17651: ICYMI M.O.B. WTF.

DIKO—a White advertising agency in Austin, Texas—is responsible for the Liquid Death and Rumpl promotion featuring M.O.B. Shopping Network, a campaign rife with stereotypes historically deemed offensive to Italian Americans.

Somebody should’ve whacked it at the concept stage.

 

DIKO LAUNCHES “M.O.B. SHOPPING NETWORK” FOR LIQUID DEATH & RUMPL COLLABORATION

Two mobsters turn outdoor product benefits into suspicious selling points for the Body Bag sleeping bag and Dirt Nap puffy blanket.

Independent creative agency DIKO has created “M.O.B. Shopping Network,” a campaign introducing Rumpl’s collaboration with Liquid Death through a home-shopping operation run by two men with unusual qualifications.

The 75-second hero film stars two mobsters in a wood-paneled studio pitching the Body Bag sleeping bag and Dirt Nap puffy blanket from the Liquid Death edition by Rumpl collection. Their sales presentation highlights the products’ outdoor performance features through suspiciously specific examples. The sales pitch deteriorates quickly as the thrashing, not-quite-dead occupant of the Body Bag is wrestled back into frame by two associates in plastic cleanup uniforms.

A natural fit with an unexpected twist

The collaboration brings together Liquid Death, the beverage brand known for its irreverent marketing, and Rumpl, the brand known for its technical blankets made with post-consumer recycled materials. Rumpl’s use of recycled plastic also connects with Liquid Death’s “Death to Plastic” mission. Both brands show that making quality products doesn’t mean taking yourself too seriously.

For DIKO, the creative challenge was to turn Liquid Death and Rumpl’s partnership into a product story. The product names supplied the starting point. Body Bag and Dirt Nap suggested the perfect spokespeople: two mobsters who would regard both products as everyday essentials. The gear’s actual features gave those characters a reason to keep talking.

“Who better to sell products called the Dirt Nap and Body Bag than two highly experienced experts?” said Diko Daghlian, founder and chief creative officer of DIKO, who also directed the film. “We looked at the features through our mobsters’ eyes. As luck would have it, both products were already occupied, making for a couple of convenient live demonstrations.”

Real features. Questionable applications.

The campaign uses the familiar conventions of late-night home shopping to connect product information with the mobsters’ line of work. Water repellency becomes insurance against “spills, stains… whatevah.” A sleeping bag’s warmth comes in handy when someone unexpectedly ends up in the Nevada desert in the middle of the night.

A free gold watch adds another classic infomercial incentive, even if it’s displayed on its former owner’s wrist.

“The creative is unhinged, but it makes strategic sense because the humor comes directly from the products,” said James Atkin, VP of global brand at Rumpl. “The names establish the mafia connection, and the features make it convincing. These characters just have very different reasons for needing them. That lets us show what the gear does in a way that feels right for both brands.”

“When two brands are practically obligated to be irreverent, things go off the rails fast. DIKO kept the rules simple: one-sentence ideas, instantly understood, funny without being mean. Then commit fully to the bit. It’s the only way to sell a body bag on a home shopping network,” said Justin Lucero, design director at Rumpl.

The campaign includes the hero film, two product videos, and four 10-second vignettes. It runs across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Rumpl’s owned channels, including Rumpl.com, email, and SMS, supported by paid social.

16470: Ranking Bias, Playing Favorites—Or, Bias & BS.

 

Digiday Media’s Worklife published a report on the five most common biases prevalent in the workplace. While racial/ethnic bias and gender bias were noted in the opening, only gender bias made the top five list. This is sadly reflective of Adland, where White women trump racial and ethnic groups as a cause for committed concern.

 

Here are the five most common biases happening in the workplace

 

By Cloey Callahan

 

There are over 150 cognitive biases in the world. Out of those, there are around 25 that show up regularly in the workplace, including newer ones like proximity bias that surfaced after the hybrid work boom, and ones that we’re all familiar with like race and gender bias.

 

“When we hear bias, our minds immediately go to race, gender, maybe sexual orientation,” said Christy Pruitt-Haynes, global head of talent and performance practice at business and leadership consultancy NeuroLeadership Institute. “All of those are very real components of bias, however it’s really important for everyone in the workplace, especially leaders, to learn there are other types of bias as well that go beyond race and gender.”

 

There are five biases that are top of the list in terms of how pervasive they can be if they aren’t identified and mitigated as soon as the bias starts to happen. Yet, not all managers and executives are aware of all five and how frequently they impact the workplace. That’s why diversity, equity and inclusion leaders are calling for education and training around these biases.

 

“What’s interesting about cognitive bias is you can’t get rid of it completely,” said Tom Kilgore, senior director of DE&I at eCommerce fulfillment solution provider Radial, which hosts regular internal training sessions around bias in the workplace. “There’s no remedy, no pill. But you learn how to live with them and how to actually address them. By doing that, it can have a positive impact.”

 

And it’s something that people might have put on the back burner during the pandemic, but DE&I leader Jen Mahone Rightler says it’s important now more than ever to educate people around the different kinds of biases.

 

“There was such a focus on trying to figure out what the virtual space was going to look like that we relaxed a lot of the training around certain cultural nuances,” said Mahone Rightler. “We’re finding that as we’re coming back into the workplace, there are so many things we forgot about.”

 

Here’s a roundup of the five most common biases happening in the workplace, including what they are and how to mitigate them.

