small Agency Diary…
Hadji,
I doubt anyone of consequence disagrees with your assessment that the industry needs improvement in the area of diversity. Your contention is that our problems are intentional, I contend they are not. My response about you looking to your book as a possible cause for your frustration was not intended as a backhanded shot. I know when I’ve had disappointments in my career I have found solutions looking to my own efforts. I can see that we don’t share that ailment, so ignore the advice and please don’t be offended by it. I agree with you that the industry can and should improve and would be better for it. I don’t agree with your opinion of why it is where it is. Let’s leave it at that. I hope you will not have to wait until the day you die to see an improvement. Best of luck to you. —Bart Cleveland, Albuquerque, NM
Let’s clarify a couple things to wrap this up:
I don’t need a hug. I don’t need a job. I don’t need attention. Our industry is comprised of people who refuse to accept that the vast majority of its problems—collective myopia, shortage of innovative ideas, shrinking talent pools, adaptation to change, understanding of consumers—are tied almost inextricably to homogenized hiring practices and arrogant attitudes towards ethnic professionals, consumers, and agencies/vendors and media outlets serving communities of color. Period. Whether or not the ad/marketing and pr industries change will not be about me, but rather it’ll be about their desire to look in the mirror and do some self-improvement of their own before it’s too late. —Hadji Williams, Chicago, IL
Essay 4122
Ratting out the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Farfour, the Mickey Mouse look-alike who preached Islamic domination to kids on a Hamas TV show, was killed in the final episode. An actor portraying an Israeli official beat the mouse to death. “Farfour was martyred while defending his land,” said a kid on the program. The kid also proclaimed that Farfour was murdered “by the killers of children.” Officials announced new programs will replace the show. Look forward to a Donald Duck suicide bomber.
• A woman accused of robbing rapper Foxy Brown was released after Foxy failed to show up at a grand jury to testify. The rapper had insisted she was not the victim of any crime, despite the cops’ charges and evidence. Sounds like a case of rapper profiling.
Essay 4121
Verizon plays the race business card. Plus, not sure it’s a great idea to publish an employee’s contact information.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Essay 4120
Sex and politics in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama appealed to Black voters during the latest debate held at Howard University. “Let me just put this in perspective: If HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country,” said Clinton. Obama countered with, “We have made enormous progress, but the progress we have made is not good enough. … The criminal-justice system is not colorblind. … It is absolutely critical for us to recognize that there are going to be responsibilities on the part of African-Americans and other groups to take personal responsibility to rise up out of the problems that we face.” Even John Edwards freestyled, “The truth is that slavery followed by segregation followed by discrimination has had an impact that still is alive and well in America. It goes through every single part of American life.” Then Clinton performed a Negro Spiritual (pictured above).
• Charges of sexual harassment are being leveled at ESPN personalities by a makeup artist who was fired from the network. The woman claims anchor Jay Crawford and commentator Woody Paige groped her, demanded lap dances and hollered things like, “Wanna see what’s in my pants? … Wanna fuck? … Can you give me a handjob today?” Bet they’re also petitioning to add a nudie centerfold into ESPN magazine.
Essay 4117
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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Ethnic biases stronger than ever
BY ANDREW GREELEY
As the 19th century turned into the 20th, Americans began to worry about the stability of their society and its culture. Strange languages were spoken on the streets, strange-looking people in strange clothes were shopping in our stores. Strange smells percolated in certain neighborhoods. Strange customs were appearing on strange holidays. These strangers were pouring into our country. They threatened our democracy, our way of life, our culture, our religious beliefs, our economy, our blood stock. Why didn’t they stay in their own countries?
The answer is they were caught in a demographic transition -- the birth rate had increased and the death rate had fallen. A population explosion was driving people out of eastern and southern Europe.
In the decade before the beginning of the Great War, the government established a commission, presided over by Sen. William P. Dillingham of Vermont, to recommend restrictions of immigration from Europe. Many of the immigrants were of inferior races, as 19th century “scientific” racialism defined inferior. It was evident to explorers that Asian and African races were inferior to the “white” races. However, all one had to do was to observe eastern and southern Europeans to realize that they were inferior too. Indeed, the most successful of the races were the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Surely they represented, along perhaps with the Germans, the greatest progress in human civilization.
Therefore, the Dillingham Commission informed the country that it was patent that Italians were an innately criminal race, that the Poles had very limited intelligence, that Jews were incapable of honest business dealings and that the Irish were shiftless, superstitious and incapable of ambition. Such individuals could never become good Americans. On the basis of “science” like this, the commission recommended draconian limitations on immigration. The country sighed with relief.
These “racial” stereotypes persist -- not as vehement as they once were, but still part of the national unconscious. “The Godfather” and “The Sopranos” fit perfectly. So does the film “The Break-up,” in which Vince Vaughn plays an insensitive oaf. He is subtly labeled “Pole” by the huge Polish flag, complete with the Polish eagle, on the wall of his office. The lazy, alcoholic Irish laugh all the way to their hedge-fund manager.
A Mexican-American high school sophomore sent me an e-mail asking why other Americans hate them so much and tell so many lies about them. My answer is that Dillingham is alive and well. They don’t want more people with somewhat darker skin who can never become good Americans.
Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington has argued that Mexicans do not want to acculturate into our Protestant political and social system. Don’t tell me, kid, that you can refute all the “facts” they propound to establish your inferiority (you’re second generation, but you have no right to the educated prose of your e-mail). The bigots (less than a third of the country) who hate you know in the depths of their souls that you and your kind are an inferior people who are trying to take over their country and ruin it. We don’t need no more Mexican flags at soccer matches and certainly no more statues of Guadalupe parading down our streets.
More seriously, young woman, you’re very smart, the kind of young person this country needs. I pray to God that you can avoid the stormtroopers who might throw you out of the country. Given half a chance, you will become a successful American. Maybe someday you can laugh at them all the way to your hedge-fund broker.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Essay 4115
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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I’m a racist? Those are fighting words
Blacks understand what white columnist doesn’t: Race matters
BY MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times Columnist
When a white male colleague calls his black female co-worker a racist, what should she do?
Walk down the hall and punch him in the nose?
Of course not. I’d be fired for workplace violence.
But that was exactly what I felt like doing Wednesday when I read Neil Steinberg’s item in which he attacked me (without mentioning my name) for my perspective on the media coverage of Bobby Cutts Jr., the black man who is charged with killing his white pregnant girlfriend in Canton, Ohio.
In my column, I noted that the media pounded the message home that Cutts, the father of three children by three women and carrying on an affair with the victim, Jessie Marie Davis, is a lowlife.
Yet, we tiptoed around the fact that Christopher Vaughn, the white man now charged with killing his wife and three children, was most likely the killer.
Indeed, the Vaughn case was shrouded in mystery, while the Cutts case was so wide open, we knew his personal business almost immediately.
Debate still going on 17 yrs. later
The difference in how these similarly heinous crimes were framed in the media had to do with race, I argued.
And had Cutts murdered a pregnant black woman, we wouldn’t know what she looked like.
In fact, the last time a kidnapped black woman made headlines or the cable news channels (she later turned up dead), her family had to browbeat and shame the cable stations into carrying the story.
As for the Vaughn family -- the media kept harping on the fact that they were the “perfect” family. Now we hear that they weren’t so perfect after all.
Call it what you will, the media are often biased when it comes to covering these issues.
Don’t believe it? Show up at a meeting at the National Association of Black Journalists, Chicago chapter. No matter what the topic, the discussion will end on this subject.
This debate over media bias was going on when I arrived in the newsroom 17 years ago, and it is still going on today.
But Neil Steinberg has become a self-appointed critic of my views on race.
“[T]o claim that Cutts was portrayed in a negative fashion ‘because he is black’ while Vaughn was displayed positively ‘because he is white’ is to a) cry wolf and b) succumb to an inverse kind of racism…,” Steinberg wrote.
First of all, the language in quotes is Steinberg's, not mine.
For the record, this is what I wrote:
“Although just about everyone I spoke with thought Vaughn must have killed his family, he was given the respect due any grieving father by the media. The Vaughns were portrayed as the perfect suburban family, with Christopher Vaughn, a forensic adviser, being described as ‘low-key.’
“For something so sinister to happen, there had to be a lot more negativity going on with this guy than what was being reported. But Vaughn was given the benefit of the doubt in the media, which increases his chances of getting a fair trial.
“Cutts was not.
“The difference in these sensational crimes isn’t character. It’s race.”
3rd explanation not mentioned
Steinberg has the right to disagree with me. In fact, he could have come down the hall, pulled up a chair, and we could have talked about our different perspectives.
Steinberg didn’t do that. He used his platform to label me a racist. That shouldn’t surprise me, since my critics at SCORE radio trashed me, as well, on Tuesday afternoon, prompting a black listener and reader to call me, enraged.
I’m comforted by the fact that a lot of black people knew where I was coming from. And since white people haven’t walked a step in our shoes, they don’t get to tell us what our views on race ought to be, anyway.
Few blacks and whites agree on this subject. And frankly, quiet as kept, most black people couldn’t care less about what white people have to say when it comes to race.
Steinberg -- who can wax poetic about one black woman he doesn’t know in the same column that he takes a cheap shot at one he does – doesn’t have the right to label me a racist even when he wraps the offensive label in clever wit.
There’s a third explanation that Steinberg didn’t mention about why Cutts was portrayed in a negative fashion and Vaughn wasn’t.
Frankly, most often, the people who make the decision about how blacks are characterized in the media look more like Steinberg than they do me.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Essay 4111
Once again, Hadji Williams drops in on AdAge.com’s Small Agency Diary…
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Help! I’ve Been Pigeonholed!
The Difficulty of Getting People to See Beyond Your Specialty
By Doug Zanger
It only took four months, but I finally got my radio/audio consultancy and website up and running. pOne partners is equal parts labor of love and a culmination of 12 years of just plain old labor. The philosophy behind it is pretty simple: I’m trying to leverage the subtleties of the ebbs and flows of radio advertising and audio content and how they fit within the framework of the bigger advertising picture to develop highly specific consulting products.
Are we a “radio agency?” I suppose we are to a degree. Where I part company with conventional wisdom is in my perception. To me, it’s not about just being an “agency” but rather a creative and (sometimes) strategic “gap filler,” using radio and audio as the foundation. Our goal isn’t to replace but to enhance what is already in place for radio stations, advertising agencies, advertisers, programmers, interactive agencies and content providers.
The pOne position is also about advocacy. We take stewardship of radio seriously. Part of the evolution is to have an internship program that encourages younger people to see how dynamic and exciting this part of the industry can be. By doing so, we hope to develop a new generation of talent that can evolve the medium. We also strongly support the Freeplay Foundation, a UK-based non-profit that donates Freeplay Lifeline radios, primarily to remote areas of Africa and other underdeveloped countries around the world. In fact, 5% of all pOne sales will go to their efforts.
What I am finding most challenging is articulating why pOne is different. There are some preconceived ideas of my background that, whether I like it or not, have been created by the body of work that I have done over the years. After the press release hit, I started receiving congratulatory e-mails from people I hadn’t heard from in quite awhile. Some still think that I am a radio producer. Some think I pretty much just do voice work. Most still think of me as that guy who produces good radio spots and station imaging.
I was taken aback at first, because I thought that I had evolved from being just one or two things. I have, in some ways, been pigeonholed. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Yes, I have a good standing in radio that I am immensely proud of and this is the obvious place for me to hang my hat and continue to grow. But I did a little writing and voice work for the TBS Humor Study a few years ago. (I am the French, Spanish and German voice of Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza in one part of the site and Sean Connery in another.) I teach advertising at a college here in Oregon. I write some TV and print. I was the voice of Patrick Henry in an animated educational DVD that was just released. I’m doing some broad branding work for a few clients. I produce video content. I consult radio stations and sales staffs. I even have a couple of screenplays in varying degrees of “doneness.” I suppose I will always be that “radio guy,” and I’ll gladly take it as long as I get a shot at doing some of these other things along the way because I honestly believe that they can be of real value to a client.
Clearly, I am in a specialized chair, finding that I have yet to pull it up to the rest of the world's table in some ways. But from where I sit, this opens up a remarkable opportunity to introduce pOne and its core mission to an entirely new audience and reintroduce myself to the people who have been part of the success and professional fulfillment I have enjoyed for over a decade. Even if it means starting off by being the “radio guy who does the good spots.”
Believe me, if that’s what it takes to move things forward, I’m all for it.
Quick Hits
Do you find yourself or your company pigeonholed sometimes? Why? Is it good or is it bad?
How would you define the difference between having a “specialization” and being “pigeonholed?”
Do you think that specialization can engender good, broad work or the other way around?
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There’s pigeonholing, then there’s specialization.
Sometimes you’re just good at what you’re good at—and what you’re good just so happens to be in great demand so the same opportunities continue to come your way. Like attracts like. There’s no shame in just being a great radio guy or a great spot media buyer or a great billboard headline writer and nothing else.
The real problem comes if you’re systematically, time and time again, not allowed to try anything else for arbitrary reasons, or god forbid, nefarious ones that have nothing to do with your abilities or the needs of your clients.
Case in point:
By virtue of nothing else but having majority black, hispanic, and/or asian staffs, America’s ethnic agencies are pigeonholed into subcontractor status and banned from the AOR portion of accounts. Imagine being told, “Doug, you’re great, but you’re White, so here’s the ‘white portion’ of the budget and nothing else. Ever. Now go get ‘em tiger!”
That’s what ethnic agencies endure. No matter how broad-reaching and breakthrough their ideas may be, no matter how smart or on-point their staffers are, they’re not even allowed to discuss being an AOR for any client. Ever. Only White agencies get to be AORs. Ethnic shops, by the way, get about 5% of the typical GM client’s budget.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re a direct response firm, a sales promo shop, an interactive agency, a boutique or a traditional broadcast shop. If your agency ain’t white-run/majority white staffed, you cannot be an AOR. Period.
Now add to this being forced to “translate” the AOR’s creative and strategy (which was created for an audience different from yours) for your audience regardless of its relevancy and efficacy to your audience. Why? Because you’re “just an ethnic shop” and it’s play the game or not play at all.
So yeah... being pigeonholed is a bad thing. —Hadji Williams, Chicago, IL
Essay 4110
Court jesters in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Michael and Janet Jackson continue their court fight to get back items that were slated for auction. The stuff includes Janet’s marriage certificate to singer James DeBarge and Jacko’s collection of Three Stooges photos. Which technically brings the number of stooges involved in this scenario to six.
• The jury is out on the decision to seat an all-White jury for a Louisiana trial with racial overtones. The case involves a group of Black students who allegedly beat a White classmate. “I’m sure I can get a fair trial,” said one defense lawyer. “You can’t tell me there aren’t six people in this town who won’t listen fairly and do the right thing. I think people have a tendency to do the right thing.” They say justice is blind, but this lawyer appears to be deaf and dumb too.
• A recent study showed Whites may be overrepresented in Manhattan jury pools, while Hispanics are the most underrepresented group. The writer of the study remarked, “Even if it’s difficult to have a mathematical representation for every trial, we shouldn’t have a system where there’s effectively no representation.” Somebody send that guy to Louisiana.
Essay 4107
From The Chicago Tribune…
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Hate crimes, special victims and media bias
By Kathleen Parker
WASHINGTON -- The fallacy of hate crime laws -- the prosecution of which requires a degree of mind-reading not yet available to most Earthlings -- has been cast into stark relief the last few weeks after an interracial rape-murder that has bestirred white supremacists and led to death threats against an African-American columnist.
The spark that caused the firestorm was the brutal rape-murder of a young white couple, Channon Christian and Chris Newsom, who were carjacked in January in Knoxville, Tenn. Five blacks -- four men and a woman -- have been charged in connection with the slayings.
Because the story didn’t receive national media attention, some commentators and others have asserted that the media do not treat racial crimes equally. They point out that when a black stripper charged three white members of the Duke University lacrosse team with rape, the national media grabbed the story by the ankle and wouldn’t let go. Not so Knoxville.
The perception of media bias is understandable -- and a credible case can be made that the media rushed to condemn the Duke athletes because it fit a recognizable racial narrative, especially in the South. But while race was clearly a factor in stimulating media interest, other factors absent from the Knoxville case -- privilege, town-and-gown conflicts, politics, underage drinking and the name Duke -- also added to the broader “story” appeal.
Nevertheless, the media’s largely unskeptical embrace of the charges in the absence of due process, coincident with the horrible events in Knoxville, have stoked passions among some whites who contend that black-on-white crime is underreported.
Adding to the current heat is the decision that the Knoxville blacks won’t be charged for hate crimes. Officials say that because the accused have had white friends, they weren’t driven by racial hatred.
That seems a flimsy argument, but it does serve to underscore the potential errancy and misapplication of laws that rely on the subjective judgment of others’ psychological motives. As the mother of one of the victims said: “If this wasn’t a hate crime, then I don’t know how you would define a hate crime.”
Hate crimes are not defined only by motive, but by their effect on other members of the same group. The argument for hate crime laws is that crimes motivated by animus toward an individual because of race, sex, gender identity or disability victimize all members of that group by causing fear and intimidation.
Adding still more fuel to the media bias claim is a group of white supremacists on one side and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts on the other. Pitts drew fire when he pointed out that the Knoxville incident wasn’t considered a hate crime and refuted claims that black crime is underreported. He ended his column with four words for whites who feel oppressed: “Cry me a river.”
That’s pure columnist flare, but decidedly, um, gutsy considering the likely reaction from people who are not widely known for tolerance. A neo-Nazi group has posted Pitts’ address, phone number and his wife’s name on its Web site, Overthrow.com. Pitts has received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls, including several death threats that are being investigated by the FBI.
Obviously, Overthrow’s editor and the 280 contributors to his American National Socialist Workers Party are the definition of a fringe group that doesn’t deserve so much attention. But the same also might be said about those who commit “hate crimes.”
