15862: Black Holidays Matter—Except In Adland.

 

Advertising Age published a provocative perspective from Wongdoody VP Eugene S. Robinson, observing the obtuse attempts to observe Juneteenth by corporate enterprises. Hey, add White advertising agencies to the list—although most shops likely give less thought to Juneteenth than Black History Month. Or any other Black holiday, for that matter.

 

Robinson suggests that one way to truly commemorate the event could involve actually hiring Black people and integrating staffs.

 

The majority of White advertising agencies will opt to post agencywide memos presenting a general explanation of Juneteenth, drafted by DEI Directors who acquired the information via Google searches.

 

Meanwhile, Ad Age illustrated the viewpoint with a peculiar royalty-free stock image (depicted above) that demonstrates a lack of interest from the editorial staff too.

 

Juneteenth And Brands—Why Diverse Workforces Should Be A Focus Instead Of Celebration

 

Many attempts to observe the holiday correctly have been bungled

 

By Eugene S. Robinson

 

Juneteenth is coming, and with it questions about what being inclusive and diverse really means in a corporate sense. Or to put a finer point put on it: What are reasonable first steps to take to indicate that a business cares what its workers and partners think about working and partnering with it?

 

Juneteenth, the federal holiday commemorating the freeing of African American slaves on June 19, 1865, was signed into law by President Biden in 2021.Celebrated in fits and starts across the U.S., Juneteenth became official with none of the Sturm und Drang that accompanied making Martin Luther King Jr. Day a holiday in 1983—Arizona, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia resisting for a variety of reasons up until 2000 in some cases.

 

There was also a delay after President Abraham Lincoln’s issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Southern secessionist states had gotten the memo but until Union troops showed up just chose to ignore it. Alignment was eventually attained and as early as 1866 people were celebrating freedom—a word we’re sorely tempted to put in quotes.

 

While the holiday has gotten enough traction over the intervening years to be considered “the longest-running African American holiday” (according to the Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History), or maybe more significantly as a second Independence Day, attempts to recognize it correctly have been bungled.

 

Witness Walmart’s Juneteenth-themed ice cream imbroglio.

 

Neither requested or required, this Juneteenth ice cream arose from Walmart executives who thought what people wanted and needed to celebrate the end of slavery was ice cream.

 

Even in the 1960s—60 years earlier than the ice cream gambit—movements were afoot to observe Juneteenth not with celebrations but with a focus on civil rights and desegregation. In 2022, we are having healthy and much-needed discussions on how much and how significant this holiday is from a corporate sense.

 

Are corporations able to observe an existing Juneteenth holiday tradition? I—along with my mother, father, sisters, my children and neighbors in Brooklyn and now California—would like it noted that we have had no tradition to share. Blacks are too busy trying to deal with the ways in which freedom might exist for us without quotation marks during traffic stops, promotions and real estate transactions.

 

In any event, does it make sense for a company to observe the holiday other than by increasing workplace diversity all along the org chart? Develop—in earnest and not for performative reasons—real career paths once you’ve increased that diversity? Stopping the ham-handed othering that happens when your workplace is not diverse enough to make it something that happens less?

 

Coming on the heels of George Floyd’s murder, the Juneteenth holiday is nonetheless a nice way for America to say, “Yes, we tricked you once but finally the good have made right this evil wrong.”

 

Maybe someday it will even be true. Until then? From the corporate side of things, a brief note, done in consultation with whatever people of color you do have on your staff, and then? Just keep things moving along. It’ll make us all feel a whole lot better.