 

1. Affinity bias

 

Affinity bias is when someone has a natural affinity to someone. Kilgore says this unconscious bias shows up most frequently during the talent recruitment process. Someone might notice that the person went to the same university, is from the same state, or has similar hobbies, and then choose to hire that person instead of someone who might be a better fit for the job but doesn’t have any similarities to them.

 

“All those data points give us this huge endorphin rush every time when we connect to them,” said Kilgore. “Our brain starts to have this affinity towards that prospective candidate. As a result, when we talk about diversifying the workforce, you often hear ‘we are looking for someone who will be a good culture fit.’ And what happens is that you get clones of yourself.”

 

One way to mitigate affinity bias is to make sure that you are intentional with interview panels that are diverse, which would then help choose candidates that vary across race, age and gender.

 

2. Gender bias

 

Gender bias is one that people might be most familiar with. “It’s always going to be a big one,” said Mahone Rightler.

 

This bias can play out in multiple areas of the business, from hiring to project management. Kilgore says that an employee might see projects consistently assigned to men instead of women, which leads to a gap in representation.

 

“As we start to see that pattern unfold, we need to actually call it out,” said Kilgore. “It’s really important that we create a safe space where there is psychological safety where people feel compelled enough to do so.”

 

Bias disruptors are extremely important in the workplace, and can help someone realize they are leaning into an unconscious bias even if they don’t realize it themselves right away.

 

3. Recency bias

 

As the year winds down and performance reviews might be happening, leaders should be especially mindful of recency bias. Kilgore says that this is a hot period in which recency bias can thrive. While a leader is supposed to assess an employee for an entire year, they might focus just on the end of the year – the most recent events.

 

One of the easiest ways to mitigate this is to lean on technology’s help. Have a management tool to track employees’ work across the entire year, rather than just focus on the past few months.

 

Pruitt-Haynes says that this can also happen during the hiring process as well, where someone who is interviewing candidates might rate the person they interviewed last very highly because it was the most recent one.

 

“Have a set of criteria when you’re making decisions,” said Pruitt-Haynes. “If it’s a hiring decision, have a rubric that says we’re looking for these things, and take notes on how closely each of those candidates match up to what you’re looking for. That moves us away from making a gut decision, which can be influenced by bias, and shifts our decision making to fact-based qualities we can really measure.”

 

4. Contrast bias

 

Often common with learning and development goals, contrast bias is when managers compare employees against each other, even if said employees need different things to succeed. “A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work with learning and development,” said Kilgore.

 

The solution here is for managers to understand that everyone works differently, and to not fall down a path in comparing employees. Kilgore says that if leaders do this, it becomes a bandwagon effect that can have a larger impact.

 

“If you’re constantly comparing two people, you minimize one person’s contributions,” said Kilgore. “Then other leaders will adopt the same perception of that person and spread a false stigma that could stunt their growth within the organization and lead to a lack of upward mobility.”

 

5. Fundamental attribution error

 

This is a tendency to explain someone’s behavior based on internal factors like personality traits, while underestimating the influence of external factors.

 

And the external factors could be plenty, especially with the rise of remote work. For example, an employee might not have their camera on frequently during work calls. Someone with fundamental attribution error might say that person is quiet, shy, and not a team player. However, the reality might very well be that this person is dealing with taking care of their multiple kids during the call, or have other things going on behind the scenes.

 

“But you’ve created the perception that this person isn’t a team player,” said Kilgore.

 

Thankfully, this can be easily mitigated through things like one-on-ones with team members, using intentionality to ask what’s going on in people’s outside lives. That might also mean paying attention to nonverbal cues and opening up for an honest conversation.

13925: 4A’s Diverted Diversity Webinar.

The 4A’s is presenting a free diverted diversity webinar titled, “Preventing Discrimination and Harassment in the Creative Workplace.” Um, the 4A’s has generations of failure preventing racial and ethnic discrimination in the advertising industry—so why is the trade organization suddenly an expert at helping allegedly beleaguered White women?

13896: Rewriting Reality.

Advertising Age published diverted diversity droning from The Female Quotient CEO and Founder Shelley Zalis, who managed to type roughly 900 words on diversity without a single mention of race and ethnicity in the workforce (she only referenced race once, when discussing casting for ad campaigns). Zalis’ opening line underscores her primary focus on promoting White women: “When it comes to diversity in marketing, we’ve come a long way—but we still have a long way to go.” No, when it comes to diverted diversity, Madison Avenue has come a long way. But for true diversity, the advertising industry has gone a long way backwards. Racial and ethnic representation is downright Googlesque—after 60+ years of openly recognizing the issue—and Black representation has actually declined. Zalis’ second sentence explains the phenomenon: “Marketing has a unique role to play in rewriting the rules on diversity in business.” Yes, adland has managed to rewrite the rules on diversity in business—by rewriting diversity to mean gender equality first and foremost.

Diversity and Inclusion: Rewriting the Rules for Marketing

By Shelley Zalis, CEO and Founder, The Female Quotient

When it comes to diversity in marketing, we’ve come a long way—but we still have a long way to go. Marketing has a unique role to play in rewriting the rules on diversity in business.

Numerous studies show that diverse teams deliver superior results. For example, recent research found that inclusive teams make more effective business decisions up to 87% of the time. Even more compelling, Deloitte’s most recent Human Capital Trends report found that companies with inclusive talent practices can generate up to 30% higher revenue per employee and greater profitability than their competitors.