In 2005, among about 7,000 hate crimes -- mostly characterized by intimidation (48.9 percent) and simple assault (30.2 percent) -- just six murders and three forcible rapes were reported as fitting the hate crime definition, according to the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics report. Though we may hate “hate crimes,” those numbers hardly seem sufficient to justify extra laws designating a special category for certain crime victims.
Groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have insisted that hate crime laws are necessary because crimes that make minority communities fearful “damage the fabric of our society and fragment communities.”
The Duke and Knoxville cases cast serious doubts on that premise. It is human nature to resent groups and individuals deemed more special than others.
Signaling through laws (or media treatment) that one group’s suffering is more grievous than another’s -- or that one person's murder is worse than another’s -- is also likely to fragment communities, as well as to engender the very animosities such laws are meant to deter.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Essay 4105
Cleaning up the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• The lawsuit involving a Washington judge seeking $54 million from a dry cleaners for misplacing his trousers is finally over, and the judge is the big loser. For starters, the judge was ordered to pay about $1,000 in court costs; plus, he may have to cover the legal fees of his opponents. He originally charged that the dry cleaners failed to live up to store signs stating “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” But the judge ruling on the case wrote, “A reasonable consumer would not interpret ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer’s unreasonable demands.” So much for the customer always being right.
• A new study released by the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility showed that it will take over 100 years before Latinos are well-represented in the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies. Despite the fact that Latinos are the fastest-growing segment in the U.S., the group has been slow to gain access at top corporate levels. “The majority of companies are run by white guys over 50. The majority of boards are run by white folks,” said the HACR President. “The customer base is different — in Miami, Dallas, LA, the majority of these markets are minority. At some point, people have to wake up.” Yeah, but it will take over 100 years.
Essay 4104
Diversity and inclusion requires more than a cookie-cutter approach. Wish someone would apply the same notion to diversity ads.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Essay 4101
Booting Camp in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• The number of Blacks joining the armed forces has dramatically dropped—by over 30 percent since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started. Relatives are leading the anti-recruitment efforts, persuading family members to steer clear of the services. They’re probably using the slogan, “A life is a terrible thing to waste.”
• Southern Blacks reached an education milestone: they’re now as well represented on college campuses as they are in the area’s overall population. “We’ve made tremendous progress, don’t get me wrong,” said an official with the Southern Regional Education Board. But unless achievement gaps are reduced, “we’re going to be in trouble. We already are in trouble, but we’ll be in more trouble seven or eight years down the road.” Maybe they should use the alternative of joining the armed forces as a college recruitment tactic.
Essay 4100
This is admittedly a routine rant at MultiCultClassics, but it always makes for an easy essay.
Whenever the topic of diversity in advertising comes up, an angry mob of adfolks quickly rallies. The unruly horde bitterly complains about the prospect of quota hiring. Vicious slurs are hurled at Rev. Jesse Jackson—even when he’s not remotely involved in the scenario. The throng whines that sacred selection standards will be lowered, and slots will be awarded to lesser-qualified candidates.
Exactly what industry do these idiots think they’re in?
Anyone who has spent the shortest stint in advertising can readily attest that jobs are handed out for all sorts of inane reasons. And things like expertise and ability rarely factor into the final decisions.
Here’s an abridged lineup of stereotypical characters that effortlessly land Madison Avenue positions ahead of minorities:
• Children of Agency Executives. The crazy part is, most of these slackers don’t want the gigs, as they often despise being associated with their parents. The pitiful kids bide their time—occasionally selling drugs to staffers—until Mom or Pops can find them a real job.
• Children of Clients. Most of these kids do want the gigs, but they’re woefully ill-suited for the field. In fact, they’re usually just one intellectual rung below the average Special Olympian. Pray for the people assigned to mentor these clueless critters.
• Children of Somebody’s Neighbor. That’s right, virtual nobodies win a place in line before minorities.
• Family Members (including Extended Family Members). Nepotism trumps racism.
• Mistresses. Certain admen with hiring authority are bona fide pimps. Nuff said.
• Boy Toys. It’s equal-opportunity time for the ladies.
• Buddies. Let’s get real. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Unfortunately, the recruited buddy is scarcely ever a stellar performer. Ditto the recruiting buddy. But since agencies dislike paying headhunter fees—and HR officers are too lazy to actively search—companies eagerly settle for any warm body to fill a cubicle.
• Ex-clients. You hated them as clients. You’ll absolutely hate them as teammates.
• Outsiders. Some senior-level jackass hatches the notion that a washed-up punk rocker or sketch comedy writer will inject innovation. Bonus points if these freaks have access to hot groupies.
• Nomadic Poison. These drifters-grifters are becoming increasingly common as new media emerges. They tend to be charlatans who hype and hustle cutting-edge ideas, but never manage to execute anything of value.
• Mercy Hires. The former partner struggling to adapt in the evolving marketplace and recovering from a dependency problem warrants a nod instead of minorities. Mercy Hires spend their days poring over tutorials for QuarkXPress.
It’s guaranteed that anti-diversity adfolks can identify numerous professional peers from the list above. Hell, a lot of the groaners may fall into the infamous categories. But honestly, can they spot a single “quota hire” in their hallways?
If you want to slam controversial roster choices on Madison Avenue, let’s begin by thoroughly examining the existing processes.
Essay 4098
American Express uses spices to make a statement about diversity—yet the spices are segregated and unequal.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Essay 4097
Why does Advertising Age’s Small Agency Diary seem to inspire small-minded commentary?
In the past week, Bart Cleveland and Marc Brownstein posted perspectives that drew responses from industry critic Hadji Williams (see Essays 4076 and 4080), and Cleveland’s thread even displayed nastiness (see Essay 4091).
It’s funny how advertising veterans become paranoid and offensive when presented with the prospect of biased behavior on Madison Avenue. Cleveland was particularly stereotypical in his response, choosing to personally attack Williams. Ditto Brad Gutting in subsequent remarks. It’s reminiscent of the recent Don Imus fiasco, where Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton were targeted with death threats after calling out the racist shock jock—although Williams might question being lumped with the Dynamic Duo of Diversity, since he occasionally prefers to title himself as Black Canseco. Additionally, there’s no intention here to brand Cleveland, Brownstein and Gutting as being in any way associated with Imus.
Regardless, it’s interesting to note that Cleveland and Brownstein whined about the pains of finding qualified talent, yet both exhibited zero attempts to stray from the standard recruitment tactics that have fortified our industry’s much-deserved reputation for exclusivity.
Cleveland took ignorance to another level by later posting an unrelated editorial on the imperative for change. Here’s a direct excerpt from his newest proclamation:
“What are you doing different? We all have bad habits that keep us from reaching our true potential. I love change because it forces you to stay on your toes. More importantly, it forces you to look at how you do things today. I hate it when people say, ‘We’ve always done it that way.’ That is the lamest reason I’ve ever heard. Gordon Sawyer founded my previous agency in 1960 in Gainesville, a small north Georgia town that’s biggest industry was chicken farms. Frank Compton used to tell me how Gordon would walk in randomly and make everyone change offices. Frank said it was great because it re-energized everyone, getting them out of whatever ruts they might be in at the time. If a guy from a chicken-farm town can be this forward thinking, I want to be.”
Hmmm. Heaven forbid Cleveland should apply such progressive notions to the search for employees. But he’ll probably be happy to learn that New York City’s Commission on Human Rights has no jurisdiction in New Mexico, where his small agency resides. As always, walking the walk remains a difficult dance move for old school adfolks.
Essay 4095
Sunday Knight News in a MultiCultClassics Monlogue…
• Religious parties worldwide are pissed off over Britain’s announcement that author Salman Rushdie will be awarded knighthood. Protestors in Pakistan chanted for Rushdie’s death. One person argued, “Earlier they had published cartoons of our Prophet, and now they have given an award to someone who deserves to be killed.” Rushdie probably hopes the knighthood comes with a suit of bulletproof armor.
• New York police said rapper Foxy Brown was robbed this weekend, with four people teaming up to steal her Louis Vuitton bag, $500 in cash, credit cards and a hearing aid. But Foxy denied the charges, telling The New York Post, “A lot of the time, people mistake me for someone else, or people always call in these false tips.” However, the cops are sticking to their story. Maybe this is another “Stop Snitching” scenario.
Essay 4093
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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Faggot vs. queer
Reflecting the evolving place of gays in American culture, one word has grown more acceptable, the other more vile
BY KEVIN NANCE
I don’t know why I said it. I was 13 — that dangerous age — and on a schoolyard in 1973, having an argument with my former best friend. Jim, as I’ll call him, had recently become distant, even hostile, and I was furious at him for deserting me. Sputtering, almost crying, I called him a name that I must have known would end whatever chance we had to reconcile. “Faggot,” I spat at him. “Dirty faggot.”
Jim’s eyes narrowed to slits. He balled up his fist and drew it back to punch me, then seemed to realize he could do better than that. “Takes one to know one,” he said with grim satisfaction, and left me standing there, stunned and speechless.
And so, years later, I found myself in the unusual position of agreeing, if only partly, with the far-right pundit Ann Coulter, who insisted that the word “faggot” — which she’d lobbed at presidential candidate John Edwards — was “a schoolyard taunt.”
But it isn’t just any taunt. In the schoolyards of my youth, you unleashed “faggot” sparingly, only against your worst enemies and only if you were prepared to back it up with violence. Then as now, you understood it as a nuclear weapon in the American name-calling arsenal, rivaling the N-word in sheer wounding power.
“Queer” was almost as bad. It was slightly quieter and more clinical, but it meant the same thing; “queer” was to “faggot” what “prostitute” was to “whore.” To fling either word at a male was to accuse him of being unmanly, a homosexual (in those days pretty much the worst thing a man or boy could be) or both.
In the past two decades, however, the two slurs have evolved in two distinctly different directions.
The new N-word?
Today, “faggot” seems to have grown even more offensive, and to more people, than ever before. Ask “Grey’s Anatomy” star Isaiah Washington, who may have been fired this month partly for having repeatedly used the term in reference to a gay co-star. In what cynics viewed as an effort to save his job, Washington apologized, filmed public-service announcements and even went to rehab over the incident — a fact that Coulter was hamfistedly trying to lampoon in a way that sparked its own firestorm. She was chastised by Republican presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani and John McCain and dropped by several newspapers that had carried her column.
In fact, “faggot” shows signs of becoming the new N-word, an expression so taboo that in their reporting on the Coulter incident last winter, several big-city newspapers, including the Washington Post, declined to print the term itself; “anti-gay epithet” was a common euphemism. (Other papers, including the New York Times and the Chicago Sun-Times, elected to print the unexpurgated version.) In phone conversations and interviews related to this column, I’ve found myself avoiding using the word whenever possible, and worrying that co-workers sitting near me might be offended.
The F-word’s diminutive version, “fag,” carries slightly less sting. Coulter called Al Gore “a total fag” a year before the Edwards incident, with much less public reaction. And when Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen called Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti a “fag” last year, the consequences were relatively muted. “Completely unacceptable,” said commissioner Bud Selig, who nonetheless simply ordered Guillen to attend what seems to have been a perfunctory bit of “sensitivity training.”
In Coulter/Edwards and Guillen/Mariotti, by the way, the attackers later insisted that their words weren’t meant as references to their targets’ sexual orientation; Guillen says he meant to imply that Mariotti was a coward, and Coulter meant — well, who knows what she meant? Both explanations don’t entirely wash, however, because of how sexual identity and gender are so closely bound, and confused with each other, in the public mind.
“Gender is about sex roles, and when you call a heterosexual man a faggot or a sissy, you’re attacking his masculinity — accusing him of doing something that doesn’t conform to traditional masculine sex roles,” explains Gregory Ward, a linguist at Northwestern University. “Gay men have been thought of the same way, and there’s a conflation of the two that people exploit in their choice of words.”
In that way of thinking, then, gay men are abnormal because they don’t act like straight men. And straight men who don’t act like other straight men — by, say, re- fusing to come to the White Sox clubhouse to get yelled at by Guillen after they’ve written something negative about him — are also abnormal, which puts them a tank top away from those mincing sissies down on Halsted Street.
The strapping lads of the International Mr. Leather competition, which took place a few weeks ago in Chicago, might have something to say about that, but that’s another story.
[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]
Essay 4092
From The Chicago Tribune…
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THE DUKE LACROSSE CASE
Cheers can’t drown out painful truths
Public brawl over rape allegations reminds us of the price women sometimes must pay for being heard
By Anne K. Ream
Supporters of the Duke University lacrosse team are in a celebratory mood. The team excelled in last month’s NCAA tournament. And just last week, the prosecutor who filed rape charges against three of the team’s players was himself put on trial, accused of ethics violations in pursuing a case fraught with problems.
The young men who narrowly lost to rival Johns Hopkins in the NCAA championship game are indeed gifted and resilient athletes. But praising the players as “outstanding” and “upstanding” young men, as the Duke Lacrosse Booster Club did in a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, is a reminder of just how low the bar has fallen when it comes to acceptable male behavior. Legal vindication is not moral vindication, no matter how hard a PR campaign works to make it so.
We may never know everything that occurred on the night of March 13, 2006, when the Duke lacrosse players threw a team party at an off-campus house. But what we do know is troubling enough.
Photos taken at the party show two young women, hired to perform by the players, dancing at the center of a group of largely drunken and leering men. The North Carolina attorney general’s report details how one of the lacrosse players held up a broomstick during the night’s events, suggesting that the women use it as a “sex toy.” Another player sent a chilling group e-mail just hours after the party, musing about bringing in more “strippers” and cutting off their skin while ejaculating. Witnesses reported hearing racial slurs lobbed by partygoers.
To be fair, individual acts do not implicate the entire lacrosse team. Misogyny is not illegal. And none of these ugly events constitutes a criminal act. But they stand as a testimony all their own, a window into a world where “good” men engage in troubling -- and sometimes troubled -- behavior.
The statement that “boys will be boys” has become an all-purpose justification for male behavior that is boorish, bad and at times even brutal. The degradation of women has been normalized for so long that it seems we have ceased to see what is right before our eyes.
Yet the words and images that came from the residence of the captains of the Duke lacrosse team demand to be addressed, as does the prosecutor’s possibly criminal mishandling of the case. They speak volumes about the climate in the players’ house. So what does our silence in the face of these truths say about us?
We talk endlessly, exhaustingly, about “moral values.” But we talk little of valuing women, particularly when they are young, poor and black, as were the women hired by the Duke lacrosse players.
Nowhere was this more apparent than at the news conference two months ago when North Carolina Atty. Gen. Roy Cooper dismissed all charges against the players, taking the opportunity to muse about the mental stability of the young woman at the heart of the case. Later that week, when the mother of one of the lacrosse players appeared on “Good Morning America” and insinuated that the accuser ought to lose her children, she left little doubt about who was being tried in the court of public opinion.
Every public rape case exists in two spaces: In the practical, “law and order” world, where it works its way through an imperfect system; and in the public imagination, where it exists symbolically, a Rorschach test of our values and beliefs. It is not only the specifics, but also the symbolism, of the Duke case that remain troubling. Both serve to remind those who come forward with rape charges that they may pay a steep and very public price for the chance to be heard.
Millions of rape victims, most of whom never report the crime -- much less see legal justice -- must have watched silently as this case unfolded, thinking about how they might have fared under such scrutiny. That the accuser gave conflicting statements to the police is not unusual. A victim’s statements, particularly in the wake of a traumatic attack, can be confused and inconsistent. Memory is resolutely imperfect over time and under the duress of repeated questioning.
Our cultural response to rape leaves its victims in the cruelest of double binds: They must choose between coming forward, which carries the risk of being blamed, and remaining silent, which carries the risk of isolation. It is a silence that damages more than the victim. It strikes a blow to our public safety as well, because unreported sexual violence allows perpetrators to violate again.
The myth of the “false report” of rape must be replaced by this truth: It is underreporting, not false reporting, that poses the greatest risk to our families and our communities. It is silence that is the enemy of change.
[Anne K. Ream is a Chicago-based writer and founder of The Voices and Faces Project, voicesandfaces.org, a national documentary initiative.]
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Essay 4091
A stereotypical comment posted at AdAge.com in response to the Bart Cleveland-Hadji Williams debate presented in Essay 4076…
Bart,
The industry really needs more people like you. I continue to be amazed at how humane you are without being soft. Basically, what you’re doing is mentoring people, something that seems to have all but vanished from the professional world these days across MANY industries.
Hadji,
You accomplished precisely minus-zero with your rants. Broadly accusing CDs of racism is…uh…silly. Several months ago I applied to a fine agency that has a “minority focus.” I’m white. I didn’t assume that they passed on me because of that. I know one thing that agencies generally find useless and irritating is uncontrolled anger. It’s not original. Grow up.
Cheers,
Brad Gutting, STL.
Essay 4089
Oh baby, it’s another MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• The mother of 50 Cent’s 10-year-old son is demanding more child support, seeking a raise from the current $25,000 per month. Fiddy’s lawyer griped, “Her demands keep escalating.” Clearly, she’s looking to get rich or die trying.
• The results are in: Eddie Murphy is Melanie Brown’s—aka Scary Spice—baby daddy. A DNA test confirmed it, although Murphy has made no public comment. Brown needs to hook up for advice with the mother of 50 Cent’s kid.
• A new nationwide survey revealed that 29 percent of men claim to have had 15 or more sex partners in their lifetime, versus only 9 percent of women boasting similar numbers. Based on the stories involving 50 Cent and Eddie Murphy, it appears that men ultimately pay for the higher figures.
• Despite a 12 percent decline in sales over the first five months of 2007, Ford CEO Alan Mullaly said the company’s turnaround plan is “pretty much on track.” Guess the bold moves are based on lowered expectations.
