16346: Quotas & Affirmative Action For The Privileged…?

 

This ain’t a new rant, but it’s always worth repeating.

 

Harvard Business Review published a report titled, “How to Effectively—and Legally—Use Racial Data for DEI,” which included the following two paragraphs:

 

To understand how to best act on this complex topic, it’s important to start with the legal foundations. According to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it’s illegal to consider any single candidate’s or employee’s race—even with the intention of creating a more diverse, equitable, or inclusive workforce—in any employment decision. Employers can’t create de facto hiring quotas (e.g., “50% of the employees hired in this department must be women”), or “reserve seats” for employees from certain groups, even in the interest of diversity.

 

According to the law, even after the recent Supreme Court ruling, gender-conscious or race-conscious hiring practices are permitted, but only as part of limited, temporary, and highly structured voluntary affirmative action programs, undertaken only if employers find evidence of company-wide or industry-wide hiring discrimination, only to correct the initial imbalance, and only without “undue harm” on members of non-targeted groups (meaning that employers cannot lay off white workers to hire workers of color).

 

The paragraphs explain recent maneuvers in Adland—as well as underscore the systemic racism so prevalent in the field.

 

In 2016, Omnicom President-CEO-Pioneer of Diversity John Wren vowed to double the number of female creative leaders at BBDO within the calendar year. In 2018, Ogilvy publicly declared that 20 women would be hired into creative leadership roles by 2020. In short, White advertising agencies took advantage of legal loopholes to promote White women via voluntary affirmative action programs.

 

Yet despite generating heat shields and performative PR in response to George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter movement, White ad agencies have not even suggested implementing quotas to increase Black representation. Affirmative action is deemed reverse discrimination. No one has openly pursued the processes proffered by Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall, executing cluster hires to correct the fully acknowledged imbalances.

 

In Adland, quotas and affirmative action are exclusively presented by the privileged—without question or hesitation—to the privileged. It’s systemic racism positioned as progress.

13829: Beam Diversity Up, Scotti.

Adweek reported on the dubious progress revealed by Verizon CMO Diego Scotti, who had mimicked HP CMO Antonio Lucio’s request for White advertising agencies to primarily promote White women and secondarily consider colored people. Sure enough, the fuzzy figures exposed by Scotti showed a big boost for White women and questionable results for people of color. When asked why he didn’t force quotas on his White ad shops, Scotti explained, “We don’t really believe in quotas, we believe in progress.” Okay, but how does one measure—and ultimately judge—progress if specific numbers aren’t applied to the equation? Scotti then segued to hyping his company’s latest diversity scheme, which involves an internship program for colored college students. Wow, that’s original. When discussing diversity, Scotti admitted, “This is not an easy thing to solve, so for me I never expected to have crazy results quickly, but I learned a few things that are important.” Whatever. But everyone should learn one thing that is important: High-tech companies like Verizon and HP are diversity dinosaurs—and these companies have maxed their quotas for conspiring with White advertising agencies.

One Year After Calling on Agency Partners to Be More Diverse, Verizon CMO Shares the Results

Diego Scotti on new hires and Verizon’s Ad Fellows program, which kicks off today

By Katie Richards

One year ago, Verizon CMO Diego Scotti sent a letter to all of the brand’s agency partners. In that letter, Scotti called on each of the 11 agencies on the Verizon roster to focus on improving the number of women and people of color working for them.

Scotti’s letter came around the same time that HP and General Mills put out similar demands, laying out quotas for their agency partners to reach. Verizon didn’t ask for agencies to meet a certain quota because as Scotti explained, “we don’t really believe in quotas, we believe in progress.” Instead he asked that all of the agencies share the current state of their workforce 30 days after the letter was sent out and deliver an action plan to improve upon those numbers in the future.

“Now we meet every quarter with all the agencies together, and everybody needs to report their progress in front of everybody else, which in and of itself is changing the dynamic of how we are having this conversation,” Scotti explained. It holds everyone accountable.

Now one year after making that call to action, Scotti shared how both Verizon and its partners are doing on the diversity and gender front.