Clearly, diverse teams operating in inclusive cultures can offer ideas and viewpoints that help drive innovation and effectiveness for the business. This is especially true in marketing, where a team that reflects the incredible diversity in the marketplace is much more likely to develop messaging and advertising that resonates. Yet, even with these clear ties to results, corporate America’s approach to diversity hasn’t resulted in dramatic advancements.

For marketing organizations—and businesses in general—diversity is important, but its benefits may not be realized without an inclusive culture.

Sadly, there’s no magic wand to wave. But every little step in the right direction gets us closer to where we want to be (and is 100% better than nothing). Here are some things marketing can do to promote diversity at every level:

Hire diversity of thinking.

Throughout the hiring process, it’s worth taking time to remind decision-makers about the business value of diversity and encourage them to embrace various backgrounds, experiences and perspectives, rather than gravitating to people who are similar to themselves, which is a natural human tendency. After all, a diverse team can be more innovative and effective. To reach diverse pools of talent, it may also be helpful to broaden your recruiting sources so that you are meeting the talent you need where they already are.

Tackle the “messy middle.”

When striving to improve an organization’s diversity, hiring is literally just the beginning. For many organizations, entry-level representation is often reflective of the available talent pool. Consider gender as an example. Research shows that, on average, entry-level representation is roughly 50% women compared to 19% women in the C-suite. This is especially true in marketing, where women are often a large proportion of the workforce at lower rungs of the ladder but a much smaller proportion at higher levels.

As with hiring, decision-makers should not only make a conscious effort to embrace diversity, but also model inclusive leadership behaviors. An organization’s culture is greatly shaped by the people at the top. We need to reimagine workplace culture to retain our best talent.

While education to build awareness can be helpful, it isn’t enough. Organizations now have the ability to make structural changes and implement transparent, data-driven solutions to make better decisions that lead to more diversity and, thus, better business outcomes, according to Deloitte’s 2017 Human Capital Trends.

Vote with marketing dollars.

Marketing is uniquely positioned to shape how people think and should use that position to create positive change. It’s not just about making sure ad campaigns feature different races, genders and ages; it’s about making sure that different kinds of people are portrayed in a fair, accurate and realistic way—instead of cynically or lazily relying on age-old stereotypes that prey on and reinforce society’s existing biases.

In June 2016, my company, The Female Quotient, partnered with the Association of National Advertisers and its Alliance for Family Entertainment to launch #SeeHer, an initiative to help achieve a more accurate portrayal of women and girls in advertising and the media. So far, more than 1,000 brands, with $40 billion of U.S. ad spend, have joined and signed up to use the Gender Equality Measure to assess and eliminate bias in their advertising. And more companies are signing up every day.

A way to take this a step further is to include explicit diversity requirements in RFPs and agency partners. To win work, marketers can look for tangible evidence that their agency is committed to hiring and developing a diverse workforce and fostering an inclusive culture. Not only is that likely to land a better result, it begins to set a standard of expectation beyond your organization.

The ultimate goal: Driving empathy, not sympathy

At the end of the day, good feelings and supportive words are nice, but to really make a difference, decision-makers should bring the rational decision of supporting diversity back to the human level through an inclusive culture. Supporting a culture of empathy is what we’re really driving at—so that we can understand people and different ways of thinking and truly value those for the insight they bring. When that happens, it is likely that inequality will begin to shrink and strength will begin to build as those numbers change throughout the ranks. After all, one person at the top of an organization has power, but a group of committed leaders has impact.

This could be the start of a major positive trend, and marketing is at the heart of the action. To change how people behave, we need to change how they think. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what marketing is all about?

Shelley Zalis is CEO and founder of The Female Quotient. Launched in 2013, The Female Quotient emphasizes collaboration and mentorship to activate change in advancing gender equality in the workplace. It leads The Girls’ Lounge, a destination at conferences, companies and college campuses where women connect, collaborate and activate change together. The Girls’ Lounge has become the largest community of corporate women and female entrepreneurs transforming workplace culture. Deloitte Digital and The Female Quotient have joined forces to deliver joint programming that continues to promote equality and inclusion in the workplace, and the shared belief that they aren’t a social imperative—they’re a business imperative.

13353: A Different Dumbness.

Campaign dumped different diverted diversity dookie, as Global Editor-in-Chief Claire Beale declared the imperative to add people with disabilities to the discussion. “Diversity has become a fashionably hot topic in our industry with regard to gender or sexuality,” announced Beale. “But we’re lagging on the subject of disability.” Actually, we’re lagging on the subject of true diversity. Whining about the oh-so-awful plight of White women—and generously mixing in the disabled—is switching the topic, ultimately dodging any accountability or responsibility for the real problem. It’s astounding that idiots like Beale have the audacity to pontificate on diversity without a single mention of race and ethnicity. Beale boldly advocates for more people with disabilities to appear in advertising, yet where was she when studies exposed the deliberate exclusion of minorities in U.K. adverts? Beale closed her bullshit by typing, “Fundamentally, with all types of disability, as with other aspects of diversity, our industry and our work are richer and more rewarding if we embrace difference.” Hell, Beale can’t even embrace difference in her own office. She displays chronic symptoms of diversity disabilities.

We must celebrate difference

With all types of disability and diversity, our work is richer and more rewarding if we embrace difference.