Essay 4088
From The Chicago Tribune…
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Green Bay heats up immigrant debate
City becomes one of largest in the nation to enact law targeting undocumented workers
By Tim Jones, Tribune national correspondent
The business of doing business in Green Bay is changing this weekend because of a new ordinance that would let the city yank the operating licenses of employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers.
Proving that immigration reform is not simply a matter of congressional gridlock and talk-radio shouting, Wisconsin’s unofficial football capital added its name this week to the growing number of local communities trying to address the issue that has Congress tied in political knots.
“Look, had Congress done their job we wouldn’t have this [ordinance] in Green Bay,” Mayor Jim Schmitt said Friday. “I think at this time it’s the right thing to do, given what’s not happening at the federal level.”
The new law, set to take effect Saturday, comes amid similar local efforts around the country, including Waukegan, Ill., where the City Council on Monday authorized giving the chief of police permission to apply to Washington for authority to enforce federal immigration laws.
Many of these efforts have spawned lawsuits or questions about enforceability. A common effect of nearly all of these laws is friction with rapidly growing Hispanic communities, such as the one in Green Bay.
Luis Bello, the CEO of La Uni-k Radio, a Spanish-language radio station in northeast Wisconsin, said most people in the Hispanic community “are pretty upset about it. They feel like they’re being taken advantage of, doing jobs that most Americans aren’t willing to do.”
Bello added: “And now they feel targeted and afraid.”
The local movement aimed at regulating immigration has generally been confined to smaller towns and cities. Hazleton, Pa., population 22,000, last year approved a law that prohibited hiring or renting to illegal immigrants. That law was challenged and is before a federal district court; a similar proposal in the Chicago suburb of Carpentersville has been delayed pending the outcome of the Hazleton case.
Last year, the mayor of the western Wisconsin town of Arcadia proposed an “illegal alien task force,” designed to prevent renting to undocumented immigrants. He backed down after a public outcry.
[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]
Essay 4086
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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U.S. must be committed to ending poverty, injustice
By RALPH MARTIRE
How does society benefit from poverty, or from the social or economic injustices it generates? The short answer is, society doesn’t. Poverty and other injustices impose costs rather than confer benefits. Some are financial and can be measured in dollars and cents. Other costs are harder to quantify, but no less real. These include growing numbers of alienated youth, many of whom are unemployed and becoming increasingly unemployable, and an expanding income disparity driving huge wedges, economic and social, between the haves and have-nots.
So how does America, with a $13 trillion-plus annual economy, counter poverty and its concomitant injustices? The answer is simple: through a combination of public services that both give the disadvantaged access to economic opportunity that otherwise wouldn’t exist and create a social safety net. On the access to opportunity side, public funding of education, job training, transit and roads helps individuals become employable and helps communities develop. Safety net investments include Medicaid, which provides health insurance coverage to low-income Americans, and Social Security, the primary income source for most seniors. Without these investments, things could be bleak.
Consider access to opportunity. According to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northwestern University, a significant portion of minority and low-income youth have been left out of the economic recovery that began in 2001. The only factor that has countered this is educational attainment. For black males, 86 percent who graduated college had jobs, compared to 57 percent of high school grads and only 33 percent of dropouts. As for income, census data reveal the average annual pay of a college grad is $51,554, compared to $28,645 for high school grads and $19,169 for dropouts. Inadequate public-sector investments in education mean no economic future for minorities and low-income folks.
Then there’s the burgeoning income gap, which last year hit historic highs. In 2006, the wealthiest 1 percent claimed nearly 20 percent of America’s income, while the bottom 20 percent of income earners got a paltry 3.4 percent. But this yawning income gap affects more than just top and bottom. Real median earnings for the 93 million non-farm workers in America haven’t grown since the economic recovery began six years ago. Meanwhile, corporate profits more than doubled during this period, and worker productivity jumped 18 percent. This stands in sharp contrast to the American economic boom that followed World War II, during which productivity gains were shared broadly across income classes, enhancing quality of life for most.
Given how the private sector is squeezing families, is it any wonder that today, almost one in six Americans receives public assistance? Which means safety-net programs such as Medicaid are more important than ever. If anything, Americans should be clamoring to ensure government is doing everything possible to counter disparities by making needed investments in services.
The data, however, indicate America is parsimonious when it comes to poverty. Adding total annual federal expenditures on programs that deal with poverty, everything from Medicaid to food stamps, housing and social services, produces the tidy sum of $390.8 billion. Which seems more tiny than tidy when you realize it’s only 15 percent of the total federal budget, and a minuscule 2.9 percent of the U.S. economy. These expenditures pale by comparison to federal discretionary spending on defense, $474 billion -- over half of all discretionary spending -- without even accounting for the Iraq war. That tacks on another $120 billion.
These spending priorities become galling when you consider unmet need. You’d think everyone fortunate enough to live in the planet’s wealthiest nation could afford to visit a doctor. Yet 47 million Americans are uninsured. Medicaid cost $189 billion this year, and covered 45 million people. Doubling that investment would cover all our uninsured, for the low, low cost of 1.4 percent of our economy. The United States could pay for this by leaving Iraq ($120 billion) and finding another $70 billion (just 2.6 percent of the budget) from other areas. Instead, over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the wealthiest 1 percent in America will receive $1 trillion from tax breaks -- more than the bottom 80 percent of income earners, combined.
Poverty and injustice benefit no one and harm everyone. America already has the economic means not only to reduce poverty, but to come close to eliminating it. All it takes is an honest review of the data and a commitment to adjust priorities.
Essay 4084
From The New York Daily News…
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Books reveal true hip hop, chapter & verse
By STANLEY CROUCH
The serpent curling in the box of trends, sentimentality, self-righteousness and bad taste that we recognize as the most adolescent side of popular culture, has been taking a number of blows, spears and stompings over the past few months. For many, this seems unfair. To call hip hop a serpent seems a bit extreme. They feel that hip hop is being battered because it has become the scapegoat for a level of violence, glamorization of criminal behavior, crude materialism and misogyny that was in place long before hip was invented.
Fine. It is true that exploitation of sex and violence has existed in popular culture for many years but that does not change the fact that what is wrong in hip hop is being recognized, and people are finally stepping forward to call out those things that they find degrading and tasteless. Hip hop’s defenders always say that there is a much greater variety of styles to the idiom than its critics acknowledge.
I have seen three new books that should be looked at by anyone interested in the degree of precise, imprecise and naive thought brought to the matter or that avoids the facts of the matter. Tayannah Lee McQuillar’s “When Rap Music Had a Conscience” is a perfect example of precision, confusion and extraordinary intellectual laziness. “Pimps Up, Ho’s Down” by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting is much more intellectually rigorous but gets caught in academic language and feminist cliches. “Beats, Rhymes, & Life: What We Love And Hate About Hip Hop” is an anthology edited by Kenji Jasper and Ytasha Womack that spans the gamut from extremely clear criticism and analysis to some of the looniest excuses I have ever read given for anything.
The problem with McQuillar’s work is that while she is critical of the thug extremes and the prison values that mislead too many young black people, she provides a chapter, “The Sacred Scrolls,” that is overladen with Afrocentric claptrap and shoddy propaganda presented as if it is real scholarship.
Sharpley-Whiting’s book does not suffer from the sort of cowardice one too often hears from black academics who genuflect to hip hop in order to stay current with the tastes of the students who provide them with whatever power they have on college campuses. Sharpley-Whiting calls them as she sees them and wisely quotes the offensive material when necessary. Her book is high level in its research and its thought, and those looking for adult ideas about the subject should look it up.
The anthology is quite good because it contains very insightful pieces, interviews with rappers in which they unknowingly damn themselves, and essays so crazy, like “A Christmas Story,” that they add new definition to the word insane.
All in all, however, we are seeing something rising up from the ground and moving through the bling and the smoke machines to ask only that we Americans recognize what is happening to our young people and understand that part of the reason it exists is that popular culture at large has far too frequently substituted sensation, pornography and shock for the mysteries and the grandeur of human feeling. In that sense, for all of its violent minstrelsy, the worst of hip hop is just following the pack.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Essay 4080
Another columnist at AdAge.com bemoans the industry’s alleged lack of talent, and Hadji Williams strikes again (see Essay 4076). The crazy part is, the columnist is none other than Marc Brownstein, who was spotlighted in MultiCultClassics last October (click on the essay title above to review Essay 1222). First read Brownstein’s latest observations, then check out Williams’ response—and finish it all off with a MultiCultClassics commentary.
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Small Agencies Seek Good Help
How Do We Get the Kids Back?
By Marc Brownstein
This is a recruitment call on behalf of small agencies everywhere. It wasn’t long ago that it was pretty easy to find talented writers, art directors, project managers, public relations people and account executives. Headhunters needed us more than we needed them. Yet today, many talented people have left the business or have opted for a freelance career.
Where have they all gone? It’s pretty well documented that we (as an industry) chased many good people away after the dot-com implosion. We hired them, put them on accounts that never had a chance of being brands, and when the venture-capital money dried up, we fired them. Nice way to treat talented individuals. That was wave one.
Wave two has arrived seven years later. Only this time, good people are losing their passion for the business because the business has changed. Recently, a writer left our agency after many years because she lost her love for advertising. That pretty much summed up what’s going on.
How has the business changed? Clients are more demanding. They side-step branding and strategy for tactical execution. They demand results in unreasonable time frames. And they tighten the purse for agency compensation. You think that doesn’t have an impact on the people who work on their brands?
In addition, agencies are trying to figure out where the world is heading. So we’re integrating -- sometimes successfully, sometimes not. We’re cross-training those who were reared on the traditional side of the business because we all know the growth is on the digital side. Thing is, all this internal realignment causes disruption and process issues. We have it at our agency. And after talking with a well-known agency consultant, most small-to-mid-size agencies are dealing with the same issues. No agency is immune.
I can tell you that, at our agency, we have job openings in many departments. And that’s not just in our Philadelphia office. We’ve had a senior-level opening in our Seattle office for months now. We’ve interviewed many candidates; there’s just a shortage of good people out there right now -- especially mid-level people. Until we find them, we’ll rely on freelancers that we’ve worked with over the years.
So what do we do? As my dad, Berny (who is our founder and CEO), says: “We have to bring fun back to the business.”
Sure, clients are breathing fire more than ever. But there’s also a growing need for great ideas. With the massive clutter out there, it’s more important than ever to make your brand stand out. Those who can, will succeed in this business. Insisting on great thinking, and fostering a culture to incubate it, will help bring young talent back to our business. Doing outrageous work will inspire others to join up. And figuring out how to execute in both traditional and digital media in the advertising and public relations space will go further still in re-establishing marketing agencies as a good choice for a rewarding career.
I know there’s interest with the next generation. I have a daughter who’s graduating high school, and almost every day one of her friends asks her how to get an internship at our agency. Or if they’re graduating college, they ask about sending me a resume. Young people are still passionate about this business. That bodes well for the future. Until then, small agencies are going to continue to make headhunters rich.
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Just a note--akin to one left in another entry:
Agencies, both big and small, traditional and non-, along with PR and promotions, would do well to expand the pool of talent from which they currently draw from. Great ideas and unique perspectives are not wrapped in just one skin color. Sounds like a broken record or a remix of an old song, but it’s true and needs to be said until people listen.
It’s counterproductive to complain about a lack of talent and useless to make “try harder” HR speeches as long we as an industry continue to display such a stunning lack of will to recruit and respect talent from ALL sectors of society, including those which we aren’t members of ourselves.
The only people hurt by this long-standing construct of entrenched homogeny are our clients’ brands and our own agencies’ futures. —Hadji Williams, Chicago, IL
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Well, it’s clear that Marc Brownstein has failed to make much progress on the Darwinian Chart of Cultural Cluelessness, assuming a simian stance somewhere between the late Al Campanis and Don Imus.
Last October, Brownstein wrote of dreams for a recruitment road show and minority student scholarships. Plus, he promised to regularly report on his achievements. Not sure about the man’s level of victory, as MultiCultClassics editors rarely read Brownstein’s online drivel. But it would be interesting to learn how many non-Whites were interviewed for his shop’s numerous job openings.
Of course, Brownstein seeks guidance from agency founder and CEO Berny Brownstein—who just happens to be his dad. You can bet the B-Boys have tapped all available relatives for the employment slots. Brownstein even admits to collecting referrals and resumes from his daughter’s pals. White-skin privilege is a terrible thing to waste.
According to Brownstein, “…agencies are trying to figure out where the world is heading. So we’re integrating—sometimes successfully, sometimes not.” Too bad his definition of integration doesn’t include diversity.
Brownstein also typed, “Insisting on great thinking, and fostering a culture to incubate it, will help bring young talent back to our business.” The question is, whose culture does the man really plan on fostering?
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Essay 4079
Everybody was Kung-Fu Fighting in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Not surprisingly, the family of Ron Goldman is pissed off over the online release of excerpts from O.J. Simpson’s unpublished “If I Did It” book (see Essay 4075). The family’s lawyers think TMZ.com, the website that posted the writings, should be held in contempt. Looks like more Goldmans are assuming little karate stances.
• A federal jury decided drugstore chain Walgreen did not discriminate against four Black customers who charged they were racially targeted. The customers claimed employees followed them around Chicago stores. Perhaps they were victims of racial prescription profiling.
Essay 4076
It’s Bart Cleveland vs. Hadji Williams at AdAge.com…
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Don’t Be Afraid of Letting Your Hires Rise
By Bart Cleveland
Small Agencies Should Be Proud To Be Launching Pads
I just got back from Miami Beach, where I got to be a Creative in Residence for the Miami Ad School. I’ve always been a big fan of the school because Ron Siechrist is most responsible for the advertising schools that we now have across the country.
When I went to school, there were maybe a handful of higher-education institutions that had an inkling of what advertising art is and how it should be taught. There was no VCU, or Creative Circus. The Art Center in L.A., along with Pratt and The New York School of Visual Arts were the best known. The school I attended, East Texas State University (now Texas A&M Commerce), had a great program. When The One Club began a student competition in the early ‘80s, ET won the first several years in a row.
This is what Ron Siechrist made happen on a much broader scale when he founded the Portfolio Center in Atlanta and later the Miami Ad School. Ron has continued to revolutionize how students learn what advertising is today, so it was a pleasure and an honor to be asked to teach in Miami for a week.
Several of us who write this blog have given advice on recruitment. It is a chronic problem for small agencies, especially if you are picky. We all want the best talent, but we’re up against very stiff competition. A top student coming out of one of the ad schools is dreaming of landing at Crispin or BBH, not MWC. I have to show how my agency is a viable, if not better choice. I recently hired a creative team after searching for months. I saw a lot of good people, but for one reason or another they just didn’t fit.
One of my veteran creative people was just hired by Mother in New York. When he came in to tell me, I already knew it was coming. This young man has made such a difference in our agency. He’s grown at a meteoric rate in his abilities, and I knew one day he would be snatched away. I am delighted for him to have the chance to work at one of the industry’s best agencies. I want all of the people who work for me to have the ability to move on at their discretion and to the agency of their choosing. It is a testament to the work we’re doing.
That’s why I try to help make the opportunity to move up happen for them. From a business perspective this is not masochistic, it’s realistic. They are going to move on. By helping them, I actually keep them longer. My agency also benefits from their best efforts. I watch my employees grow in ability and confidence and it doesn’t make me afraid -- it makes me happy.
Today we said goodbye to this fine employee. The entire agency celebrated his good fortune over lunch, and his final words were inspirational. He said he knew that the agency had given him the opportunity to do work at a level that Mother would appreciate and that if he hadn’t come to this tiny agency in this small town, if he had gone to a big agency in a big city, it probably wouldn’t have happened. He might not realize how right he is.
I suggest to all small agencies to take a similar philosophy in recruiting young talent to your agency. Tell them you will take a personal interest in their career and then make good on the promise. I don’t fear that because I don’t have Axe or Nike as clients my agency won’t be attractive to new talent.
I have something that can be just as useful to a young person. I have an agency that can be a launch pad for his career.
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You want better talent? Stop relying on homogenized talent pools from homogenized sources. With the exception of 2 art directors I worked with in the mid 90s, the best creative talent I’ve ever worked with or managed never went to any ad school. Not Miami, not the old Creative Circus, not VCU, not Portfolio Center, none of them.
There are great creatives coming out of plenty “regular schools” every year. Too bad CDs, HR folks and industry insiders are bent on focusing on 4 places for recruiting.
Secondly, and I know this one’s gonna be a stretch, let’s pretend creatives who are not white can do the job well enough to give ‘em shot. I know we don’t really believe that, but for giggles, let’s just pretend.
I’m sick of watching great ideas and unique perspectives and approaches not get in the door because CDs can’t get past the dark melanin that’s presenting them.
You can talk all you want about what agencies can do to get the “cool kids,” but until we accept the fact that we have to want the cool kids so bad that their educational background and ethnic background won’t be held against them, then this industry will continue to deserve the 92% white rosters and homogenized clutter-creating ideas that it continues to turn out. —Hadji Williams, Chicago, IL
Hadji,
Whoa, you are on a rip and all I can say is, calm down and get some perspective. The guy who I mentioned in my piece who left to work for Mother didn’t go to one of the “four” schools, he went to the University of Texas. I can assure you as a CD looking for talent I welcome it from anywhere. As far as your race rant, you’ve obviously had a bad personal experience, but it doesn’t mean it’s the norm. Many agencies are hiring people from all over the world. Thanks to the ad schools like MAS we have that option. Different backgrounds and cultural diversity are a plus in a creative industry. Talent is at too much of a premium for agencies to do as you say we’re doing, hiring based upon race. Are you sure that your problem is your race and education? Could it be your book? Give it some thought. I hope you feel better now that you got your frustration off your chest. Best of luck to you. —Bart Cleveland, Albuquerque, NM
Mr. Cleveland,
When I speak of the issues within the industry I speak not only from 15 years of personal experience, I speak of facts. 92% white rosters is not something I made up—that comes from the last AAAAs conference. The ethnic agencies not being allowed to fairly compete for the AOR portion of contracts is not just my opinion, nor is it just my personal experience, it’s standard industry practice. The hiring practices—be they intentional, accidental or what—are not just bad experiences of one person. They’re based on an 80-year industry track record.