At the agencies, 31 percent of employees at the leadership level are people of color, up nine percent from last year. Eleven percent of those in leadership positions are hispanic, up 5 percent; 51 percent are female, up 3 percent.

“This is not an easy thing to solve, so for me I never expected to have crazy results quickly, but I learned a few things that are important,” Scotti said. One of those important lessons Scotti learned came from starting an in-house agency that launched in February.

There are already 70 people working on Verizon’s in-house team and the staff is split, 50 percent white and 50 percent people of color. Additionally, 52 percent of the staff is female and 48 percent is male.

“The number one lesson is when you build something from scratch and you put the filter of diversity in it, you can do it,” he said. “If you create the right environment, then you can do it.”

Looking specifically at new hires, 210 employees have been hired in the past year to work on the Verizon account across agencies; 41 percent of the hires were people of color and 53 percent were women.

Creating an in-house agency and focusing on improving agency and internal diversity numbers was the first prong in Scotti’s diversity-focused approach for Verizon. Another prong is the Ad Fellows program, which officially kicks off today.

The Ad Fellows program selects 20 college graduates from across the country, all with diverse backgrounds, to participate in an eight-month fellowship program. Scotti hopes that at the end of the program, 90 percent of the fellows will score full-time jobs at one of the six companies participating in Ad Fellows.

What makes Ad Fellows different than your typical fellowship, though, is that Verizon tapped five of its agency partners—McCann, Momentum, Rauxa, Zenith and Weber Shandwick—to participate in the program.

Over the course of eight months, the 20 fellows will be split into smaller groups and rotate between Verizon and a handful of the participating agencies (which cover creative, media and PR). That way the recent graduates have a chance to explore different parts of the marketing and advertising business and find out what it is they want to do with their career and what parts of the business they excel in.

The program is fully paid and covers housing and expenses for all 20 fellows to ensure that people of all backgrounds can have the chance to participate.

While the program just kicked off today, Scotti already has big plans for its future. Outside of holding more cycles each year, Scotti hopes that the idea of an Ad Fellows program can extend beyond Verizon. He hopes one day that, “every company in America has an Ad Fellows program and they gather agencies to work with them. I would love to partner with the ANA or The Ad Club or some organization that could help bring other clients to partner with the ad agencies and make it a really big thing.”

13800: Mindshare Shares Its Diversity.

Campaign reported Mindshare promoted Nilufar Fowler to Worldwide Central CEO. Not sure about Fowler’s racial/ethnic origin, but she appears to be more interested in diverted diversity than true diversity. Whatever. Mindshare undoubtedly checked its minority quota box twice with Fowler’s elevation—the new leaders is a 1) female 2) of color—even though she was already on staff.

Mindshare promotes Fowler to worldwide central CEO

Mindshare has promoted its global lead on Unilever, Nilufar Fowler, to Worldwide Central chief executive at the Group M agency, replacing Marco Rimini.

By Omar Oakes

Fowler succeeds Marco Rimini, who has moved into the newly-created role of chief development officer, reporting to global chief executive Nick Emery.

As chief executive of Mindshare Worldwide Central she will now be responsible for running the agency’s global client teams and also reports to Emery.

Mindshare has also created Rimini’s new role to allow him to “drive core differentiating products”, such as Shop+, its bespoke service for brands on Amazon, and the agency’s global Fast initiative (Future Adaptive Specialist Team).

Rimini, who joined the agency 11 years ago from J Walter Thompson, has been tasked with working with regional Mindshare chief executives and global client leaders to support them so the agency can better become “adaptive marketing partners” that clients want.

Fowler has been replaced as global client leader for Team Unilever by Ailsa Lochrie, who was EMEA chief operating officer.

Lochrie will now be responsible for WPP’s second biggest client account. Last month Unilever announced its marketing budget was likely up be up year on year after a decline in spend last year, the analyst Liberum reported.

As EMEA chief operating officer, Lochrie was working in a coordination role alongside Helen McRae, the Western Europe chair who is also UK chief executive. Lochrie’s replacement has not yet been chosen.

13744: Waxing Poetic On Brazil.