By Claire Beale

As I write this, Mars’ brave work for Maltesers using disabled actors and themes hasn’t even aired on TV yet, but I’ve already had someone email me to complain that the ads are not diverse enough. “Not enough men in them,” they whined.

I think it was a joke. But it does highlight that some people will look for faults even when (or perhaps exactly because) the original intentions are of the very best. Once the ads have been unleashed on the public, there will certainly be a whole panoply of reactions, and not all of them will be positive.

The Maltesers work, by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, was created in response to a competition from Channel 4 to normalise the portrayal of disabled people in ads. Diversity has become a fashionably hot topic in our industry with regard to gender or sexuality, but we’re lagging on the subject of disability. Still, Channel 4 deserves very real credit for inspiring advertising creatives and marketers here. The broadcaster’s superb “superhumans” commercials have done so much to erase taboos and there’s been a noticeable increase in the casting of disabled actors in ads over the past few years. Most importantly, often the actors have not been cast because disability is a theme of the script but just because, well, some of us are disabled. More of this, please.

But while we’re inching (far too slowly, of course) towards a more positive position on visible disability, we’re still way behind when it comes to dealing with invisible disabilities and tackling the taboos there. OK, hidden disabilities are hard to embrace through portrayal in ads, but let’s at least begin by acknowledging the issue within our own industry.

It’s worth noting that one of the pieces in this week’s Campaign was supposed to be a very honest, brave and immensely insightful and important article on mental illness in the ad business. Unfortunately, the article was withdrawn at the eleventh hour, not because its author had second thoughts but because the author’s agency requested it should not run. Perhaps there’s a perfectly reasonable and sensitive reason the agency requested its withdrawal, I don’t know. But I do know it’s a real shame that you can’t read it. Of course, some disabilities are actually hidden work weapons. As our article highlights, conditions such as ADHD and Asperger’s can heighten creative intelligence; in an industry that lives or dies on its ability to touch people through brilliant, surprising creative thinking, being able to see the world through a different lens to the rest of us can be a phenomenal asset.

Fundamentally, with all types of disability, as with other aspects of diversity, our industry and our work are richer and more rewarding if we embrace difference.

12850: Wax Brazilian.

Advertising Age presented Women to Watch in Brazil. Can’t help but wonder about the diversity in this group. And it’s only a matter of time before White advertising agencies snatch up the honorees to boost diversity figures for both ethnicity and gender—effectively killing two birds with one stone fox.

12212: Growing Pains Of Diversity.

USA TODAY published “Growing Pains: Multicultural explosion rattles residents”—a lengthy, thoughtful examination of the rapid growth in racial and ethnic diversity in Northern Virginia.

11870: Hispanics = Gringos?

From The New York Times…

More Hispanics Declaring Themselves White

By Nate Cohn

Hispanics are often described as driving up the nonwhite share of the population. But a new study of census forms finds that more Hispanics are identifying as white.

An estimated net 1.2 million Americans of the 35 million Americans identified in 2000 as of “Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin,” as the census form puts it, changed their race from “some other race” to “white” between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, according to research presented at an annual meeting of the Population Association of America and reported by Pew Research.

The researchers, who have not yet published their findings, compared individual census forms from the 2000 and 2010 censuses. They found that millions of Americans answered the census questions about race and ethnicity differently in 2000 and 2010. The largest shifts were among Americans of Hispanic origin, who are the nation’s fastest growing ethnic group by total numbers.

Race is an immutable characteristic for many white, black and Asian-Americans. It is less clear for Americans of Hispanic origin. The census form asks two questions about race and ethnicity: one about whether individuals are of Hispanic or Latino origin, and another about race. “Hispanics” do not constitute a race, according to the census, and so 37 percent of Hispanics, presumably dissatisfied with options like “white” or “black,” selected “some other race.”

The researchers found that 2.5 million Americans of Hispanic origin, or approximately 7 percent of the 35 million Americans of Hispanic origin in 2000, changed their race from “some other race” in 2000 to “white” in 2010. An additional 1.3 million people switched in the other direction. A noteworthy but unspecified share of the change came from children who weren’t old enough to fill out a form in 2000, but chose for themselves in 2010.

The data provide new evidence consistent with the theory that Hispanics may assimilate as white Americans, like the Italians or Irish, who were not universally considered to be white. It is particularly significant that the shift toward white identification withstood a decade of debate over immigration and the country’s exploding Hispanic population, which might have been expected to inculcate or reinforce a sense of Hispanic identity, or draw attention to divisions that remain between Hispanics and non-Hispanic white Americans. Research suggests that Hispanics who have experienced discrimination are less likely to identify as white.

The data also call into question whether America is destined to become a so-called minority-majority nation, where whites represent a minority of the nation’s population. Those projections assume that Hispanics aren’t white, but if Hispanics ultimately identify as white Americans, then whites will remain the majority for the foreseeable future.

White identification is not necessarily a sign that Hispanics consider themselves white. Many or even most might identify their race as “Hispanic” if it were an explicit option. But white identification may still be an indicator of assimilation. White identifiers are likelier to be second- and third-generation Hispanics than foreign-born and noncitizen Hispanics. They also have higher levels of education and income. The researchers’ data did not show the country of origin of the families of those people who shifted their identification.

The results are a strong sign that fears of a unique “Hispanic challenge,” where Hispanics immigrants might remain as a permanent Spanish-speaking underclass, are overblown.