By the way, U of T was on the list. But that’s neither here nor there, to be honest. What’s at issue was/is the point of your latest entry and that’s how can agencies find/keep the best possible talent for their needs.
I will contend from now until the day I die that this industry needs to look beyond traditional faces and places. Not to the exclusion of anyone but to the inclusion. To do less is to shrink your pool of human resources and your opportunities for developing the best work possible.
If Madison Ave. when its entrenched biases may well be the least of its problems. (sic)
But what do I know—I’m just ranting, right? —Hadji Williams, Chicago, IL
Oh, one more thing—and only because you raised the issue: My book(s).
KTH sold out of its first printing because I’m an outstanding writer who discussed issues that just about everyone with even a cursory knowledge of the marketing, PR and ad worlds knows to be true but are often too afraid to discuss in an honest and entertaining way.
As for my portfolio/reel—which is supposedly what we judge folks on—it’s filled with 15 years of outstanding work for clients big and small including a few that most only dream of getting a shot at.
So when I speak of problems, I’ve earned the right to tell the truth about what’s going on in this business. And I do so with the hopes that folks will wise up and fix what’s broken, which in the long run will help everyone, including our clients.
Then again, I could follow your lead and take backhanded shots at anyone who disagrees. —Hadji Williams, Chicago, IL
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Essay 4075
Peppering the news with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Cadbury Schweppes announced intentions to shutter 15 percent of its candy factories, eliminate 7,500 jobs and possibly sell the U.S. unit producing 7Up, Snapple and Dr. Pepper. You do not want to be a Pepper right now.
• A report by the Council on American Islamic Relations showed 2006 was the worst year ever for anti-Muslim bias in America, with complaints of civil-rights abuses jumping 25 percent. You do not want to be a Dr. Pepper-drinking Muslim right now.
• Excerpts from O.J. Simpson’s “If I Did It” book are on the Web. The comic-bookish entry includes: “I looked over at Goldman, and I was fuming. I guess he thought I was going to hit him, because he got into his little karate stance. … ‘What the fuck is that?’ I said. ‘You think you can take me with your karate shit?’ He started circling me, bobbing and weaving, and if I hadn't been so fucking angry, I would have laughed in his face. … Goldman was still circling me, bobbing and weaving, but I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. ‘You think you’re tough, motherfucker? … OK, motherfucker! Show me how tough you are!’ … Then something went horribly wrong … I put my left hand to my heart, and my shirt felt strangely wet. I looked down at myself. … The whole front of me was covered in blood.” Simpson appears to have the makings for a sequel to The Naked Gun.
Essay 4073
What do you call a year in which you sell 63 million Earth-friendly products? The first half of a shitty headline.
Essay 4072
From The New York Times…
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To Commit a Hate Crime, Must the Criminal Truly Hate the Victim?
By MICHAEL BRICK
In her courtroom on the 21st floor of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn yesterday, Justice Jill Konviser-Levine sat and pondered the question of hate.
“Bottom line,” Justice Konviser-Levine ruminated aloud, “is animus an element of the crime?”
The crime in question was the killing of Michael J. Sandy, 29, a gay man who was lured to a parking area in Sheepshead Bay last October, beaten and chased into traffic. He later died in the hospital.
Prosecutors have said a group of young men contacted Mr. Sandy through an online gay chat room, selecting him as a robbery victim in the belief that a gay man would be unwilling or unable to put up a fight and unlikely to report the crime.
The defendants — John Fox, 20; Ilya Shurov, 21; and Anthony Fortunato, 21 — have been charged not just with murder, but with murder under the state Hate Crimes Act of 2000, which provides longer prison sentences for crimes motivated “in whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person.”
Prosecutors and defense lawyers have presented contrasting interpretations of that phrase, the words it includes and the words it omits.
In court documents, a defense lawyer has asked Justice Konviser-Levine to dismiss the enhanced murder charges against all three defendants because “the crimes alleged are not crimes of hate but rather crimes of opportunity.”
That lawyer, Gerald J. Di Chiara, filed a motion in which he argued that lawmakers responsible for the Hate Crimes Act had written a statute applicable only to defendants who truly hate their victims. He quoted from a State Senate memorandum in support of a law “designed to ensure that only those who truly are motivated by invidious hatred are prosecuted for committing hate crimes.”
To allow prosecutors to pursue hate crime charges without demonstrating such hatred, Mr. Di Chiara argued, would render the law unconstitutionally vague and arbitrary.
[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Essay 4071
Big fat news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• New York City mailed over 33,000 invitations to restaurant and food suppliers for a seminar detailing the upcoming trans-fat ban. So far, about 20 people have responded for the event scheduled for Thursday. “This is the first time we are doing this. It may be people don’t want or need this kind of assistance,” said a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Or maybe they’re all busy eating Super-Sized Extra Value Meals at Mickey D’s.
• Wendy’s announced that it’s open to selling the company. Wonder if Wendy’s will vanish before trans fats.
• Michael Jackson agreed to a settlement with a New Jersey finance company that helped him with money deals involving the purchase of Sony’s half of the catalog of Beatles’ tunes. The company was suing Jackson, charging that he tried to swindle them out of fees. As noted in Essay 4063, Jackson recently griped that the entertainment industry is “full of sharks, charlatans and impostors. … Because there’s a lot of money involved, there’s a bunch of schmucks in there. … It’s the entertainment world, full of thieves and crooks. That’s not new. Everybody knows that.” Didn’t realize he was talking about himself.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Essay 4068
From The St. Petersburg Times…
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HipHopSodaShop to serve as youth’s business school
Former NAACP head Benjamin Chavis plans to open the first of many HipHipSodaShops in St. Petersburg to teach hip-hop youth about business, investment and social responsibility.
BY PAUL SWIDER, St. Petersburg Times
A plan to make St. Petersburg the launching pad for a new hip-hop concept is getting a boost under a new boss with national clout.
Benjamin F. Chavis, former head of the NAACP and longtime social activist, has taken over as chief executive of H3 Enterprises, the parent of HipHopSodaShop, which plans to open its first store of a worldwide chain in St. Petersburg later this year.
The store will bring together hip-hop music, gaming and healthy food with an ethos of community investment. Chavis said several hundred thousand dollars will be invested in the location, without being more specific.
H3 hired Chavis and his firm, CEF Management, as the company’s board gets serious about its novel business model. Pitching itself as the first publicly traded hip-hop company, H3 is planning to use HipHopSodaShop as a vehicle to promote sound business, teach investment to hip-hop youth and incorporate social responsibility into what Chavis describes as a unique business concept.
“This is a model development,” said Chavis. “We hope the rest of corporate America will look at this.”
Chavis is a co-founder, with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, of the nonprofit Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, an organization aimed at recapturing the social consciousness of original hip-hop and using its popularity to bring about social change.
“For the last three years, Russell and I have been talking about teaching financial literacy to young people,” Chavis said. “This is the perfect teaching tool. We’re going to put it into practice.”
After a career that started with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and moved up through the Nation of Islam, Chavis said he is now utilizing business concepts to promote cultural development.
H3 and HipHopSodaShop have garnered attention in the two years since the company was formed by 25-year-old Brian Peters and a partner. They’ve attracted notice from the hip-hop and sports communities but have yet to put a store together.
“If they really want to reinvent the soda shop and make it a cool, positive place for kids to hang out, that’d be great,” said University of South Florida marketing professor Carol Osborne. “But they really need to pull off a unique one.”
Chavis said the next location will probably be in Harlem. Stores are also planned in Jamaica, South Africa and the United Kingdom, among other locales.
[Click on the essay title above to visit the HipHopSodaShop website.]
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Essay 4065
From The Chicago Tribune…
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‘What is a hate crime?’ Issue deserved deeper examination
By Timothy J. McNulty
A front-page article on hate crimes in last Sunday’s Tribune (see Essay 4028) provided a fascinating insight about racial division in the country and provoked angry responses about the mainstream media’s reporting on hate crimes.
Unfortunately, the way the newspaper called attention to the story with provocative headlines and photos promised more than it delivered and was more stereotypical than informative.
The story raised an important topic worthy of the front page, but it was undercut by its presentation and omissions that include asking but never fully answering the question raised by the large main headline: “What is a hate crime?” Even more, the secondary headline, “Some are asking why no media outcry over murders in which victims were white and defendants are black,” simply played into allegations of a media double standard. It needed to say more.
The brutal killing of a young white man and woman in Tennessee last January is central to the story, but not until the 18th paragraph are authorities quoted saying that there is no evidence of racial motivation in the case. Three black men and a woman are charged with the kidnapping, rape and murder.
That killing motivated first extremists and later more generally conservative commentators and bloggers to condemn the “liberal” media for not making this a major story of black-on-white crime, even though police and prosecutors say the contention that this was a “hate crime” is baseless.
That desire to seek more publicity for the crime is fueled, the story points out, by several high-profile cases in which whites were charged with crimes involving other races, most recently when white Duke University lacrosse players received national attention on charges, later dropped, of raping a black woman.
Lots of emotion is evident in reaction to the crime and to the reporting of the issues that it raises. But it cries out for some clear, unemotional discussion of what is meant by the term, especially after the grieving mother of one of the victims is quoted: “If this wasn’t a hate crime, then I don’t know how you would define a hate crime.”
There is a distinction between “hateful” crimes, which could apply to many violent crimes, and a “hate crime,” which is a legal term with definition, even if it is controversial and depends on subjective judgments about motivation and thought.
A prosecutor and ultimately a jury decide whether race, religion, ethnicity or other factors qualify a crime as a hate crime, but the article did not go into such specifics. Nor did it mention the consequences of increased penalties.
The story by Tribune national correspondent Howard Witt provided details of national crime statistics by race and comments by others on how the media cover crimes by racial identification. He quoted country music star Charlie Daniels on his Web site taking Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to task for not rushing to the site of black-on-white crimes. I would have liked to have heard from either of those men on the topic.
Witt, a skillful reporter who has been writing complex stories about racial controversies, wrote in an e-mail Thursday that the story has been reviled and praised. Some of the hundreds of e-mails and Web postings he has seen show people reading into the article whatever fits their preconceived ideas and prejudices.
But other readers sent messages expressing concern that the paper’s coverage of this and the Duke case was “pandering to bigots.” They wrote that the topic of race and crime is too easily manipulated.
The story, labeled a “Tribune Special Report,” demanded careful treatment for such a volatile subject. The juxtaposition of the photo of a smiling young white couple and then passport-size photos of three sullen black men and a black woman said more than it meant to.
The packaging of the article, the task of editors, not reporters, is a sharp reminder of how critically important the position on the page plus the headlines, labels and photo captions are to readers’ perceptions, even before they read the story.
The crime was covered locally in Knoxville and still receives much regional attention, because of continuing demonstrations by members of neo-Nazi groups and other white supremacists.
Extremist groups have used it as a recruiting tool on the Internet and spread rumors and false details of the murders along with allegations of a media double standard. Five months after the crime, the Knoxville News-Sentinel ran a front-page story separating fact from fiction in the case.
A few days before the hate-crime story, the Tribune published a Commentary page article on the same topic by syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts. The “white supremacists and conservatives” who are pushing the Tennessee story, Pitts wrote, are “so abysmally, stupidly, self-servingly wrong” that he could not help but respond.
So did many readers, including one who wrote, “the media has never shied away from covering black crime—whether the victims are white or black.” She also noted that the issue is not just about the perpetrators of crime, contending that stories about white female victims are more likely to make headlines than stories about black female victims.
The story should have probed deeper and given more context to the issues. While the connection between race and crime is a complex subject for any writer, readers expect a special report in the newspaper to be special and its presentation precise.
Essay 4064
From USA Today…
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Ministers say hate crimes act could muzzle them
By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY
Minister Harry Jackson recalls being told about the black men who were lynched near his home in Florida in the 1950s and his family’s flight to Ohio after a state trooper threatened his father at gunpoint for helping blacks register to vote.
“That was a real hate crime,” Jackson says.
Crimes such as those spurred black ministers to join the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Today, Jackson, pastor of the Hope Christian Church in Lanham, Md., leads a movement against what gay activists say is their civil rights act: the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007.
Jackson and more than 30 ministers say the law could prevent clergy from doing what their civil rights forebears did: preach against immoral acts. “We believe there is an anti-Christian muzzle-the-pastor kind of feeling behind this kind of law,” Jackson says. “I need to be able to preach that adultery, fornication, straying from the way of the Lord is wrong.”
Activists say argument is a lie
Proponents of the bill, which would increase penalties for attacks on gays motivated by the person’s sexual orientation, say Jackson’s position is nonsense.
“They cannot be more protected than they are … to do that because (the bill) reiterates their right to say what they want to say,” says Harry Knox, director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group in Washington that is pushing for the law. Jackson’s argument “is a lie, and it should not be told in the name of the Gospel,” he said.
The Hate Crimes Prevention Act would allow the Justice Department to assist state prosecutors in cases of violent felonies motivated by “prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of the victim.”
Federal action could be triggered in states that do not have hate crimes laws or if authorities fail to prosecute such attacks. Penalties would range from 10 years to life in prison.
[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]
Essay 4063
Law and Restaurant Orders in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• A California Applebee’s restaurant accidentally served a margarita to a 2-year-old toddler. After the kid grew drowsy and started making strange faces, his mom removed the sippy cup lid to discover tequila and triple sec. The child inevitably got ill, prompting an emergency room visit. “I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it,” said the mother, “but then he got sick.” The manager admitted to making the mistake, claiming the margarita mix and apple juice are housed in similar containers near each other in the restaurant refrigerator. Sounds like the Applebee’s manager has been hitting the “apple juice.”
• Michael Jackson said in a court deposition that while he was fighting child molestation charges, he received advice from Rev. Jesse Jackson and billionaire Ron Burkle. Jacko sought help against people he deemed to be disloyal advisers seeking to take advantage of him. The King of Pop proclaimed the entertainment industry is “full of sharks, charlatans and impostors. … Because there’s a lot of money involved, there’s a bunch of schmucks in there. … It’s the entertainment world, full of thieves and crooks. That’s not new. Everybody knows that.” Jacko needs to change his title to the King of Paranoia.
• A disciplinary panel disbarred District Attorney Mike Nifong, the man who led the infamous Duke Lacrosse Team prosecution. Nifong supported the decision; however, he refuses to call the players completely innocent. When asked if he believed the accuser had been attacked, Nifong said that while he didn’t know if she had been sexually assaulted, “something happened to make everybody leave that scene very quickly.” The players’ lawyers plan to seek criminal contempt charges and other possible legal actions. Wonder if Nifong will call Jesse Jackson.
Essay 4061
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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‘I no longer feel safe’
By MONROE ANDERSON
The e-mail from one of Chicago’s concerned public school teachers buried the lead. It started off establishing her credentials and providing demographics about the West Side school where she teaches. It wasn’t until the eighth paragraph in the 1,009-word correspondence that my attention was seized: “This year has been the worst year,” the teacher wrote, relating what happens in an inner-city school that had classrooms with no doors and a library room with no books. “I no longer feel safe. Students tell us they are running the school and they are.”
Although I know the name of the school, I won’t expose it. It could easily be almost any high school in any of Chicago’s neglected, poverty-stricken and abandoned communities. And although I know the e-mailer’s name, at her request, I won’t report it. She loves teaching and fears retaliation if her identity is revealed. I will, however, share more of her e-mailed words. “The teachers in our school are all ‘highly qualified.’ Many have master’s degrees and some have their doctorates. The only reason we stay at a school like ours is for our students. But it is taking its toll. We are all stressed out and some are physically ill. Many teachers are looking for positions in other schools,” wrote the concerned teacher, who is herself a product of Chicago Public Schools.
“CPS took away some of our security, so in a school with all our problems we have less security than before. Teachers are pushed around, hit, and knocked down. Last year a teacher got into an altercation with a student and she was seriously injured. The principal fired her. She didn’t have acceptable classroom management skills.”
The pink-slipped teacher was ahead of her time. She was terminated a year before 775 other CPS teachers in April suffered the same plight, many for the same shortcoming. This year, notwithstanding, the West Side high school was no different from a double-digit number of others. During a phone interview, the concerned teacher -- who desperately hopes that the Illinois Legislature will come up with more money to fund better security for students and staff in Chicago schools -- told me of an incident earlier this session. She was taking attendance and asked about one student who had missed far too many classes. “He’s dead,” one of her students answered, matter of fact. He was the only one lost to gun violence this year at her West Side school. Percy Julian High on the South Side lost a student and a teacher to violence. The anything-but-grand total is 24 CPS students to die this school year by gunfire.
“All things are interrelated,” said Phillip Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project, an education reform organization that is determined to reverse the downward spiral. “The family provides social structure, economic structure, educational structure. Seventy percent of children in the black community are born into single-parent homes.”
Jackson echoed what the concerned teacher told me. “My school is 99.9 percent African American,” she wrote in her detailed e-mail, “and 95 percent of the students come from families that are living at or below the poverty line. My students live with crime, drugs, violence, abandonment, gangs and poverty. Many of them live in single-parent homes headed by their mother, grandmother, and sometimes great-grandmother. Neither their parents nor relatives have graduated from college. Many have parents that have not graduated from high school. Pregnancy has somehow become a badge of honor. I have freshmen girls who have babies.”