Advertising Age reported on the trend of White advertising agencies recruiting talent from Brazil—where scam ads and cultural cluelessness are local traditions. Of course, bringing in Brazilians allows White ad shops to check off minority quotas while continuing to ignore Latinos and other people of color in the United States. The Ad Age report inspired a comment from Kat Gordon, who cried, “Quick add to this piece: FEMALE creatives from Brazil (overlooked here) are also a huge recruiting opportunity for US agencies. The 3% Conference has a 30,000-person social community + we were shocked when we looked at our Facebook community. After the US, our #1 group of followers is from Brazil. Not the UK. Not Canada. It’s time we talked about LATINA talent, too.” By all means, Ms. Gordon, let’s talk about Latina talent too.

Is Brazil the New Sweden for U.S. Agency Recruiters?

By Laurel Wentz

When Wieden & Kennedy hired an Argentine creative in 1997 for a job in Portland, Ore., José Mollá was a rarity. And when he tried to hire a creative team from Brazil, no one wanted to come.

“It was kind of unheard of to have talent from Latin America in the U.S.,” Mollá said. “And now it’s super common.”

Today, Mollá chairs The One Club, the prominent organization for honoring creativity. And The Community, the successful Miami shop that he and brother Joaquín started, is often the first U.S. agency for Latin American creative teams that later work at shops like Droga5, R/GA and David & Goliath, he said.

One of his former creative directors, Gustavo Lauria, opened a New York shop called We Believers in 2014. Lauria won four Lions at Cannes last year and will be a U.S. judge on the Titanium and Integrated jury this year. His award-show blockbuster, which is also turning into an environmentally friendly business, is “Edible Six-Pack Rings,” a biodegradable version of the plastic six-pack rings that can harm marine life when discarded.

Latin American creative leaders are the new Swedes. For years, Swedish creatives took over high-profile creative roles at U.S. agencies, before mostly returning to Scandinavia. One of the last to depart, Andreas Dahlqvist, left his post as chief creative officer at Grey New York in April to become chief creative officer of Nord DDB in his native Sweden. Increasingly, Latin American creatives are stepping into U.S. leadership roles as chief creative officers or executive creative directors, or running their own agencies, like Anselmo Ramos at David in Miami. After surviving trial by fire in their often less-than-stable home countries, they do more with less, and adapt quickly and creatively to just about anything. And they do it all with a touch of emotion that plays well in the work they create.

In one big shift, Brazilian creatives, once reluctant to relocate from their sunny, high-paying market, are flocking to the U.S. For many, that change of heart is a combination of disillusionment over Brazil’s endless corruption scandals, a depressed local economy and a U.S. market that increasingly welcomes them with better career opportunities. “More and more Latins are being hired and judged by their talent, not their accents,” Mollá said.

Sometimes, it seems like the entire Ogilvy Brazil creative department that did brilliant work like Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaigns under Anselmo Ramos has landed in Los Angeles. Ramos, who left São Paulo in 2014 to open WPP’s rapidly successful David agency in Miami, said he always encouraged his Brazilian team to believe working abroad makes you “not only a better creative, but a better human being.”

Ramos said he “couldn’t be prouder” of Eduardo Marques and Rafael Rizuto, who are exec creative directors at 180LA, and Roberto “Beto” Fernández and Paco Conde, who joined Anomaly LA as exec creative directors in February. (And Fernández’s twin brother, Renato, was promoted to chief creative officer of TBWA/Chiat/Day in February.) In New York, Ogilvy Brazil alumni Fred Saldanha is exec creative director at Huge, and João Coutinho became exec creative director of Y&R North America last month.

And David, under Ramos, has stellar creative work coming out of Miami that displays a neat grasp of American culture, including Burger King campaigns like “Proud Whopper,” celebrating gay pride, and a “Scariest Burger King” outlet dressed in a McDonald’s costume for Halloween.

At Saatchi & Saatchi, Buenos Aires native Javier Campopiano became chief creative officer of the New York office last year, and a Brazilian, Fabio Costa, is the exec creative director in Los Angeles.

Two of Brazil’s highest-profile creatives, Andre Kassu and Marcos Medeiros, are now in charge of CP&B’s Miami office, after opening a CP&B shop in São Paulo three years ago that has become one of Brazil’s hottest startups. Now, they rotate between São Paulo and Miami, Kassu said, and they recently won the global account for Brazilian airplane-maker Embraer, to be run from Miami.