In that regard, the census numbers are not new: There is mounting evidence that Hispanics are succeeding in American society at a pace similar to that of prior waves of European immigrants.

10998: Social Media By Ethnicity & Race.

From Advertising Age…

Pew Study: Blacks Over-Index On Twitter; Whites On Pinterest

26% of Black Internet Users Surveyed Use Twitter, Compared to 14% of White Users

By Cotton Delo

Consumers have an ever-expanding set of choices for social-networking, and Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are finding a niche among different demographic subsets, according to new research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The study, an expansion of a similar study on Twitter in 2010, queried 1,802 people on their cell phones and land lines over the course of a month late last year.

Here are seven takeaways.

Black users over-index on Twitter.
 Twenty-six percent of black internet users surveyed said they used Twitter, compared to 14% of white users and 19% of Hispanics. (In 2010, Pew reported that 13% of black internet users, 5% of white users and 18% of Hispanics were using on Twitter.)

Blacks and Latinos also over-index on Instagram.
 Twenty-three and 18% of black and Latino internet users respectively use Instagram, compared to 11% of whites.

Pinterest is the whitest social platform.
 Eighteen percent of white internet users are on Pinterest, compared to 8% of blacks and 10% of Hispanics.

Twitter is most popular among urban-dwellers.
 Twenty percent of people living in urban areas use Twitter, compared to 14% in the suburbs and 12% in rural areas.

Pinterest is more popular among better-off people.
 Twenty-three percent of people with household income between $50,000 and $74,999 use Pinterest, as well as 18% of people who make more than that. Just 10% of people who make under $30,000 use it.

Instagram has become much more popular than Tumblr.
 Tumblr has been around since 2007, but just 6% of people surveyed use it. Thirteen percent use Instagram.

Facebook is used by everyone everywhere—even senior citizens.
 Thirty-five percent of people 65 and older use Facebook.

10399: Adios, Negro…?

From The Los Angeles Times…

Census Bureau considers changes to race, ethnicity questions

The U.S. Census Bureau is considering changes in questions it asks Americans about race, in an effort to keep up with evolving perceptions about race and identity.

The bureau released recommendations Wednesday in which it suggested dropping use of the term “Negro” on its questionnaires and counting Hispanics as a single category, regardless of race. The census now defines Hispanic as an ethnicity, not a race, and respondents who say they are of Hispanic origin are also asked to identify their race.

The recommendations were based on research conducted through experimental questions asked of 500,000 households during the 2010 census. The findings showed that many Americans believe the current categories don’t always jibe with their own views of their identity and have led to confusion.

For example, asked to state their race on the 2010 census, more than 19 million people, including millions of Hispanics, chose “some other race,” rather than select from the five offered categories: white, black, Asian, American Indian or Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.

One change proposed by the Census Bureau would simply ask respondents to choose their race or origin and allow them to check a single box next to categories that would include white, black or Hispanic. Another would end the bureau’s use of the controversial term “Negro” as an alternative for black or African American. And a third would add write-in categories to allow those of Middle Eastern or Arab origin to specifically identify themselves, officials said.

Nicholas Jones, chief of the Census Bureau’s racial statistics branch, said the research findings were the first step in a process leading to possible changes for the 2020 census.

Changes to census questions must be approved by Congress.

10140: Quit Using ‘Oaxaquita.’

From The Los Angeles Times…

Epithet that divides Mexicans is banned by Oxnard school district

‘Oaxaquita’ (little Oaxacan) is used by other Mexicans to demean their indigenous compatriots — who are estimated to make up 30% of California’s farmworkers.

By Paloma Esquivel, Los Angeles Times

Rolando Zaragoza, 21, was 15 years old when he came to the United States, enrolled in an Oxnard school and first heard the term “Oaxaquita.” Little Oaxacan, it means — and it was not used kindly.

“Sometimes I didn’t want to go to school,” he said. “Sometimes I stayed to fight.”

“It kind of seemed that being from Oaxaca was something bad,” said Israel Vasquez, 23, who shared the same mocking, “just the way people use ‘Oaxaquita’ to refer to anyone who is short and has dark skin.”

Years later, indigenous leaders are fighting back against an epithet that lingers among immigrants from Mexico, directed at their own compatriots. Earlier this month the Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project in Oxnard launched the “No me llames Oaxaquita” campaign. “Don’t call me little Oaxacan” aims to persuade local school districts to prohibit the words “Oaxaquita” and “indito” (little Indian) from being used on school property, to form committees to combat bullying and to encourage lessons about indigenous Mexican culture and history.

Indigenous Mexicans have come to the U.S. in increasing numbers in the last two decades. Some estimates now put them at 30% of California’s farmworkers. In Ventura County, there are about 20,000 indigenous Mexicans, most of whom are Mixtec from the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero who work in the strawberry industry, according to local organizers.

Many speak little or no Spanish and are frequently subjected to derision and ridicule from other Mexicans. The treatment follows a legacy of discrimination toward indigenous people in Mexico, said William Perez, a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University who has interviewed and surveyed numerous indigenous Mexican students.

“One of the main themes is the discrimination, bullying, teasing and verbal abuse that they receive from other Mexican immigrant classmates who are not indigenous,” he said. The abuse, which often goes unnoticed or is minimized by teachers and administrators, has left some of the indigenous students too embarrassed to speak their native languages, he said.