We’ve got to combat the cause -- enduring racism, too few jobs, too many guns and drugs -- while attacking the effect. Toward that end, Jackson’s Black Star Project held a memorial march downtown Saturday, with participants bearing 196 black crosses representing each of the CPS students who have been killed in Chicago in the past 10 years. By drawing attention to the senseless murders of our young, he hopes to spark a movement generating programs to rebuild and repair the African-American family, which he believes is the solution to the lion’s share of our social and economic problems.
“Father’s Day,” he said, “is a joke in the black community.”
The lack of laughter is deafening.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Essay 4059
Weekend-O-MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Ronco Corporation, known for such products as the Veg-O-Matic and the Pocket Fisherman, has filed for bankruptcy. But wait, there’s more! Actually, there’s not much more.
• Forbes unveiled its “Celebrity 100 Power List,” and Oprah Winfrey topped the lineup with an estimated $260 million in earnings. You can buy a lot of Veg-O-Matics with that kind of money.
• Eddie Murphy has taken a DNA test to see if he’s the daddy of Melanie Brown’s (aka Scary Spice) 2-month-old daughter. Let’s see if Murphy ducks out after learning the results ala his Academy Awards appearance.
Essay 4057
From news sources nationwide…
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‘Cream of Wheat’ man finally gets grave marker
Photo of Chicago chef from about 1900
LESLIE, Mich. -- A man widely thought to be the model for the smiling chef on Cream of Wheat boxes finally has a grave marker bearing his name.
Frank L. White died in 1938, and until this week, his grave in Woodlawn Cemetery bore only a tiny concrete marker with no name.
Wednesday, a granite gravestone was placed at his burial site. It bears his name and an etching taken from the man depicted on the Cream of Wheat box.
Jesse Lasorda, a family researcher from Lansing, started the campaign to put the marker and etching on White’s grave.
“Everybody deserves a headstone,” Lasorda told the Lansing State Journal. He discovered that White was born about 1867 in Barbados, came to the United States in 1875 and became a citizen in 1890.
When White died Feb. 15, 1938, the Leslie Local-Republican described him as a “famous chef” who “posed for an advertisement of a well-known breakfast food.”
White lived in Leslie for about the last 20 years of his life, and the story of his posing for the Cream of Wheat picture was known in the city of 2,000 located between Jackson and Lansing and about 70 miles west of Detroit.
The chef was photographed about 1900 while working in a Chicago restaurant. His name was not recorded.
White was a chef, traveled a lot, was about the right age and told neighbors he was the Cream of Wheat model, the Jackson Citizen Patriot said.
Long owned by Kraft Foods Inc., the Cream of Wheat brand was sold this year to B&G Foods Inc.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Essay 4056
Girls Gone Mild in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Foxy Brown made nice with the judge who once handcuffed the artist to a bench during trial. The judge dismissed probation-violation charges, noting Ms. Brown has been a well-behaved probationer. “Go on to a happy life,” said the judge. “I see a positive report here. … I see you have been seeking permission when you have to leave the state. Your drug tests are negative. And you are continuing with anger management.” Wow, with a report like that, Foxy may lose her rapper’s license.
• Naomi Campbell settled with a former personal assistant who received a smackdown from the fiery supermodel. The settlement amount remained a secret, and Campbell’s lawyers didn’t return calls for comment. Not sure it’s a good idea to call for comments, given Campbell’s tendency to hurl cellphones.
Essay 4055
From The New York Times…
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Proposed Ban on Taco Trucks Stirs Animosity in a California Town
By CAROLYN MARSHALL
SALINAS, Calif. — Jose Martínez left Mexico around 1988 and toiled for years in a patchwork of fields here, harvesting berries and lettuce and barely making ends meet.
In 2002, Mr. Martínez took advantage of a city law created to help novice entrepreneurs start businesses related to the city’s largely Hispanic cultural heritage. He bought a taco truck, one of 31 licensed mobile catering vehicles in Salinas, and built it into a modestly profitable operation.
But the City Council, responding to a business group and its most vocal members — the owners of Mexican restaurants — is poised to vote next month on a draft ordinance to ban taco trucks and other catering vehicles from Salinas, a farm town about 120 miles south of San Francisco.
The proposed ordinance, which is still subject to revision, is the latest round in a two-year debate that some say has created a rift in this community, placing poorer Mexicans who are looking to better themselves at odds with longtime residents whose families emigrated years ago.
Salinas is not alone. Taco trucks, cultural icons and social magnets in Mexico, have become a flashpoint in at least a dozen cities in California — including Santa Rosa, 55 miles north of San Francisco, and Gardena, 15 miles south of Los Angeles — and in other states, like Arizona, Oregon and Tennessee.
Restrictions are being debated in the Central Valley towns of Lathrop, Escalon and Lodi. In most cases, brick-and-mortar businesses resent the competition. Many observers say the taco truck issue illuminates far more complex dynamics, from the perils of rapid urban development to hidden resentments toward, and among, Hispanics.
“It’s rarely if ever discussed, but there are obvious racial undertones,” said David LeBeouf, a lawyer for about 100 food vendors here and in several Central Valley cities.
[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]
Essay 4051
Not wearing pants with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• It’s been a busy week in the case of the judge suing a dry cleaners for $54 million over a misplaced pair of pants (see Essay 4014). On Tuesday, the judge testified and left the courthouse in tears. On Wednesday, the business owners took the stand, with the wife ultimately breaking down. “Economically, emotionally, and health-wise as well, it’s been extremely hard for us,” said the woman. “[The judge] would just come into the store as he pleased, taking pictures as we were running the business.” The judge claims that if he wins, he’ll only pocket $2.5 million, using the rest to help victims in similar situations. Never realized there were other pitiful souls seeking millions for disappearing pants.
• The Delcambre Town Council in Louisiana wishes certain pants would disappear. The area legislators are poised to enact a law prohibiting people from wearing saggy pants. The law states, “It shall be unlawful for any person in any public place or in view of the public to be found in a state of nudity, or partial nudity, or in dress not becoming to his or her sex, or in any indecent exposure of his or her person or undergarments, or be guilty of any indecent or lewd behavior.” Critics charge that Blacks are being targeted, but the mayor insisted, “White people wear sagging pants, too. Anybody who wears these pants should be held responsible.” Violators could face up to six months in jail and a hefty fine. Hopefully, it will be less than $54 million.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Essay 4050
Anyone who can explain this diversity ad will be eligible to win a bike without handlebars.
Essay 4049
Not playing games with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• The Game isn’t playing, rejecting a plea deal for his police-impersonation case in New York. The artist is charged with jumping into a taxi last November, flashing a fake badge and telling the cabbie to speed to his destination. But The Game claims he never did it; rather, he insisted, “I told [the cabbie] to hurry up. Don’t drive crazy.” Actually, most cabbies are probably trained to drive crazy when rappers get in their cars.
• Wal-Mart is allegedly experiencing a rise in shoplifting and employee theft. Analysts speculate the stealing is tied to bad employee morale and the recent announcement that the retailer would no longer prosecute minor offenses. Perhaps “Always Low Prices” should be revised to read, “Always Low Morale and High Crime Rates.”
• The Kellogg Company announced plans to stop advertising directly to kids under 12 for certain products including Froot Loops, Apple Jacks and Pop-Tarts. Which means Toucan Sam is now available for beer and cigarette advertising.
Essay 4048
From The New York Times…
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Justice Dept. Reshapes Its Civil Rights Mission
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON — In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.
Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has successfully argued in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations that the Constitution’s drafters did not mean to restrict.
The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the government’s civil rights mission, said Brian K. Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
“Not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority,” Professor Landsberg said. “No one had ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin.”
Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement that the agency had “worked diligently to enforce the federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on religion.”
[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]
Essay 4047
How do you grow a decent diversity supplier ad? Obviously, Shell has no answer for that one.
Essay 4044
From The Chicago Tribune…
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Immigrant ‘woes’ can be addressed with inclusion
By Steve Chapman
The fight over what to do about illegal immigration is not entirely a matter of people coming to the United States in violation of the law. It’s also about what they allegedly bring with them: social pathologies. Many Americans think illegal immigrants are prone to all sorts of destructive behavior: committing crime, having children out of wedlock, dropping out of school and refusing to learn English.
This is not a full and fair portrayal. Still, there is some truth to the charge that when we import foreigners, we also import social problems. Even immigration-rights groups acknowledge a problem and the urgent need to address it. But you can’t fix a problem until you understand what it is.
Towns that pass measures against illegal immigrants portray the laws as a way to combat crime. In reality, the belief that this group is prone to felonious habits is largely unfounded. Crime rates plummeted in the 1990s even as illegal immigration surged, and Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson has documented that “living in a neighborhood of concentrated immigration is directly associated with lower violence.”
The evidence is surprising but clear: Foreign-born Hispanics are far less likely to end up in prison than native-born whites. They also have low divorce rates.
As for learning English, the truth is also more appealing than the myth. Many of the people who have immigrated here don’t speak the language well, if at all. But that’s a transient phenomenon with a time-tested treatment: reproduction.
Surveys indicate that the majority of U.S.-born children of Latino immigrants mainly speak English, and by the third generation, more than 90 percent prefer English. What happened with past immigrant groups is also happening with this one.
Education is a mixed picture. Some 42 percent of Hispanics in this country never finished high school. But many immigrants dropped out before even coming here, and others do so once they arrive. Fortunately, their children and grandchildren do far better, with high school completion rates rising to 89 percent by the third generation.
But some indicators provide ample cause for worry. Latino men born in this country are seven times more likely to end up in prison than those who came here from abroad. Unwed mothers account for nearly half of all Hispanic births. Raul Gonzalez, legislative director of the National Council of La Raza, sees the rise of “negative assimilation” -- Latinos adopting the malignant attributes they see in other ethnic groups, rather than the productive ones.
If this leads you to think we are creating a permanent new underclass, though, don’t be so sure. High crime rates were common among previous immigrant groups when they were still newcomers -- particularly the Irish, Italians and Jews. Yet those groups are now as safe, sane and successful as you can get. It would be unwise to assume Hispanic immigrants who have arrived in recent years will automatically repeat the pattern, but there is no reason to think they are doomed to dysfunction.
Opponents of immigration see such concerns as grounds for a vigorous crackdown to keep people from coming here without permission. But most of their remedies are irrelevant at best. If we’re alarmed about illegitimacy or crime among the children of immigrants, we won't cure the maladies by putting a wall along the Mexican border, fining companies that hire undocumented workers, or carrying out mass deportations.
Why not? Because those second- and third-generation Latinos are already legally in this country, and they have as much right to be here as anyone else. Banishing them is not an option. So we had better look for ways to foster behavior that is healthier for them and the rest of us.
How to do that? Putting illegal immigrants on a path to legalization can only help: It’s hard to tell U.S.-born kids to assimilate while you’re treating their parents like outlaws. Allowing parents to work legally would improve their economic fortunes and foster participation in the larger society, which would also be good for their families and communities. Government policies that reward responsible conduct and discourage dependence are good for immigrants and natives alike.
If you want Latino immigrants and their children to embrace mainstream culture rather than anti-social attitudes, widening the divide between them and the rest of society is not the answer. Anyone who wants to promote assimilation has to start with inclusion.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Essay 4043
Without diversity, we’d be missing our most valuable source of energy. But we wouldn’t be missing this contrived ad.
Essay 4042
From TalentZoo.com…
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A Diverse Set of Problems
by Danny G
We’re still in an age of mass marketing—and mass mediocrity
Let’s try an experiment. I want you to form a mental image of “Joe Sixpack.”
Advertising people talk about “Joe Sixpack” all the time. But what does he look like?
Picture him in your mind. Look away from the screen until you’ve got him pictured…then come back and read the rest.
Got a picture?
OK. Now…let me ask you a question:
Is he black?
I’d be willing to bet the “Joe Sixpack” you pictured in your mind was a white dude. With a beer belly, sitting on the couch, holding a beer, watching NASCAR or something like that. Right?
It’s not a particularly flattering image, but I’ve heard numerous clients and ad professionals refer to the imaginary “Joe Sixpack” as some sort of average typical consumer–and proceed to commit millions of dollars to messages targeting that very type of person.
But in reality, we have no idea who “Joe Sixpack” is. It’s just another condescending stereotype. And stereotypes and prejudices have a special place in the advertising industry. We call them “demographics.”
We’re living in an age in which marketers are desperate to reach disparate audiences. Whether it’s using CRM, segmentation, targeted marketing, or whatever you’d like to call it, the search is on to know as much as we can about every single customer.
But it can’t be done.
The problem is, most marketing is mass marketing. Even if you break your audience into 200 different segments for some direct marketing initiative, you’re still mass marketing. It will never, ever be truly one-on-one marketing, lest you unleash an army of door-to-door salespeople. We have to make assumptions. We have to make guesses. Because human behavior isn’t as predictable as we wish it could be. And we don’t have the budgets necessary to create ideas and programs that truly treat people as individuals with different backgrounds, tastes, ideas, or hot buttons.
Whatever attempts our industry makes at including different audiences is invariably a token effort, an afterthought to fill some perceived obligation. That’s why any ads that promote a company’s commitment to “diversity” always depict a carefully blended group of freshly scrubbed, differently hued people. For example, there are always some African-American people—just not ones that look “too black.” Other things are lacking in those “diversity” group shots: No midgets, no wheelchair-bound co-workers, no really fat chicks. Just a happy rainbow coalition—oh wait, no gays or lesbian couples either.
Advertising, far from taking any risks, is determined to stay as old-fashioned as possible. Of all the ads I’ve seen on TV that show a typical nuclear family—a mother, a father, and children—I don’t think I’ve ever seen one with a mixed race couple, adopted kids from a different ethnicity, or a father with a prosthetic leg.
It’s amazing how so much advertising seems so disconnected from the real world. Just like software programs such as Excel, Photoshop, or PowerPoint, our industry has default settings, the images clients are most comfortable with. In this business, white is the default setting, not black. Young is default, not old. Same goes for thin, straight, married, Christian…all preferable to whatever the alternatives are. Anything that deviates is different. And different makes people, particularly clients and agency executives, nervous and uncomfortable.
While we fret over how best to communicate with new generations and new media, we need to also concern ourselves with what we communicate—and how we attempt to portray those we’re communicating with. I don’t think there’s an easy answer. Real life simply is too imperfect, too messy, too disordered, and too unpredictable to accurately portray in advertising.
We can’t account for the nuances found in everyone’s lives. So we’re going to get more generalizations. More middle-of-the road. More work that tries to appeal to mass audiences with massive doses of mediocrity.
Sounds to me like Joe Sixpack isn’t just the target audience. He’s also the client.
[Danny G can be seen at TalentZoo.com and AdPulp.com.]
Essay 4041
From The New York Daily News…
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Face it: Legalizing millions will cost trillions
By STANLEY CROUCH
The federal immigration bill has been sent into legislative limbo for now — but we cannot ignore the high drama and even higher melodrama that accompanied the fight. They revealed many ugly and irrational aspects of what our politics has become.
Those aspects always arise when any group not considered “white” is thought to benefit or suffer from federal policy. In this case, we were talking about undocumented immigrants — mostly Mexican — who, for decades, have been coming through our Swiss cheese borders, finding unskilled jobs and taking advantage of better living conditions that can include welfare and medical treatment.
If we step back, we see that we have been standing in a drama determined, at least partially, by the history of prejudice that Mexicans have experienced in this country ever since losing Texas. Some of those prejudices included the belief that they were innately incompetent, frivolous, lazy and given to irresponsibly having large families.
If those stereotypes didn’t do, religious prejudice against Catholics took over.
Above all else, they were not white, being some sort of inferior mixture of American Indians and Europeans.
It is, therefore, understandable that we should cast a skeptical eye on any criticism of a policy — like this immigration bill — that might do them some good. But, alas, there are real reasons to suspect those who so self-righteously defend the comprehensive immigration bill as either the best thing to do or, at least, as better law than no law at all.
Only the most naive Republican could believe that their support of the bill will magically turn Mexicans, who tend to vote 2 to 1 for Democrats, into a minority ready to elect more elephants. Others have pointed out that unskilled Mexicans serve as cheap labor for Republican employers, who make use of many who have come across the border illegally, proving that the GOP can remove the mantle of “the party of business” at will.
But the truth — and what makes the proposed reforms so troubling — is this: The bill, which would make millions of undocumented immigrants eligible for all kinds of benefits, would bear a monumental cost to the taxpayers of the United States, no matter what their color or background. How much? By some estimates, $2.5 trillion.
Some Republicans have ignored this cost because their business constituency assumes that though they, too, will have their taxes raised — it won’t be that bad since the bulk of tax money will come from the rest of us.
For their part, it seems Democrats are ignoring the cost to the taxpayer because the cause seems a good liberal one, so damn the taxes, full speed ahead.
Give us a break!
In the end, many of these 12 million undocumented immigrants will become United States citizens — but our legislators need to figure out the very best way to limit the burden of the taxes that the mass of Americans will have to pay in order to bring this about. For good or for bad, it is always about the Benjamins, and no amount of self-righteous grandstanding will change that.
But it should also be about legislating policy that’s good enough for undocumented immigrants and the American taxpayer at large. That is the challenge we always have to meet.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Essay 4038
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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Don’t let immigration bill be job America won’t do
The scary thing about the repeated failures of President Bush and Congress to push through that urgently needed, long-discussed, continually nitpicked immigration reform is that each time it is swatted down, nativists bent on making life miserable for the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country are increasingly feeling their oats. The longer members of Congress dicker over amendments and technicalities and voting procedures, the more the basic elements of the measure -- tougher border security and a path to citizenship -- get lost in the political haze.