And it’s not just agencies. More clients are from Latin America themselves, and expect their agencies to reflect the diversity they see in their U.S. consumers. Diego Scotti, the chief marketing officer of Verizon, a client of The Community, is from Argentina. And Fernando Machado, Burger King’s head of brand marketing, worked at Unilever in São Paulo for many years and was an Ogilvy Brazil client; now he’s a client of David in Miami.

In April, Coca-Cola named the president of its Mexico business unit, Francisco Crespo, as the company’s first U.S. chief growth officer, a new role that will oversee marketing. HP’s global chief marketing officer, Antonio Lucio, who was raised in Puerto Rico, has made diversity a hallmark of his two years at the company—and requires his five agencies to make a similar commitment.

At a time when the U.S. under Donald Trump has become a less welcoming place toward immigrants, there is concern. One chief creative officer from Colombia said he is considering getting Colombian passports for his two U.S.-born children.

“Regarding Trump America, the last few months have been pretty disheartening,” said PJ Pereira, founder and chief creative officer of San Francisco agency Pereira & O’Dell. A Brazilian by birth, he became a U.S. citizen last year. “I see friends really concerned, afraid if they’ll be able to renew their visas. And everyone is a bit paranoid. Are we going to feel a violence that didn’t manifest in the Obama years? Are our kids going to suffer because of that?”

But momentum is on the side of fresh international creative influences. And agencies continue to apply for, and get, 0-1 work visas to bring creatives to the U.S. “The threat makes the commitment to diversity even stronger,” Mollá said. “I get the feeling it’s too late. There is no way back, like it or not.”

13621: Quota Quotes.

Campaign presented a video featuring industry figures promoting the use of quotas to achieve gender equality. While the commentators included a few remarks regarding racial and ethnic diversity, the conversation really centered around jumping on the White women’s bandwagon. Hey, when quotas for racial and ethnic minorities were discussed in 2015, there was not equal enthusiasm for the equality tool. Imagine that.

13409: Delayed WTF 33—CMO BS.

MultiCultClassics is often occupied with real work. As a result, a handful of events occur without the expected blog commentary. This limited series—Delayed WTF—seeks to make belated amends for the absence of malice.

Digiday published another culturally clueless confession from an alleged leader within a White advertising agency—a probable White woman serving as a Chief Marketing Officer—who shared her ignorant thoughts on diversity.

Reacting to the recent requests for diversity from General Mills and HP, the confessor cried that quotas lead to hiring based on motives other than merit. First of all, MultiCultClassics addressed this outdated perspective years ago. Secondly, the confessor seems oblivious to the fact that her own executive existence is undoubtedly being listed as a diversity hiring, as White advertising agencies are promoting White women with roles like Chief Marketing Officer in order to boost diverted diversity figures. Sorry, but the confessor’s cloddish comments show she obviously did not land her job via professional experience and merit.

The confessor also predicted, “There are going to be situations where agencies, under pressure and time, won’t hire on merit, but will go find 10 more women and five people of color.” Um, the recruiting ratio between White women and people of color will be far greater than 2 to 1. Hell, it will probably exceed 200 to 1.

The confessor realized recruiters contribute to the global dilemma too. Gee, what a revelation! “We’ve had books received from recruiters where it’s all men,” admitted the confessor. “And it wasn’t until we ask them, ‘How come this is all men?’ that the recruiters say, ‘Oh, wow, yeah.’ The recruiter had to be pushed to think of women that would work for the job.” Heaven forbid the recruiter might have considered finding people of color as well. And of course, the confessor doesn’t display any accountability in the scenario. That is, why weren’t objectives discussed before the recruiter identified and presented candidates?

To push the Catholic metaphors, the Digiday confessional is actually a confirmation—that the leaders in White advertising agencies are culturally clueless and covert racists.

:::

‘It’s sad it’s come to this’: Confessions of an agency CMO on diversity quotas

By Shareen Pathak

Brands like General Mills and HP are both exhorting agencies to improve diversity numbers — by leveraging client dollars.