Educators and others in the U.S. often don’t recognize diversity within the Mexican community, said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, a researcher at the UCLA Labor Center who has written extensively about indigenous Mexican migration.

“We forget that it’s a multilingual, multiethnic community,” he said. “We forget about the fact that 62 indigenous languages are spoken in Mexico.”

The organizing project’s campaign, Rivera-Salgado said, “is a really interesting way to confront, very directly, something that the Mexican nation and the Mexican immigrant community sometimes sweeps under the rug, and that’s the prevalence of racism and discrimination that indigenous people have to endure in Mexico and that is reproduced here in the United States.”

Elvia Pacheco, a Mixtec mother who lives in Oxnard, said her U.S.-born son’s middle school teacher poked fun at him for his Oaxacan heritage. Pacheco is from Oaxaca; the boy’s father is from the central state of Guanajuato.

One day her son came home and threatened to kill himself if she made him go to school again.

When she asked what was wrong, “He said, ‘You embarrass me.’”

“It’s the worst thing a mother can hear from her son — to be renounced because of who you are,” she said.

Since then, they have taken classes about Mixtec history and culture and participated in the project’s organizing efforts. It has made a world of difference, she said.

Denis O’Leary, a member of the Oxnard School District’s Board of Trustees, was at an event to launch the campaign.

“I’m very proud of the students and the parents that stood up on this issue,” he said. “We need to now learn from this and do better.”

On Wednesday the school district unanimously passed the resolution originally proposed by the organizing project prohibiting the derogatory terms and creating an anti-bullying committee, O’Leary said.

Though the district had existing policies prohibiting bullying and taunting, “This resolution is going to let teachers know, and administrators know, that this group, that nobody really thought of, has suffered. And we need to pay attention,” he said.

9679: Defining Latinos.

From The New York Times…

For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture Than Color

By Mireya Navarro

Every decade, the Census Bureau spends billions of dollars and deploys hundreds of thousands of workers to get an accurate portrait of the American population. Among the questions on the census form is one about race, with 15 choices, including “some other race.”

More than 18 million Latinos checked this “other” box in the 2010 census, up from 14.9 million in 2000. It was an indicator of the sharp disconnect between how Latinos view themselves and how the government wants to count them. Many Latinos argue that the country’s race categories — indeed, the government’s very conception of identity — do not fit them.

The main reason for the split is that the census categorizes people by race, which typically refers to a set of common physical traits. But Latinos, as a group in this country, tend to identify themselves more by their ethnicity, meaning a shared set of cultural traits, like language or customs.

So when they encounter the census, they see one question that asks them whether they identify themselves as having Hispanic ethnic origins and many answer it as their main identifier. But then there is another question, asking them about their race, because, as the census guide notes, “people of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin may be of any race,” and more than a third of Latinos check “other.”

This argument over identity has gained momentum with the growth of the Latino population, which in 2010 stood at more than 50 million. Census Bureau officials have acknowledged that the questionnaire has a problem, and say they are wrestling with how to get more Latinos to pick a race. In 2010, they tested different wording in questions and last year they held focus groups, with a report on the research scheduled to be released by this summer.

Some experts say officials are right to go back to the drawing table. “Whenever you have people who can’t find themselves in the question, it’s a bad question,” said Mary C. Waters, a sociology professor at Harvard who specializes in the challenges of measuring race and ethnicity.

The problem is more than academic — the census data on race serves many purposes, including determining the makeup of voting districts, and monitoring discriminatory practices in hiring and racial disparities in education and health. When respondents do not choose a race, the Census Bureau assigns them one, based on factors like the racial makeup of their neighborhood, inevitably leading to a less accurate count.

Latinos, who make up close to 20 percent of the American population, generally hold a fundamentally different view of race. Many Latinos say they are too racially mixed to settle on one of the government-sanctioned standard races — white, black, American Indian, Alaska native, native Hawaiian, and a collection of Asian and Pacific Island backgrounds.

Some regard white or black as separate demographic groups from Latino. Still others say Latinos are already the equivalent of another race in this country, defined by a shared set of challenges.

“The issues within the Latino community — language, immigration status — do not take into account race,” said Peter L. Cedeño, 43, a lawyer and native New Yorker born to Dominican immigrants. “We share the same hurdles.”

Read the full story here.

7192: Hasta La Vista, Lou.

From The New York Times…

CNN Special on Latinos Stokes Debate Over Dobbs

By Brian Stelter

Instead of being simply a draw for Hispanic viewers, CNN’s four-hour documentary, “Latino in America,” turned into a political rallying cry for activist groups who are calling on the cable news channel to fire Lou Dobbs, a veteran anchor with well-known views on immigration.

An array of minorities held small protests in New York and other cities on Wednesday, the first night of CNN’s presentation. They are trying to highlight what they say are years of lies about immigration by Mr. Dobbs, who anchors the 7 p.m. hour on CNN.

CNN, a unit of Time Warner, has not commented on the protests or covered them on its news programs. One of the activists featured in the documentary said she tried to raise what she called Mr. Dobbs’s “hatred” on one of the channel’s news programs Wednesday, but her remarks were cut from the interview.

The anti-Dobbs campaign has, however, drawn considerable attention in the Spanish-language press; the Thursday front page of the New York newspaper El Diario featured a red slash mark through Mr. Dobbs’s face and the word “hipocresia,” Spanish for “hypocrisy,” atop the illustration.