This was never the sexiest issue for mainstream Americans, even those whose lives are directly affected by it through their reliance on low-wage immigrant workers. But from the day the president first proposed his guest worker program to last November when Democrats took control of Congress, Americans were thought to be open to comprehensive reform. Now, apparently, whatever sympathy was stirred up by the heartfelt statements of legal and illegal immigrants at mass rallies in various cities is fading. A Gallup Poll reveals of those Americans who have an opinion on the immigration bill -- and at this stage, most don’t -- three to one are against it. “Amnesty” has become even more of a loaded buzz word than it was: Most Americans polled don’t want people they see as violating the law getting anything resembling a free pass.
Bush, who has been roundly criticized for his failure to line up reluctant Republicans behind the bill, one of the major items left on his agenda, said the legislation was “temporarily derailed” following its late-hour crash last week and vowed to get it passed. Democrats say they are keen on renewing efforts to push it through, following a questionable decision by their majority leader, Sen. Harry Reid, to pull the bill rather than give Republicans more time to settle on what amendments to debate.
With the window of time for this legislation shutting -- there is no chance of acting on it once the presidential race heats up -- it is incumbent on Bush to use whatever clout he has left to line up Republicans behind it and for Reid to get it back on the Senate agenda. The more unproductive talk there is about the bill, the more tired people will become with it. Perhaps someone needs to engage Americans on an emotional level, to call into account the compassion for the underdog this country has always been known for. “Sometimes there are big problems that have to be addressed, and there’s no political gain in it and maybe even political loss,” said Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, a key conservative Republican supporter of the bill. “You’ve got to do it, nonetheless.” We can only hope he’s right in predicting it will be done before the Senate’s July 4 recess.
Essay 4036
Taxing tidbits in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Wesley Snipes is griping he’s being charged with federal tax evasion because he’s Black. Snipes’ lawyers argued that prosecutors filed more charges against the actor and let two co-defendants slide with fewer charges because they’re “Caucasian, while Mr. Snipes is African-American.” Snipes probably wishes he was in the black.
• Hillary Clinton wishes she were in the Black and Brown, as the presidential candidate is stumping hard with minority women. Clinton’s campaign scheduled a meeting today with 300 “women of color” to raise funds and support. If Clinton really wants to impress the ladies, she’ll invite Wesley Snipes. Or husband Bill.
• Another up-and-coming rapper was gunned down and killed. Rayquon Elliott, aka Stack Bundles, was shot at his housing project in Queens, New York. The artist recently released a CD with Brian Wilson (not of Beach Boys fame) titled, “Riot or Die.” Guess he won’t be rioting.
Essay 4033
The story below appeared at Adweek.com. A brief MultiCultClassics response immediately follows…
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MyM Market Profile: Chicago
By Kevin Downey/Marketing y Medios
It sometimes takes the ad community a few years to catch up with population trends. Such is the case in Chicago, where the Hispanic population has been exploding but where the number of targeted media outlets and advertising revenue lag behind markets of comparable size, notably Miami.
That’s somewhat understandable for a market that is hardly a border town. But hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have been flooding into Westside and Southside neighborhoods and increasingly the suburbs. This trend is projected to continue well into the next decade, opening up opportunities for Hispanic media and for advertisers looking to tap into a large population in a market that is inexpensive for the moment.
Chicago is the fifth largest Hispanic market with 454,000 television homes, according to Nielsen Media Research. Its Hispanic population more than doubled between 1980 and 2000, from 635,000 to just under 1.5 million people, 75 percent of whom are Mexican, based on data from SRC LLC.
Moreover, Chicago’s Latino population is now estimated to be near 1.9 million, and it’s projected to grow by another 52,000 people each year through 2012, according to Boston-based consultancy Global Insight. Hispanics will account for more than one out of five Chicagoans by then, reaching 2.15 million residents with $58 billion in buying power.
“At some point this will level off at least as far as in-migration from Mexico,” said Gary Menger, lead demographer at Applied Geographic Solutions. “But these Mexican families are also having more children than native-born Americans. So even if that tide ceases you’ll find for the next 25 to 30 years an increase in the Hispanic population.”
Still, while Chicago’s Hispanic population has been growing, advertising revenue has been slow to keep pace in the changing market.
Advertisers spent $123 million in 2006 on Hispanic media in Chicago, according to Hispanic Business magazine, compared with about 41 percent of expenditures spent in Miami despite having virtually the same size population. Ad spending increased at the slowest rate among the 10 largest Hispanic markets, up only 3.8 percent from 2005.
Hispanic TV and radio accounted for about 40 percent of revenue at $49 million and $47 million, respectively, with print generating $27 million, according to Hispanic Business.
Ed Fernandez, vp/general manager at Telemundo affiliate WSNS Channel 44, said the struggle for Hispanic media outlets is that just a few multicultural agencies exist in the area.
“People don’t think of Chicago as a Hispanic market,” Fernandez said, noting: “We also lack the big-name agencies outside of [Starcom MediaVest’s] Tapestry. We need prominent, big agencies preaching the gospel to retailers and Fortune 500 companies that they need to advertise to Hispanics in Chicago.”
There are also a limited number of Latino media outlets to attract ad revenue.
Univision dominates with two of four Spanish-language TV stations, WGBO Channel 66 and TeleFutura affiliate WXFT Channel 60. Azteca America has the fourth Hispanic station, WOCK Channel 13.
Univision also leads in radio with five of the market’s eight Spanish-language stations, including No. 5-ranked WOJO (“La Que Buena” 105.1 FM). “Pasión” WPPN 106.7 FM is No. 10, with ratings up 45 percent in the morning since the station brought in L.A.-based host Eddie “El Piolín” Sotelo in January, according to Arbitron’s Winter 2007 ratings. Former Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) morning man Luis Jiménez now holds court at “La Kalle” stations WVIV 103.1 FM and WVIX 93.5 FM.
Univision’s dominance makes it tough for competitors to make headway in the market. SBS’ only station in Chicago, Mexican format WLEY 107.9 FM, is tied at No. 10 among listeners 12 years or older on an all-day basis. The station’s ratings, however, have been slipping.
But Benjamin Aguirre, a local media specialist at Tapestry, says Univision isn’t gouging advertisers because of its position.
“We negotiate on ratings and the fair share [each station] can get,” Aguirre said, adding: “I’d consider it extremely affordable when compared to the general market.”
Still, Univision’s WGBO has cornered the Hispanic TV market during prime time and in news dayparts. WGBO averaged an 8.7 prime time rating in the 18-49 demographic during the February sweeps, according to Nielsen. Telemundo WSNS had a 2.6 rating.
WGBO also far outperforms WSNS in news. At 10 p.m. in February, for instance, it pulled an 8.1 rating, compared to WSNS’ 1.9.
In the May sweeps, WGBO tied for No. 2 among all stations in the 18-34 demographic on an all-day basis, according to Univision. But WSNS has been making changes to its newscasts to make it more competitive.
WSNS’ Fernandez said the station overhauled its 10 p.m. newscast earlier this year, adopting a format that originated in L.A., “En Contexto,” where in-depth discussions about key news stories have replaced news bites.
In May, WSNS’ 10 p.m. rating among adults 25-54, the news demographic, was up 36 percent from May 2006, to a 3.0. “Since we launched ‘En Contexto’ in late January, it’s been terrifically well received,” Fernandez said.
Meanwhile, Hispanic print media outlets in Chicago has seen big changes in recent years. There are six audited publications, according to Latino Print Network, including weekly magazine Tele Guía de Chicago.
Tribune’s daily Hoy came into the market in early 2003, replacing the weekly ¡Exito!, and its weekend edition, which launched in December of that year, is now Chicago’s most widely distributed publication. Hoy’s Monday to Thursday distribution was 43,216, up from 40,366 in March, according to Certified Audit of Circulations (CAC); its Friday distribution was 55,373, up from 53,653.
Hoy’s Fin de Semana Chicago was distributed to 208,821 people in March, according to CAC, slightly down from March 2006.
ImpreMedia’s La Raza, which launched in 1970, is Chicago’s oldest Spanish-language newspaper. ImpreMedia bought the weekly in 2004 from investment firm Hispania Capital Partners. The paper's circulation is continuing to trend up past the 200,000 mark, said publisher and CEO Robert Armband.
A few years ago, La Raza also joined the Sun-Times Network Group newswire service, extending its reach throughout the market with content accessible both in English and Spanish to multiple media outlets, including English-language newspapers, TV and radio.
The free weekly Reflejos Bilingual Journal, with a 93,000 circ, had a changing of the guards this month with Jerry Campagna retiring as president. Paddock Publications purchased the paper from Campagna in 2000.
About 44 percent of Hispanics in Chicago prefer to speak Spanish, according to Scarborough Research. They also are younger than average, with 55 percent ages 18 to 34, a statistic Tapestry’s Aguirre said has prompted Chicago papers to make editorial tweaks.
Both Hoy and La Raza have made strides to give their papers a livelier feel, he said. “Hoy definitely has a feel similar to [Tribune’s English-language] daily RedEye, where the content is easily digestible but relevant.”
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The story’s opening line says it all: It sometimes takes the ad community a few years to catch up with population trends.
Of course, when the people movements include racial and ethnic components, the years turn to muchos decades with our industry.
On a side note, it’s ironic these revelations are now presented by Adweek, a publication whose parent company saw fit to eliminate Marketing y Medios, the premier magazine focused on the Latino market.
Is anyone really surprised that Chicago would be so lagging in this booming arena? The city’s major advertising agencies are notoriously White, with no organizations like New York City’s Commission on Human Rights to push progress. Although it is interesting to recognize Chicago is home to Rev. Jesse Jackson, the dictator of diversity.
“People don’t think of Chicago as a Hispanic market,” remarked Ed Fernandez. “We also lack the big-name agencies outside of [Starcom MediaVest’s] Tapestry. We need prominent, big agencies preaching the gospel to retailers and Fortune 500 companies that they need to advertise to Hispanics in Chicago.” One of the city’s largest shops, Leo Burnett, has struggled to hire qualified executives to run its minority Lápiz Division—which can’t help Burnett’s attempts to integrate the general market staff. So it will be damned difficult identifying any gospel preachers.
The laborious examinations of Latino media consumption show another basic flaw in reasoning: Why presume you can reach a unique audience by employing the same vehicles that are even failing with White folks?
Guess it’ll take the ad community a few years to figure this out too.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Essay 4029
From The Associated Press…
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Africans taken into slavery who died crossing the Atlantic honored
BY BRUCE SMITH
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHARLESTON, S.C. - Eighteen years ago, Tony Akeem organized a ceremony in New York City to honor the millions of Africans who died crossing the Atlantic during the slave trade. Similar observances have since spread around the world.
On Saturday, offerings of water, honey and rum were poured along the shores of South Carolina and elsewhere for Middle Passage Remembrance Day. The remembrance is held the second Saturday in June.
“We must, we must, honor our ancestors,” said Tony Akeem, who has been organizing an observance at Coney Island, N.Y., ever since a 1989 conference on the slave's brutal trip was held at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he works as a photographer.
The observances have spread from Philadelphia to San Francisco and from Brazil to Ghana. Most were started by people who have attended the New York event, Akeem said.
Saturday marked the 10th year South Carolina was participating in the remembrance. About 100 people gathered at a Fort Moultrie dock on Sullivans Island near Charleston.
The first slaves arrived in Charleston in 1670, the same year the Carolina colony was created. Historians estimate nearly 40 percent of the millions of slaves brought to what became the United States passed through Charleston. Many others died at sea.
“The stories run pretty strong that there were people who realized they were enslaved and would rather drown than be enslaved and when allowed up on the decks, would just jump into the water,” said Fran Norton of the Fort Sumter National Monument, which includes Fort Moultrie. “It commemorates those people who gave up their lives for freedom.”
Just how many perished in the slave trade will never be known.
“We know that many died of disease because they were packed in the ships like sardines,” said Osei Terry Chandler, a project director at a Charleston education facility who is helping organize the South Carolina memorial.
Participants at the ceremonies in New York and South Carolina drizzled water, rum and honey into the waves Saturday. Adjo Palmer, a Ghana native who led the South Carolina ritual, told The (Charleston) Post & Courier that such ceremonies are important in honoring her ancestors.
“We didn’t come here on our own accord. We were brought here,” she said. “So while we are here, we just have to do what we have to do to survive. I thank our ancestors for bringing us this far and … I pray that we will have unity and strength to go farther than where we are now.”
“Pouring libations is simply to venerate your ancestors,” said Bill Jones, who helps organize the Coney Island ceremony. “It gives the ancestors a cool drink of water, or a little bit of gin or a little bit of rum, whatever you pour the libation with.”
“In African spirituality we believe we are in constant contact with our ancestors. They are not someplace in heaven, they are right here with us.”
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Essay 4028
From The Chicago Tribune…
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What is a hate crime?
Some are asking why no media outcry over murders in which victims were white and suspects are black
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- What happened to Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, a young Knoxville couple out on an ordinary Saturday night date, was undeniably brutal. The two were carjacked, kidnapped, raped and finally murdered during an ordeal of unimaginable terror in January.
But whether the attack was a racial hate crime worthy of national media attention is another question, one that has now ignited a fierce dispute over the definition of hate crimes and how the mainstream media choose to cover America’s most discomfiting interracial attacks.
That’s because the murders of Christian and Newsom didn’t fit the familiar contours of a traditional Old South attack, in which whites target blacks and reporters quickly assume the motivation must have been racial.
Instead, the races were reversed: Christian and Newsom were white; the three men and one woman charged with their murders are black. And the failure of the story to gain much media attention outside of the Knoxville area has galvanized conservative commentators across the country who insist the case offers clear evidence of liberal bias in the major media.
They have launched a broad Internet campaign, waged via blogs, e-mails and YouTube videos, to counter what they regard as suppression of a story about an anti-white hate crime.
“There is a discomfort level [in the national media] with stories that have black assailants and white victims,” said Michelle Malkin, a prominent conservative newspaper columnist and TV commentator who has featured the Knoxville case on her Web site. “If it doesn’t fit some sort of predetermined narrative of how we view taboo subjects like race and crime, there’s a disinclination to cover it.”
Country music star Charlie Daniels, who lives 150 miles from Knoxville, contrasted scant coverage of the Christian-Newsom murders with the national media frenzy that erupted last year when a black woman accused three white members of the Duke University lacrosse team of raping her at a party. The white players were cleared in April after the accuser proved unreliable and no evidence corroborated a crime.
“If this [Knoxville case] had been white on black crime, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their ilk would have descended on Knoxville like a swarm of angry bees,” Daniels wrote on his Web site. “I guess the lack of TV cameras discouraged them.”
Cause celebre for extremists
Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists have jumped on the case as well, drawn to the state where the Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1865. Hate groups have organized rallies in Knoxville and set up Web sites under the victims’ names to spew racial invective.
But it’s not just conservative whites and extremists who have criticized the national silence over the Knoxville case.
“Black leaders are not eager to take this on because it’s one more thing that would cast a negative light on African-Americans,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an author and nationally syndicated black columnist who has written frequently about the reluctance of black leaders to denounce crimes committed by blacks against whites. “There’s already an ancient stereotype that blacks are more violent and crime-prone, anyway.”
Rev. Ezra Maize, the president of the Knoxville chapter of the NAACP, has been one of the few black leaders to address the case.
“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable speaking out against this crime because it was African-Americans [allegedly] committing a crime against Caucasians,” Maize said. “It’s not a black-and-white issue. It’s a right-and-wrong issue. Those who committed this crime were unjust in doing so and they should pay the penalty.”
[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]
Essay 4027
Stars behaving badly in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Shrek recently came under fire for being a spokesogre for an anti-obesity campaign targeting children. Now comes news that McDonald’s has experienced record-breaking sales with a Shrek-backed Happy Meals promotion. Talk about having your McCake and eating it too.
• In the Borat film, Sacha Baron Cohen’s character was seen chasing a businessman down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, trying to hug the irate New Yorker. Now the businessman is chasing down Borat with a lawsuit charging violations of his civil rights led to “public ridicule, degradation and humiliation.” He’s probably angling for a part in the sequel.
• R&B star Akon recently stirred controversy by performing a racy onstage scene with an underage girl during a concert. Now the artist is in trouble for hurling a 15-year-old kid off the stage. The kid allegedly tossed something near Akon, prompting the artist to have the crowd point him out. Akon then called the kid onto the stage, picked him up and threw him back into the audience. At least one concertgoer reported receiving a concussion when the kid landed on her. Akon can probably expect a call of support from R. Kelly.
Essay 4026
The creative team responsible for this ad should have worked a little longer into the night for a better solution.
Essay 4025
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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Fear of growing Latino power drives bias
By SUE ONTIVEROS
Are you really surprised that Carpentersville’s stupid anti-immigration ordinance didn’t do anything but stir up emotions? I’m not.
That proposal would have given the village the right to take licenses from businesses that hired undocumented workers. It also would have allowed fines for landlords who rented to those same workers.
All that proposal did was get everyone’s shorts in a knot and gave a lot of people a chance to voice their hatred toward Latinos. Because, let’s face it, when people say they are against illegal immigration, they aren’t talking about the Irish nanny on the North Shore. The anti-immigration forces are solely interested in getting rid of Latino immigrants.
They are tired of all “those people” and want to send them all back where they came from.
I don’t doubt that Carpentersville Trustees Paul Humpfer and Judith Sigwalt didn’t recognize that vitriol and knew it could work to their advantage come re-election time. And you know what? It all went just fine for them. As Sigwalt was quoted in the Sun-Times this week, “I’ve got four more years on the board and so does Paul, so it’s not going to fade away.”
Of course not. Anytime they need to whip up emotion and support for anything, they’ll just trot out that proposal again and people will be lining up behind them. It’s a great political move for them personally. Don’t be surprised if one or both of them use this as their launching pad for higher office.