In the past week, General Mills told Advertising Age that it now requires agencies competing for its business to meet quotas: 50 percent of the creative department must be female, while 20 percent must be people of color. Shortly after, HP CMO Antonio Lucio called on its agencies to send the company a proposal outlining exactly how each agency will improve diversity numbers.

These are two different approaches, but potentially a harbinger of things to come: Other major clients like PepsiCo’s Brad Jakeman, an outspoken champion for agency diversity, have already lauded the move.

But while there’s no question diversity is a nagging problem in the industry and numbers need to improve, these new requirements are causing consternation among agency executives, particularly those in new business. We asked one agency CMO who is not involved in the General Mills or HP work to give us an unvarnished insider’s perspective. As always, we granted anonymity in exchange for honesty.

So brands and agency diversity quotas: Good, or bad?

It’s a weird thing, isn’t it? That it’s come to this? I think it’s really sad that it has to be this way. And the reason it’s sad is because ultimately, any decision — whether you’re hiring someone, whether it’s an agency or a law firm, this kind of thing — will make people feel like they got the job not because they are the most qualified person for the role regardless of sex, gender, race.

So you’re talking about the post-quota hires?

Yes. The trouble is, we run the risk of — as an industry and, broadly, as an economy — that we make decisions not based on merit but based on quotas.

OK, but diversity is a huge problem. If not this, how do you fix it?

Of course. It’s sad that as an industry we’re not naturally reflecting the population. But it’s so complicated. Quotas are a Band-Aid to sort out the fact that agencies are not reflecting the population the brands are selling to. But when you think about diversity inside businesses, the issues are far more fundamental.

How?

If you think about the way people hire, it’s often about recommendations. So person A is hired, has a friend from college, recommends that person, and so on. That’s fine, but you hire people that think like you and tend to look like you too. What we need to be asking is: Are our hiring techniques allowing us to find the people who are best at their roles? And the answer is going to be no.

But wouldn’t quotas fix that?

But those are symptoms. The root cause won’t be fixed. We’ve had books received from recruiters where it’s all men. And it wasn’t until we ask them, “How come this is all men?” that the recruiters say, “Oh, wow, yeah.” The recruiter had to be pushed to think of women that would work for the job. So it’s on us. And just because you hire women or people of color, doesn’t mean you’ve fixed systemic issues.

How are agencies going to fill quotas?

There are going to be situations where agencies, under pressure and time, won’t hire on merit, but will go find 10 more women and five people of color. It can become quite frustrating. I’m a woman, and I don’t want to be hired because I’m a woman.

The interesting thing about this is that the screws are really being tightened.

They are. It’s a good thing too, at least we’re having this conversation and turning this into a hot-button issue. But I sense it’s creating some panic.

How?

Well, I like the HP approach. Feels like a partnership. But otherwise, there’s going to be agencies under new business pressure frantically trying to meet quotas. Maybe not in this case, but in the future. The second you start having quotas without context you worry about procurement-led decisions. I do hope there are checks and balances to make sure people don’t fudge numbers. But the process can be opaque. I’m so positive about it putting pressure on the industry, but it’s worrying.

13327: Quotas & Quotes.

AgencySpy posted on the General Mills account review—which features diversity requirements for the competing White advertising agencies—with a headline reading, “General Mills Insists That Its Future Agencies Meet Specific Diversity Quotas.” The tone of the headline and the integration of the term “quotas” was enough to inspire over 75 comments to date. It’s a collection of cultural cluelessness, vividly exposing the ignorance killing inclusion.

Given the drive for diversity that has accelerated over the past decade, White advertising agencies should be capable of meeting General Mills’ mandates—and the agencies should be fully aware of the makeup of their staffs. Indeed, the holding companies are keeping records, although there is a continued refusal to publicly disclose the data. Most White advertising agencies have even made open commitments to diversity and inclusion. The figures sought by the cereal maker do not exceed the goals of the average White shop. So what’s the problem with General Mills’ request?