The hypocrisy, critics say, lies in CNN’s decision to woo Hispanic viewers with a prime-time documentary while still giving Mr. Dobbs a nightly forum. Roberto Lovato, a founding member of Presente.org, a Latino advocacy group, said in a statement, “We won’t allow the network to court us as viewers while, at the same time, they allow Dobbs to spread lies and misinformation about us each night.”

Separately, Mr. Dobbs is also the target of a “Drop Dobbs” campaign by the progressive groups NDN, Media Matters for America, and others. That effort started after Mr. Dobbs repeatedly raised questions about President Obama’s birth certificate.

There is no indication that the campaigns are affecting CNN’s revenue, but they are highlighting Mr. Dobbs’s status as an outlier at the channel, which has sought to position itself as a middle ground of sorts in the fractious cable news arena. Mr. Dobbs is known to be exploring an exit from CNN, and he is viewed as a potential hire for the Fox Business Network, an upstart channel owned by the News Corporation.

The Latino campaign’s Web site, BastaDobbs.com, features a video compilation of past comments by the CNN anchor, including his claim in October 2006 that “about a third of the prison population in this country is estimated to be illegal aliens.” He was apparently referring to federal prisoners, and he later acknowledged the claim was made multiple times in error.

As the timing of the prison comment indicates, there is nothing new about Mr. Dobbs’s controversial stance toward immigration, and CNN executives have argued that his hourlong evening program hews more closely to a newscast.

Privately, when some executives are asked about the Dobbs complaints, they sometimes cite the production of “Latino in America,” with the implication being that the channel presents many points of view. The documentary, which drew an average of about 900,000 viewers on Wednesday and Thursday, follows two editions of “Black in America.” It presented Hispanic activists with a new rallying point this fall.

Isabel Garcia, a civil rights lawyer who was featured in “Latino in America” and organized an anti-Dobbs protest in Tucson on Wednesday, said that CNN edited her comments about the anchor out of an interview.

She had expected a 15-minute conversation about immigration opposite Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., and a staunch supporter in immigration enforcement, on the prime-time program “Anderson Cooper 360.” During the taped interview Wednesday, she said she made several unprompted comments about Mr. Dobbs.

She said she called Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Dobbs “the two most dangerous men to our communities,” and said that “because of them, our communities are being terrorized in a real way.” She also asserted that CNN was “promoting lies and hate about our community” by broadcasting Mr. Dobbs’s program. The comments were not included when the interview was shown Wednesday night.

“They heavily deleted what I did get to say,” she said.

CNN said the segment in question was tied to “Latino in America.”

“As with all pre-taped interviews, they are edited for time and relevance to the topic of discussion,” a spokeswoman said. “The debate between Isabel Garcia and Joe Arpaio was no exception.”

6833: Scrutinizing Sotomayor.

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

Is Judge Sotomayor playing race card?

Like a stopped clock that is accurate twice a day, Rush Limbaugh is sometimes actually funny.

After Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor tripped and broke her ankle Monday, Limbaugh said, “I hope she can find a wise Latina doctor to set that ankle, as opposed to an average white doctor, because the wise Latina doctor has much richer experience with broken ankles.”

Oh, come on. That is funny.

Or at least reasonably clever, Sotomayor having said in 2001, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

I have defended Sotomayor for making that statement, while the White House has not. “I’m sure she would have restated it,” President Barack Obama said shortly after the storm broke over Sotomayor’s remarks.

Sotomayor has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, assuring senators that what she meant to say was that “there is only one law” and she would follow that law “ultimately and completely.”

But you can see why Democrats are nervous. Roland Burris, a political hack, muscled his way into the Senate by nakedly playing the race card, and now everybody is jumpy about any comments that seem to indicate one race should be favored over another. (Unless it is white people being favored, in which case there is rarely a controversy.)

Burris, whose main claim to fame was that in 16 years of holding public office in Illinois he had not been indicted even once, was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who a few weeks earlier had been led away in handcuffs, accused of trying to sell that Senate seat.

Initially, the White House and the Senate’s Democratic leadership wanted to delay Burris’ appointment until Blagojevich was impeached so the new, untainted governor of Illinois could fill the seat.

But Team Burris quickly moved into action. Rep. Bobby Rush dared the Senate to deny a black man the seat that had been held by Barack Obama.

“There are no African Americans in the Senate, and I don’t think that anyone, any U.S. senator who is sitting right now, would want to go on record to deny one African American from being seated in the U.S. Senate,” he said.

After Burris stood outside the Senate in the rain after being rebuffed from taking his seat on Jan. 6, Rush went on “Hardball With Chris Matthews” and said: “It reminded me of the dogs being sicced on children in Birmingham.”

With that, opposition to the quick seating of Burris collapsed.

After going back to Illinois and swearing under oath that he had never tried to buy the Senate seat from Blagojevich, Burris returned to Washington and was sworn in as the junior senator from Illinois.

All has not gone well, however. Two weeks ago, the transcript of a secretly recorded phone call between Burris and the brother of Blagojevich was released in federal court. In the phone call, Burris offers to write a check to the Rod Blagojevich campaign and says, “I’m very much interested in, in trying to replace Obama, OK.”

The Senate Ethics Committee is looking into all of this, but some senators are now nervous and angry. They folded in the face of the race card when it came to Burris, but now some are aflame over what they see as Sonia Sotomayor’s playing of the same card.