Not such a hot move for their town, unfortunately. I can’t wait to see what this does for property values there. And what business owner in his or her right mind would choose Carpentersville now? Any national chain would have to be nuts to locate there, knowing a law like that could wreak havoc for business. The village could come in any day and just yank the business license. What business wants to operate under such Gestapo tactics?
I suspect few businesses would pick a town that has alienated an entire ethnic group, either. Latinos, documented or not, have major buying power, and are touted repeatedly as being the fastest-growing minority in this country.
And that’s exactly what I think is at the heart of a lot of this anti-Latino immigrant rhetoric. Mainstream America worries that a growing Latino population could change the landscape, especially when it comes to political power. They’ve tried to turn the issue of immigration into a situation solely concerning Latinos.
The Catholic Campaign for Immigration Reform knows that the undocumented workers at the center of the immigration battle aren’t only Latino. They are Polish, Asian, African and many more ethnicities. So on Sunday, the campaign is going to host Welcoming the Stranger, a procession beginning at 1:30 p.m. at Division and Ashland that will culminate in a trilingual mass at St. Stanislaus Kostka, 1300 N. Noble.
Those participating have been asked to wear ethnic clothing to demonstrate the diversity of the immigration issue. Postcards bearing the names of real families hurt by the unsettled immigration situation will be handed out. The cards also will include names of the Illinois delegates to Congress. Participants will be asked to pray for those families and to call members of Congress to asking them to support immigration reform.
Cardinal Francis George will address the crowd. In the Archdiocese of Chicago, more than 50 percent of the population is made up of recent immigrants, legal and otherwise, said Elena Segura, Midwest director of the campaign. This is the first time the cardinal will be in this type of liturgical setting concerning immigration reform. His support is critical, especially because immigration reform efforts seem to have fallen apart.
And when it comes to leading the flock, especially on this volatile issue, the cardinal makes no distinctions, Segura said. “He is the pastor of everyone, documented and undocumented.”
Essay 4024
From The New York Times…
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The Shame of the Cherokee Nation
Many members of Congress were rightly outraged by the Cherokee Nation’s decision earlier this year to revoke the tribal citizenship of about 2,800 descendants of slaves once owned by the tribe. The tribe’s leaders have since tried to avoid any punishment by restoring partial rights to some black members. Congress should disregard that ruse and move ahead with legislation that would force the Cherokee to comply with their treaty obligations and court decisions that guarantee black members full citizenship rights, including the right to vote and hold tribal office.
This dispute dates back to the 19th century, when Cherokee, Seminole and Creek signed treaties with the federal government that required them to accept their freedmen — many of whom had mixed black and Indian parentage — as full tribal members in return for recognition as sovereign nations. The tribes have repeatedly sought to abridge black Indian rights, but the treaties have been repeatedly upheld in federal court.
Black tribal rights were also upheld last year in the Cherokee tribe’s own supreme court. Then the tribe voted to expel black members. This could potentially deprive them of their cherished tribal identities, along with access to medical, housing and tribal benefits.
Representative Diane Watson, Democrat of California, is circulating a draft of a bill that would strip the Cherokee of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid, and suspend the tribe’s gaming rights, until it returns black members to full citizenship. The bill would also require the Department of the Interior — which has dragged its feet on this issue — to report to Congress on the status of freedmen’s rights in all tribes.
It is shameful that the Cherokee have to be pressured into restoring the rights of their own black citizens. But that clearly is what is needed.
[Click on the essay title above for more.]
Friday, June 08, 2007
Essay 4023
Friday evening news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• The NAACP is cutting about 40 percent of its staff nationwide, and temporarily shutting down seven regional offices. Interim president and CEO Dennis Hayes said, “We are right-sizing our organization to meet the present circumstances.” Meanwhile, organizational racism and discrimination seem to be healthy and growing with each fiscal quarter.
• About two years ago, investigators found $90,000 in cash packed in the freezer of Congressman William Jefferson—not to be confused with Congressman John Conyers (see Essay 4019). Jefferson was indicted this week and charged with soliciting bribes, ironically prompting a federal judge to freeze the politician’s assets. Wonder how long before Jefferson’s on ice.
• Free at last, free at last. Looks like Paris Hilton didn’t last a week in jail, released to serve the remainder of her 45-day prison sentence under house arrest. Congressman William Jefferson better hook up with Hilton’s lawyers.
UPDATE: Oops. Typed too soon. A judge reversed the decision to let Paris Hilton serve out her sentence in the luxury of her rich person’s house. Seconds after Hilton’s lawyers pleaded for her home confinement, the judge declared, “The defendant is remanded to county jail to serve the remainder of her 45-day sentence. This order is forthwith.”
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Essay 4020
From The Chicago Tribune…
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Snitching on snitches has troubling root
By Clarence Page
WASHINGTON -- Can snitching be ethical? The question has troubled me ever since I was a little-bitty boy. I ratted out my neighborhood friend Andrew. He had brazenly filched a couple of cookies out of his mother’s cookie jar after she told us not to. When I snitched, Drew was ticked off at me. But his mom let him off the hook. She even gave each of us a cookie. Years later, Andrew would go to prison on much more serious charges. I would pursue a career in journalism. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
My childhood friend came to mind when I heard about a Web site called whosarat.com, which is devoted to snitching on snitchers. It posts names, photos and court documents of witnesses who cooperate with the government. The Internet, that great megaphone for the masses, now targets tattletales too.
Whosarat.com was launched by a guy named Sean Bucci in 2004, apparently out of personal rage. He had been indicted in federal court in Boston on marijuana charges based on information from an informant. At first the site was free, but it caught on. Now it charges $7.99 for a week of access or $89.99 for a lifetime membership and a free “Stop snitching” T-shirt.
In case you haven’t heard, “Stop snitching” T-shirts, DVDs, rap videos and Internet sites are all signs that the criminal underworld’s values have gone mainstream, transmitted like a lethal virus through the culture and multibillion-dollar commerce of hip-hop.
As the rap star Cameron “Cam’ron” Giles said in a recent CBS “60 Minutes” interview, cooperating with police violates his “code of ethics” and damages his street credibility. “It would definitely hurt my business,” he said. As a result, neither he nor his entourage of potential witnesses have cooperated with police investigating Giles’ 2005 shooting in Washington by a presumed carjacker.
The whosarat.com site claims to have identified more than 4,000 informers and 400 undercover agents, many from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet.
Of course, police and prosecutors would like to shut down the site, if that pesky 1st Amendment weren’t in the way. The Web site claims that it does not condone violence. Yet, its home page prominently displays mug shots and bios of its “rats of the week” in a way that all but paints targets on their faces.
According to a recent article about the site by New York Times reporter Adam Liptak, at least one witness in Philadelphia has been relocated and the FBI was asked to investigate after material from the Web site was mailed to neighbors and posted on cars and utility poles in his neighborhood.
The “Stop snitching” culture is bad, but it has grown in reaction to two other malignant problems.
One is the false testimony offered up by too many witnesses looking for lighter sentences and used much too eagerly by unquestioning prosecutors.
The other is a persistent pattern of bad relations between police and civilians in certain neighborhoods.
Arrests and prosecutions too often have been tainted by witnesses lured or coerced into lying in return for lighter sentences.
As stated in “The Snitch Culture,” a 2005 report by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, “Snitch testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in capital cases.”
An American Bar Association report, “Achieving Justice: Freeing the Innocent, Convicting the Guilty,” last year similarly recommended requiring corroboration of jailhouse informant testimony with other evidence or testimony to avoid wrongful convictions.
Even in the small-town neighborhood where I grew up, residents would refuse to cooperate with police if they felt the police could not be trusted. Urban crime declined sharply in the 1990s after cities and towns got a lot smarter about “community policing” programs to improve police-civilian cooperation.
What happens next at whosarat.com depends on how smart police, judges and prosecutors are going to be about the risks it poses.
The Web site’s operators could be charged with witness tampering or aiding and abetting criminals, but it would be hard to make the charges stick. The information on whosarat.com is drawn from court documents posted elsewhere on the Internet. The information helps other defendants receive fair trials. Judges are better off deciding in each case whether witnesses’ identities can safely be posted anywhere on the Internet or whether they should be sealed legally from public access.
There may be hope for hip-hop too.
Giles issued a national apology after saying in his “60 Minutes” interview that he would not even snitch on a serial killer next door.
Even the world of gangster rap reeled at that one.
Essay 4019
Separated at Mirth in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Congressman John Conyers is irked over FOX News displaying his picture for a story about Congressman William J. Jefferson. Conyers and Jefferson are both Black. Despite an on-air apology from the network, Conyers is not satisfied. “FOX News has a history of inappropriate on-air mistakes that are neither fair, nor balanced,” said Conyers. “This type of disrespect for people of color should no longer be tolerated. I am personally offended by the network’s complete disregard for accuracy in reporting and lackluster on-air apology.” Fox is blaming the mistake on a 22-year-old production assistant who apparently grabbed the wrong videotape. The network must have a file labeled “Black Politicians.”
• The five Illinois high school students reprimanded for loud cheering at the graduation ceremony will get their diplomas after all (see Essay 4002). “It is time for the good of the community, the school district, the families and the students involved to move on,” said Superintendent Gene Denisar. One student expressed happiness over the decision but added, “If they would have apologized, it would have been better.” She’ll probably wind up getting Congressman William J. Jefferson’s diploma.
• The descendants of slaves owned by President James Madison have planned a gathering for this weekend. It’s part of a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. There’s a Jefferson joke in here somewhere.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Essay 4016
The following appeared in numerous sources nationwide. These kinds of studies always seem like the work of hustlers—does any Black advertising agency not have a copyrighted version of this information?
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URBAN HUSTLERS EMERGE AS NEW SOUGHT AFTER TARGET; STUDY
Marketers looking to make a big splash with today’s urban consumer need to better understand what drives the group. And for this 20 million person segment that includes status, fame and fortune, according to a new study by Alloy Media + Marketing. Today’s urban consumers have shed their past geographic, inner city roots to include a whole new profile, which Alloy has coined “Urban Hustlers.” Some 39% of these consumers are white and another 39% live in suburban areas. The 18-to 34-year-old segment is defined as trendsetters who are largely driven by the need to succeed.
“They are not content,” said Tru Pettigrew, president of the Alloy Access, a division of Alloy Media + Marketing. “They are not satisfied. There is a constant need to get to the next level.”
The group, rooted in hip-hop and street culture, is really defined more by psychographic standards than by their demographics. The segment “transcends race, ethnicity and geography,” Pettigrew said. “The mentality is their starting point is irrelevant.”
Urban Hustlers have a particular affinity for a range of products, including cars, high-end apparel and shoes, entertainment, cell phones and technology. They place a high premium on fashion and lifestyle and frequently use social networking sites to find and share information. And with an estimated $90 billion in spending power, that’s an important point for marketers.
“We need to understand what motivates them, their dreams and passions so you can craft your message to appeal to that mindset,” Pettigrew said. “This is a group that is willing to spend lot of money to help enhance their image or help them achieve image they are looking for.”
According to the study, Urban Hustlers spend 45% more on clothing, accessories and shoes than non-urban consumers, with annual spending reaching $17.4 billion. These consumers drop an average of $100 more than the general market, with overall discretionary spending reaching $383 each month.
And when it comes to leisure interests, the group goes all out. They drop $9 billion a year on recreational activities, the study found. “They are spending money using the luxury lifestyle to project an image for how they want people to receive them,” Pettigrew said. Respondents identified Bill Gates (22%) as the person they most admire over celebrities including P Diddy, Jennifer Lopez and Oprah Winfrey, the survey found. Alloy surveyed 1,386 people ages 12 to 34 for the study.
Essay 4014
Satisfaction not guaranteed with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• The irate judge who filed a $67 million lawsuit against a dry cleaners that lost his trousers (see Essay 2080) has lowered his demand to only $54 million. The judge claims the service posted signs stating “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and “Same Day Service.” Next time, the cleaners will have to add a disclaimer reading, “Void when dealing with crazy-ass judges.”
• Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe is reluctant to apologize for the state’s role in slavery. Beebe said, “I think Arkansas probably has as good a feel for folks working together as any Southern state or any other state, so I think we’ve moved past that.” However, Beebe is probably open to offering an apology for former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.
Essay 4012
What do you bring to the party? That’s a question someone should ask the creative team responsible for this lame ad.
[Click on the essay title above to view the accompanying website.]
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Essay 4011
Extended courtships in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Happy anniversary to R. Kelly, who was indicted on 21 counts of child pornography exactly five years ago today. A trial date has still not been set. “It’s ridiculous that it has taken five years to get to trial,” said New England School of Law Professor Wendy Murphy. “There’s no excuse for it. But this is a tried-and-true tactic when it comes to sex-crimes cases: ‘victory by delay.’ Witnesses end up moving away. They die. You tend to see a lot of delays for defendants who are wealthy. You don’t tend to see a lot of delays when the defendant is a poor kid from the inner city.” Hey, keep poor kids from the inner city away from R. Kelly.
• The Los Angeles firefighter who was fed dog food by coworkers (see Essay 1451) may add a retaliation claim to his racial harassment lawsuit, thanks to a judge’s ruling on Monday. Wonder if the firefighter will wait in the doghouse as long as R. Kelly.
Essay 4008
Thanks to Carmen Van Kerckhove of Racialicious.com for forwarding the press release below. A brief MultiCultClassics response immediately follows…
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PROMINENT ORGANIZATIONS JOIN FORCES TO CREATE HISTORIC
DIVERSITY INITIATIVES
The AdColor Industry Coalition Announces the Inaugural AdColor Awards to Recognize Outstanding Achievements of Diverse Professionals in the Advertising, Marketing and Media Industries
(New York, NY) June 4, 2007 — Today, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), the American Advertising Federation (AAF), The ADVERTISING Club of New York (AD CLUB NY), and Arnold Worldwide announced that they have joined forces to form The AdColor Industry Coalition. ADCOLOR™ is a first of its kind cross-industry collaboration on the issue of diversity. The Coalition hopes to combine the energies of the marketing, media and advertising communities to stimulate ideas, discussion and solutions to advance diversity goals.
The Coalition’s first effort will be The AdColor Awards, a program that will honor outstanding diverse professionals at the junior, mid and senior levels in each segment of the advertising, marketing and media industries. The awards show will take place at the ANA Multicultural Marketing Conference on November 4, 2007 in Miami, Florida. Interested applicants or those who want to nominate candidates can download nomination forms at www.adcolor.org. The deadline for nominations is August 1, 2007.
“We are thrilled to host The AdColor Awards,” said founding Coalition member Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the ANA. “We look forward to celebrating the accomplishments of Rising Stars, Innovators, Change Agents and Legends, as well as learning from their experiences so that we can replicate their path to success for future generations.”
Currently, Yahoo!, Advertising Age and Arnold have signed on as presenting sponsors of the program. Additional pro bono support is being provided by DraftFCB, Fox Networks Group, McCann Erickson, Publicis New York, Rokkan, Reed Smith, and The Kaplan Thaler Group.
About ADCOLOR™
ADCOLOR™ was established in 2005 to promote increased diversity in the advertising, marketing and media industries, as well as to inspire current and future communications professionals of color by celebrating the accomplishments of diverse role models and industry leaders. Go to www.adcolor.org for more information.
About The AdColor Industry Coalition
The AdColor Industry Coalition is a historic collaboration between The ADVERTISING Club of New York (AD CLUB NY), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) and Arnold Worldwide. These organizations and other companies are committed to the success of the AdColor Industry Initiative.
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Well, it’s certainly historic for organizations that have consistently failed in their diversity initiatives to suddenly team up to tackle the issues. Call it a case of the colorblind leading the colorblind.
And what better way to herald the new day than with another minority awards show? It’s the perfect supplement to the Mosaic Awards and other multicultural tributes that continue to segregate the industry. Funny how this innovative salute to cultural harmony doesn’t include any White categories. Or even disabled and GLBT silos. Plus, let’s not forget the growing segment of aging adfolks. Perhaps it’s time to distribute trophies to the chronic offenders fueling discrimination and exclusivity. Oh wait, that’s the role of New York City’s Commission on Human Rights.
The AdColor choir features a few rising stars, notably Arnold Worldwide’s Tiffany R. Warren. Ms. Warren was listed in Advertising Age’s Women To Watch 2007, and she allegedly calls herself a “diversity Pollyanna.” Hey, she’s clearly found a fitting forum to test the authenticity of that title.
[Click on the essay title above to learn more about AdColor.]
Monday, June 04, 2007
Essay 4006
From The Washington Post…
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Americans’ Views on Illegal Immigrants Are Complex and Conflicted, Poll Shows
Some Back Degree Of Legalization but Not Full Citizenship
By N.C. Aizenman and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writers
Jason Woodward, 31, a financial analyst in Clarksville, Tenn., says that putting illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship would be issuing a “free pass for lawbreakers” but that an attempt to deport 12 million of them would be “wasting millions of taxpayer dollars.”
Janet McIntee, 76, a retiree in Geauga, Ohio, supports a Senate plan that would lead to citizenship, but she has no sympathy for illegal immigrants.
“We have got to get ahold of who these people are and do something to make them legal,” McIntee said.
Joshua Grimes, 28, an accountant in Saginaw, Mich., thinks illegal immigrants should pay a penalty for violating the law but be allowed to remain.
“There needs to be some kind of system put in place so they can become legal,” Grimes said.
A new Washington Post-ABC poll and follow-up interviews found that Americans remain divided and uncertain about how best to deal with the estimated 12 million people living illegally in the United States.
The immigration debate in the past year has inspired heated rhetoric on talk radio and drawn hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets, but follow-up interviews with participants in the poll revealed that many Americans’ views are far more nuanced and complex.
More than half of those surveyed said illegal immigrants hurt the country more than help it, an opinion voiced by seven in 10 Republicans and about half of Democrats.
A slim majority believe in creating a pathway to citizenship, with younger people and Democrats far more open to the idea than Republicans and those over 55.