General Mills isn’t the only client to ask to see the diversity of its advertising agencies. Multicultural shops are routinely scrutinized like this. Clients judge these crumb-collecting companies by their “authenticity”—which is a polite way to say the staffs at such agencies are expected to be majority minority. Plus, minority ownership is an important expectation of the scheme. These shops are typically required to show their diversity supplier figures too, and are often mandated to use minority vendors. And of course, the work produced by multicultural shops must be blatantly targeted, often to the point of being stereotypical.

In short, it’s about time clients scrutinized the diversity of all its partners. And it’s well beyond time for White advertising agencies to deliver on diversity. Why would anyone want to team up with a company that doesn’t keep its promises?

12514: Quotes On Quotas.

Campaign asked MediaCom UK CEO Karen Blackett and three White advertising executives if diversity quotas should be used to enforce fairness and inclusiveness in the industry. The responses were sadly canned, contrived and clichéd, presenting the same old reactions and proposing the same old solutions.

One White adman claimed the answer was to embrace a standard minority outreach program—The Ideas Foundation—which has been around for 11 years. As always, an allegedly breakthrough effort has existed for over a decade, yet the industry is still predominately White.

The Rooney Rule was mentioned; however, most White advertising agencies would hire Mickey Rooney—even though he’s dead—before adopting the Rooney Rule.

The White adwoman declared, “All clients should be asking questions when the same White besuited posh boys and professional northerners rock up to meeting after meeting talking about changing the cultural landscape. Come on. Anyone can see your agency is dying on its arse. If you can’t see that coming, you’re fucked.” Yawn. The last White advertising agency leader who used the word “fucked” in reference to adland’s dearth of diversity wound up doing nothing about it—but managed to nab an ADCOLOR® trophy.

Why are diversity quotas out of the question? White admen and White adwomen have deliberately executed exclusivity quotas for generations.

::

Does adland need diversity quotas?

It’s no secret that adland is predominantly white, middle-class and male. There’s also widespread agreement that this should change – not just on moral grounds, but because a more diverse workforce would benefit the industry commercially.

Many great initiatives already exist within it. Just last week, George Osborne received advertising luminaries and young people who have benefited from The Ideas Foundation, the charity set up by the Engine president, Robin Wight, that gives people from different backgrounds a leg-up into the industry. But for many, change is not coming quick enough.

At the Advertising Association’s recent Lead conference, the subject of diversity came up repeatedly. Sir Peter Bazalgette, the chair of Arts Council England, said: “Diversity in creative industries does not reflect the whole country. We don’t bring in people from the whole community. That’s wrong on a fairness basis but it doesn’t make commercial sense.” The MP Stella Creasy also criticised the industry for not moving fast enough. The only way for it to do so, she said, is to introduce diversity quotas. But are they really the answer?

Agency head

Karen Blackett, UK chief executive, MediaCom

“For the UK to remain a creative leader in the world economy, finding the best talent is a priority. And talent is diverse. So diversity is a priority too. Do I agree with quotas? No. So how do we do this? Test if the Rooney Rule (used in American football) could work in a business context (ensuring a proportional number of candidates interviewed for a role are from an ethnic minority background). Unconscious bias training is imperative. We all have a natural bias, but recognising it is key. Finally, those of us from different ethnic and educational backgrounds need to stand up and act as role models.”

Agency head

Tom Knox, chairman, DLKW Lowe

“Last year’s Diversity report from the IPA showed that our industry has made progress on diversity, but we certainly need to do more to ensure our workforce more closely resembles the nation as a whole. However, affirmative action that discriminates on the basis of gender or ethnic origin when deciding who to employ is illegal. What can work, and should be more widely adopted, is affirmative action to ensure minorities and women get a fair chance in the interview and selection process. Good examples of this are the Rooney Rule in the NFL and gender quotas on candidate shortlists for parliamentary seats. The final decision on who gets hired must remain meritocratic.”

Agency head

Robin Wight, president, Engine; founder, The Ideas Foundation

“If every agency and brand supported The Ideas Foundation, there would be no need to even debate the issue of ‘diversity quotas’. In any event, diversity quotas are to misunderstand the problem. The problem is that 14- to 16-year-olds from ethnic minorities are not even considering our industry: sport, music, medicine, law, finance, even crime. But not advertising. And if they do, there is no pathway for them. The Ideas Foundation is that pathway: brands sponsor a brief that is taught in schools and mentored by agencies. Our concept is brilliant and unique but we’re not big enough. Quotas are too late and wrong in principle.”

Creative head

Vicki Maguire, deputy executive creative director, Grey London

“I love talk of quotas; it’s the thought of agencies picking up the phone to recruiters and putting in their orders that tickles me: ‘Can we have two birds, a couple of ethnics; not Swedes, we’ve got them… Have you got any disabled?’ But before it gets to that, market forces are already playing their part. All clients should be asking questions when the same white besuited posh boys and professional northerners rock up to meeting after meeting talking about changing the cultural landscape. Come on. Anyone can see your agency is dying on its arse. If you can’t see that coming, you’re fucked.”

10918: Hall Of Fame Quotas.

From The Chicago Tribune…

From the Hall of Fame to affirmative action

By Saul Levmore

Many baseball fans are uneasy about the recent disinclination of baseball writers to muster the necessary 75 percent vote in favor of any Hall of Fame candidate. Barry Bonds, perhaps the greatest hitter in the history of the game, is widely understood to have been passed over because of his association with steroids. Drugs, whether banned by baseball or by the law, improve performance in many sports, and the players who are most closely connected to these drugs, including Bonds and Roger Clemens, will probably never become Hall of Famers under the current voting rules.

The problem is that drug use was so widespread that we are unsure whom to taint. Lance Armstrong is finally admitting to doping, but fans of cycling are also unsure whether any top cyclist was drug-free. In baseball the taint is attached to any player whose muscles appeared to fructify with age. If we had some way of knowing who used and who did not, it would be defensible to exclude from competition and from post-career recognition those who did. But in the absence of such knowledge, the best players of the generation will be excluded even though some of their remarkable performances predated their presumed drug use.

What if we were to change the terms of admission to the Hall of Fame by deploying a modest quota? If we want to identify the best players, one way to remove disagreement, bias or incomparability (as the rules of the game and its ballparks change over time) is to agree on a minimum number of players to be elected in each era. Historically, 10 to 20 players have been elected per decade. A new rule should begin in 2014 and provide that in 2018, and every five years thereafter, the five players with the most votes in that year or any of the preceding four years will automatically be elected. This will promise at least 10 players per decade. The message will be that the Hall should include the best players of each era, and perhaps the voters will mark their ballots accordingly.

The same argument for a kind of quota can be associated with affirmative action. An employer who finds that hiring decisions on the basis of credentials and interviews always produce white males might consider the possibility of conscious or subconscious biases in favor of this group or against others. It makes sense for the employer to combat this risk. And we are familiar with laws that encourage diversity or even insist that employers change their hiring patterns.

Those who hire should try to identify the very best candidates from previously underrepresented groups. It seems quite unlikely that the best employees are all of one race and gender, and one way to overcome flaws in credentialing or interviewing is to deploy a quota, or minimum. For legal and public relations reasons, no one identifies these tools as quotas, but it makes sense for the introspective interviewer to think as follows: “Given that minorities constitute 20 percent of the applicant pool, I should be sure that at least 10 percent of my recommended candidates come from this group. I might find 15 percent or even 30 percent in a given year, and that would be fine, but given my history I should impose a modest quota in order not to miss the very best minority applicants who are, after all, likely to be among the best applicants overall.” Whether this common-sense approach is encouraged or is inconsistent with recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings is a separate subject. There are many important differences between hiring and Baseball Hall of Fame cases, but they share the goal of seeking the best candidates in a pool.

Quotas require common sense. I might decide on a quota of charitable giving equal to 5 percent of my income, because I know that otherwise I might be too critical of all charities and give too little. But it would be absurd to think that I must vote for a fringe political party “x percent” of the time. The exclusion of Barry Bonds and other tainted stars is one obvious case for modest quotas. So let’s identify the five or 10 best players of the steroid period, and that decade will be punished enough by not having many more of its number in the Hall of Fame. More important, we should look at our own decisions, and then correct for possible biases with self-imposed quotas.

Saul Levmore is a University of Chicago Law School professor and former dean of the school.