The number in favor of a guest worker program is almost identical -- 53 percent -- but on this issue, almost as many Republicans as Democrats back the concept. Those in the Western part of the nation are most supportive of it (65 percent), as are those in urban areas.
But the partisan divide resurfaced when people were asked what factors should be weighed the most in admitting immigrants. Democrats tended to say that reuniting immigrant families should be given priority, while Republicans were more likely to say that the skills of the immigrant should be paramount. The survey also found that those who oppose a Senate legalization proposal give a much higher priority to the issue of immigration than those who favor it in some form.
[Click on the essay title above to read the full story.]
Essay 4003
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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Immigration hurts blacks
BY MONROE ANDERSON
President Bush scolded some members of his base for, of all things, fear-mongering on illegal immigration. “If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s an amnesty bill,” chided the Fear Monger-In-Chief, the man who would have us believe there could soon be a heaven-bent Muslim terrorist hiding under every bed and in every closet in America. “That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens.'”
The president and his acolytes have turned empty political rhetoric into a pop art. That’s why we had to stay the course rather than cut and run. It’s also why we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here, and why we needed a troop surge to get the job done. Even as the president was tongue-lashing some party demagogues for not embracing the Senate compromise bill that would back his push to give virtual amnesty to the 12 million or so illegal immigrants who’ve successfully stolen across U.S. borders, he fell into his habit of using empty political rhetoric: “Amnesty is forgiveness for being here without any penalties,” the president said last week in southern Georgia at a training center for government security officials. “This bill is not an amnesty bill.”
The immigration reform bill is alarmingly reminiscent of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which was sold as the solution to the growing immigration problem. The bill 21 years ago gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants. The compromise bill for reform now being debated in the Senate would give amnesty to 12 million -- for a price. Those who came here before Jan. 1, 2007, must pay $5,000 in fines and apply for legal status in a process that requires them to return to their home country. That solution is so, so rich and rewarding -- for the rich. Illegal immigration allows the rich to get cheaper and cheaper goods and services and the black working class and poor to get hustled and trickled-down on.
And worse, according to a revised report released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Using data from the 1960-2000 U.S. Census reports, researchers discovered “a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates.”
“This is basic supply and demand,” Jeffrey Grogger told me. Increase the number of low-skilled workers, and wages fall and unemployment increases for black workers. The employment rate of black high school dropouts fell 30 percentage points, to 42.1 percent from 72.1 percent between 1980 and 2000, the study reported. In that same period, an alarming number of unskilled black men were being put behind bars. Although immigration isn’t the only factor, said Grogger, a University of Chicago professor who helped write the report, it “accounts for 10 percent of the incarceration rate.”
In 1980, just 1.3 percent of black high school dropouts were in jail or prison. By 2000, it had skyrocketed to 25.1 percent. Even black men with a high school diploma were more likely to end up being locked up. Their incarceration rates increased to 9.8 percent from 0.5 percent during the same time period. The study reports another alarming statistic for that period. Much of the other 90 percent of the soaring incarceration rate for unskilled black men, Grogger suggested, can be attributed to the war on drugs in general and the crack cocaine epidemic in particular. With those jobs in the inner cities that didn’t go to immigrants being outsourced to the suburbs and Third World countries, uneducated, low-skilled black men turned to drugs and guns as their principal commerce. States enacted tougher sentencing laws, police stepped up enforcement of those laws and existing prisons became overpopulated with African-American men.
Black joblessness is compounded by employers who believe there is a stronger work ethnic among immigrants. During the Joint Economic Hearing on Addressing the Problem of African-American Male Unemployment in March, Sen. Charles Schumer noted that black men with no criminal records were no more likely to find work than white men with criminal records.
Now that’s what I call frightening.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Essay 4002
Please refrain from applauding during this MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• In Galesburg, Illinois, five high school students were denied their diplomas because friends and relatives cheered too loudly at the graduation ceremony. Hoping to control rowdiness and keep the event solemn, school officials made students and attendees sign documents promising to remain quiet. But the five students and their friends and families apparently violated the agreements. There are questions of bias, as four of the students are Black and one is Latino. Some parents contend cheers for White students failed to result in denying diplomas. “Race had absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever,” said the school’s principal. “It is the amount of disruption at the time of the incident.” Guess we can look forward to disruption after the incident too.
• An auction of Michael Jackson paraphernalia netted $1 million, much to the dismay of Jackson, who sought to stop the sale. The organizers plan to hold another auction and said, “We still have tens of thousands of additional smaller items that we think will be exciting.” Sounds like a thriller event.
• Robin Givens revealed that ex-hubby Mike Tyson raped her and threatened to commit suicide 48 hours before being interviewed by Barbara Walters in 1988. Of course, the revelation is part of Givens’ promotion of her new autobiography. Please refrain from wildly stampeding to your local bookseller to check it out.
Essay 4001
The campaign tagline reads: An American Revolution. But the use of hip-hop stars to hawk cars is hardly revolutionary.
Essay 4000
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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CEO vs. slaves
BY BARBARA EHRENREICH
Recent findings shed new light on the increasingly unequal terrain of American society. Starting at the top executive level: You may have thought, as I did, that the guys in the C-suites operated as a team -- or, depending on your point of view, a pack or gang -- each getting his fair share of the take. But no, the rising tide in executive pay does not lift all yachts equally. The latest pay gap to worry about is the one between the CEO and his -- or very rarely her -- third in command.
According to a just-reported study by Carola Frydman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Raven E. Saks at the Federal Reserve, 30 to 40 years ago, the CEOs of major companies earned 80 percent more, on average, than the third-highest-paid executives. By the early part of the 21st century, however, the gap between CEO and the third in command had ballooned up to 260 percent.
Labor’s new bottom
Now take a look at what’s happening at the very bottom of the economic spectrum, where you might have pictured low-wage workers trudging between food banks or mendicants dwelling in cardboard boxes. It turns out, though, that the bottom is a lot lower than that.
On May 16, a millionaire couple in a woodsy Long Island suburb was charged with keeping two Indonesian domestics as slaves for five years, during which the women were paid $100 a month, fed very little, forced to sleep on mats on the floor, and subjected to beatings, cigarette burns and other torments.
This is hardly an isolated case (see my book, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, co-edited with Arlie Hochschild.) If the new “top” involves pay in the tens or hundreds of millions, a private jet and a few acres of Nantucket, the new bottom is slavery.
Some of America’s slaves are captive domestics, like the Indonesian women in Long Island. Others are factory workers, and at least 10,000 are sex slaves lured from their home country to American brothels by promises of respectable jobs. CEOs and slaves: these are the extreme ends of American class polarization.
Polarized division of labor
But a parallel kind of splitting is going in many of the professions. Top-ranked college professors, for example, enjoy salaries of several hundred thousand a year, often augmented by consulting fees and earnings from their patents or biotech companies. At the other end of the professoriate, you have adjunct teachers toiling away for about $5,000 a semester or less, with no benefits or chance of tenure. There was a story a few years ago about an adjunct who commuted to his classes from a homeless shelter in Manhattan, and adjuncts who moonlight as waitresses or cleaning ladies are legion.
Similarly, the legal profession, which is topped by law firm partners billing hundred of dollars an hour, now has a new proletariat of temp lawyers working for $19 to $25 an hour in sweatshop conditions. On sites such as temporaryattorney.blogspot.com, temp lawyers report working 12 hours a day, six days a week, in crowded basements with inadequate sanitary facilities. According to an article in American Lawyer, a legal temp at a major New York firm reports being “corralled in a windowless basement room littered with dead cockroaches,” where six out of seven exits were blocked.
‘Dark energy’ pulls us apart
Contemplating the violent and increasing polarization of American society, one cannot help but think of “dark energy,” the mysterious force that is propelling the galaxies apart from each other at a speed far greater than can be accounted for by the energy of the original big bang. Cosmic bodies seem to be repelling each other, much as a CEO must look down at his CFO, COO, etc. and think, “They’re getting too close. I’ve got to make more, more, more!”
The difference is that the galaxies don’t need each other and are free to go their separate ways nonchalantly. But the CEO presumably depends on his fellow executives, just as the star professor relies on adjuncts to do his or her teaching and the law firm partner is enriched by the sweated labor of legal temps. For all we know, some of those CEOs go home to sip their single malts in mahogany walled dens that have been cleaned by domestic slaves.
Why is it so hard for the people at the top to graciously acknowledge their dependency on the labor of others? We need some sort of gravitational force to counter the explosive distancing brought about by greed -- before our economy imitates the universe and blows itself to smithereens.
[Barbara Ehrenreich’s most recent book is Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream.]
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Essay 3098
From The Chicago Sun-Times…
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Biggest sellouts are blacks who destroy their communities
BY JEREMY LEVITT
How do we as African Americans define selling out? Is it dating outside of our race? Is it the shuck-and-jive entertainers? Is it the black Republican? Is it the overly ambitious, material-driven civil rights activist? Or, is it the well-spoken and studious black child?
I believe we need a new paradigm of selling out. Today’s sellouts are blacks who perpetuate violence and destruction in the black community and participate in the globalization of negative stereotypes and images of African Americans.
Not long ago, I was eating lunch at a restaurant near downtown Chicago, and a young black man walked in with a scantily dressed white woman on his arm. They were both in their early 20s and dressed the part. I saw a few “sisters” sigh as they entered. Yes, the brother -- smiley gold teeth and all -- looked real proud to have “Becky,” and she seemed even prouder to be on a safari with her African guide. They sat down near me and spoke very loudly, apparently wanting all to hear. I overheard a young black woman say, “It’s bad enough that he is a sellout, but do they have to be so ignorant, too?” I gave her a nod of approval.
Then, as I gazed at the local newspaper, I read an interesting story about hip-hop and its alleged misogynistic and materialistic culture. This caused me to ask: What is selling out? According to Wikipedia, it refers to “compromising one’s integrity, morality and principles in exchange for money, success or other personal gain. It is commonly associated with attempts to increase mass appeal or acceptability to mainstream society. A person who does this is labeled a sellout. Selling out may be seen as gaining success at the cost of credibility.” This is a pretty good definition. In the context of race relations, sellouts compromise racial solidarity and group identity and integrity for perceived societal acceptance, adventure or mere escape by dating outside of their race or ethnic genre. To many, love gives no amnesty to selling out.
However, given the poor state of black America, I believe we should redefine if not expand the term. African Americans rank at the bottom of nearly every social, political, economic and health indicator in the country. We are among America’s poorest, financially in debt and illiterate. Proportionate to the population, we comprise the single largest racial group in prison and are disproportionately the unhealthiest.
Based on this reality, perhaps we need to redefine selling out to castigate blacks who enable this condition. I mean blacks who are destroying our communities: the real terrorists. I mean those who murder, rape and molest, sell drugs, and gang-bang; those who keep our communities looking pillaged. I mean blacks who perpetuate and celebrate violent and destructive culture. I mean blacks who reinforce the global pathology of violence against black women. I mean black entertainers and athletes who sell out to corporate America and consciously pimp a materialistic, misogynistic and violent culture to our youth. I mean black media that are raising a generation of young dummies on a diet of racially disparaging music and sleazy reality television.
Today’s sellouts are individuals who wreak havoc in the black community through various forms of violence, including degrading imagery, and those black-owned institutions and corporations that exploit the consumer strength of African Americans by overfeeding us with niggardly products.
It’s time to quit blaming others; to call a spade a spade, not a role model.
[Jeremy Levitt is a professor of law at Florida International University and distinguished scholar at Northern Illinois University College of Law.]
Friday, June 01, 2007
Essay 3097
Dude, you’re getting a MultiCultClassics Monologue…
• Dell Inc. announced plans to lay off 8,000 employees. “While reductions in head count are always difficult for a company, we know these actions are critical to our ability to deliver unprecedented value to our customers now and in the future,” said Michael Dell. Dude, you’re getting a pink slip.
• Circuit City plans to cut about 850 jobs, adding to the 3,400 fired in March. The City population is now down to about 43,000 citizens.
• Forget peanut butter and jelly. Folks are concerned over peanut butter and salmonella. Since August, over 200 people got sick by peanut butter tainted with salmonella, leading to the Peter Pan brand being pulled from shelves. Peter Pan likes to sing, “I won’t grow up.” But he may make you throw up.
• The controversial Camel No. 9 (see Essay 2087) has inspired protests against publications like Vogue magazine. “If you draw income from the advertisement of tobacco,” stated one letter writer, “you are as guilty as big tobacco companies in selling the health and future of so many of our youth in order to pad your bank accounts.” Ellen Vargyas of the American Legacy Foundation added, “Research out there shows that young people are susceptible to advertising. I wish the publications themselves would look hard at what they’re doing. Readers look to them to see what’s cool and what’s trendy—and they see cigarettes.” Or photo spreads of supermodels smoking cigarettes.
Essay 3094
From The New York Times…
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Telling India’s Modern Women They Have Power, Even Over Their Skin Tone
By HEATHER TIMMONS
NEW DELHI — The modern Indian woman is independent, in charge — and does not have to live with her dark skin.
That is the message from a growing number of global cosmetics and skin care companies, which are expanding their product lines and advertising budgets in India to capitalize on growth in women’s disposable income. A common thread involves creams and soaps that are said to lighten skin tone. Often they are peddled with a “power” message about taking charge or getting ahead.
Avon, L’Oréal, Ponds, Garnier, the Body Shop and Jolen are selling lightening products and all of them face stiff competition from a local giant, Fair and Lovely, a Unilever product that has dominated the market for decades.
Fair and Lovely, with packaging that shows a dark-skinned unhappy woman morphing into a light-skinned smiling one, once focused its advertising on the problems a dark-skinned woman might face finding romance. In a sign of the times, the company’s ads now show lighter skin conferring a different advantage: helping a woman land a job normally held by men, like announcer at cricket matches. “Fair and Lovely: The Power of Beauty,” is the tagline on the company’s newest ad.
Not surprisingly, the rush to sell skin-lightening products has drawn some criticism, with people saying that the products are at best unsavory and that they reinforce dangerous prejudices.
When Unilever markets Fair and Lovely, it “doesn’t cause bias,” but it does make use of it, said Aneel G. Karnani, a professor with the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan who earned a business degree in India.
Global cosmetics companies — which also sell skin-lightening products throughout Asia and in the United States, where they are marketed as spot or blemish removers — argue that they are just giving Indian women what they want.
Taking offense at the products is “a very Western way of looking at the world,” said Ashok Venkatramani, who is in charge of the skin care category at Unilever’s Indian unit, Hindustan Lever. “The definition of beauty in the Western world is linked to anti-aging,” he said. “In Asia, it’s all about being two shades lighter.”
Sales of Fair and Lovely have been growing 15 to 20 percent year over year, Mr. Venkatramani said.
Skin-lightening products are by far the most popular product in India’s fast-growing skin care market, so manufacturers say they ignore them at their peril. The $318 million market for skin care has grown by 42.7 percent since 2001, says Euromonitor International, a research firm.
“Half of the skin care market in India is fairness creams,” said Didier Villanueva, country manager for L’Oréal India, and 60 to 65 percent of Indian women use these products daily. L’Oréal entered this specific market four years ago with Garnier and L’Oréal products, but so far has a small market share, he said.
The idea of “glowing fairness” has nothing to do with colonialism, or idealization of European looks, Mr. Villanueva said. “It’s as old as India,” he said, and “deeply rooted in the culture.”
There’s no denying that the notion of “fairness,” as light skin is known in India, is heavily ingrained in the culture. Nearly all of Bollywood’s top actresses have quite pale skin, despite the range of skin tones in India’s population of more than a billion people.
Lightening products can damage the skin if they are overused, dermatologists say, particularly if they contain hydroquinone. The compound reduces melanin but can leave permanent dark spots in high doses.
Deeply rooted ideas about women’s roles are slowly shifting in India. The percentage of women married before the age of 19, for example, has dropped sharply. Advertising and marketing gurus are aiming at young, urban Indian women, who are earning their own money and are potential customers for a host of products including name-brand clothes, cosmetics and new cars.
India is hardly alone in its pursuit of “fairness.” Korea, Japan and China are big markets for skin-whitening products. And the United States is not exempt. Ebony magazine ran similar ads relating to full-face “skin brightening” or “skin whitening” creams aiming at African-American consumers through the 1950s and 1960s, said Jeanine Collins, communications director for Ebony. Those ads changed their message during the 1970s and 1980s to talk about removing spots or blemishes, she said.
In India, advertisements for L’Oréal-branded products and the company’s Garnier line generally feature a pale model, and focus on the ingredients in the product, using take-action language like “YES to fairer and younger looking skin” or “Against inside cell damages.”
L’Oréal’s super-high-end Vichy line is more direct: the main advertising image in Asia shows a woman unzipping her blemished, darker face to reveal a light, even-toned one within.
“We have never had any complaints about the ad’s social implications,” said Nitin Mehta, India general manager of the active cosmetics division of L’Oréal, which makes Vichy products.
Unilever’s Fair and Lovely brand has drawn particular scrutiny because of its market dominance, its ads and the parent company’s image. Unilever also makes Dove products, whose “Real Beauty” campaign encourages women in the United States and Europe to embrace the way they look. This month, Unilever said it would ban super-skinny models from ads.
The All India Democratic Women’s Association has been monitoring advertisements since the 1990s and gets particularly angry with ads that convey the message “if she is not fair in color, she won’t get married or won’t get promoted,” said Manjeet Rathee, a spokeswoman for the association’s media group. The current crop of television ads for fairness creams are “not as demeaning” as ones in the past, she said.
In a twist that makes it difficult for critics to accuse Unilever of stoking just women’s insecurities, the company has begun to advertise a Fair and Lovely product for men.
Essay 3093
“My work improves our nation’s security…” This work doesn’t improve the nation’s diversity advertising.
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