“We need to know, for example, whether she’s going to be a justice for all of us or just a justice for a few of us,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, said on “Meet the Press” with David Gregory that while he would not use the word “racist” to describe Sotomayor, “I think that she is a person who believes that her background can influence her decision. That’s what troubles me.”

The Democrats are sticking with Sotomayor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote an op-ed piece recently in the Miami Herald that began: “Some slivers of my past: a dust storm. A one-room schoolhouse. The teacher who gave me boxing gloves.”

Reid writes that all those things shaped his life, just as Sotomayor’s life “as a Latina” shaped hers. He says that as he talked to Sotomayor recently, he saw a “reflection of myself and of the fabric of this country.”

“She is the quintessential American story. How is this a detriment to the highest court in the land?”

A good question. And, as her nomination hearings begin July 13, one that is sure to be asked repeatedly.

6447: The Future Looks White Bright.

AdAge.com published the following story on the fate of ethnic advertising agencies. This topic will also be covered in the near future via Culturally Clueless FAQs. Check back soon.

Do Ethnic Shops Have a Future?
May Be Far in Distance, but Integrated Madison Ave Could Spell End for Some

By Marissa Miley

NEW YORK -- No matter who is in the White House or what the lawyers ultimately accomplish, the consumer-facing side of marketing will never inhabit a post-racial world. In a realm where every differentiating factor is examined to place consumers into niches and categories, being judged by the color of one’s skin is simply a fact of life.

Behind the scenes, however, it’s a different story. That’s where the lawsuits, diversity officers and recruiters struggle to change the face of the advertising industry. And what if they succeed? Suppose some years from now general-market shops have fully integrated staffs with knowledge of every cultural and racial demographic—and reams of quality research. Will the need for agencies that specialize in ethnic marketing disappear?

“If you look at the way things are currently done, [African-American agencies] would go out of business, because we wouldn’t have anything to do,” said Eugene Morris, chairman-CEO and founder, E. Morris Communications. Since black-owned agencies are routinely passed over for general-market assignments and make their money as ethnic shops, he said, they’d have no business left. Even now, they receive disproportionately small budgets relative to the market contribution they make. “Unless that changes, how can we compete?”

Fay Ferguson, co-CEO of Burrell Communications, said she feels differently. She is convinced that as the general-market agencies become more robust and reflective of the “tanning of America,” the best of the multicultural agencies will “not just survive but thrive,” she said.

And then there are the idealists. Bill Imada, chairman-CEO of IW Group, anticipates an altogether different scenario. “I’m hoping there won’t be a need for multicultural agencies in the future. I would welcome being extinct,” he said.

Distant future
While they may differ on some points, all three agree on one thing: General-market agencies aren’t going to be all that diversified any time soon.

Mr. Imada conceded that when he first entered the business 18 years ago, he thought that general-market agencies would catch up within years. “Eighteen years later and I’m not convinced,” he said.

The fact of the matter is that diversifying the employee makeup of general-market agencies certainly does not ensure that those agencies will have the expertise or experience to do segmented ethnic marketing. For starters, they do not have the resources or appropriate leadership at the top.

What is more, said Alex Lopez Negrete, president-CEO of Lopez Negrete Communications, general-market agencies would not necessarily have the same motivations or passions for their work.

“It’s not about changing the slang, or throwing in the hip-hop,” Mr. Lopez Negrete said. “It gets a lot deeper. We’re dealing in a very different kitchen.” He said that his agency understands and cares deeply about the Latino community in a way that general-market agencies do not. What he does is not about race, it’s about culture. And this doesn’t mean that he excludes people of other cultures; Mr. Lopez Negrete supposes that around 8%-10% of his employees are non-Hispanic. What everyone at his company shares is a passion for Hispanic culture.

“That’s what we breathe, that’s what we do 24/7,” he said.

Value of specialization
Mr. Lopez Negrete envisions a future where general-market and multicultural agencies collaborate on work for clients. “As long as clients see the value of true specialization, not just the veneer of that work, multicultural agencies will continue to grow, continue to exist—and coexist in relationships fostered by the client,” he said.

Alejandro Ruelas, managing partner of LatinWorks, which is in part owned by Omnicom Group, considers general-market agency ventures in ethnic marketing as healthy competition and a boost to his business in Hispanic marketing. He estimates that currently over 90% of work in Hispanic advertising arena is done by specialty shops, rather than general-market agencies.

“It would be a welcome challenge,” he said, if those general market agencies entered his space. “For me, it’s not a threat. It’s an opportunity for us to become better by having competition to look up to and measure ourselves against,” he said.

Some multicultural agencies aspire to dominate the niche space that they are in. Mr. Lopez Negrete wanted only to serve the Latino population.

Others, like Walton/Isaacson, hope to be the “Planet’s Most Interesting Agency.” Co-founder Aaron Walton attributes his company’s success to the diversity and inclusivity within the ranks of his agency. The bulk of his business is in the general market. “We understand the differences and we celebrate the things that are common,” Mr. Walton said.

He imagines that many general-market agencies would like to tap into the multicultural space, but said that “just because you want to doesn’t mean you can.”

“It’s an easy shift for us to do general-market work. It’s a harder shift for the general marketers the other way,” said IW Group’s Mr. Imada.

Equal opportunities
But Mr. Morris disagrees, and he has noticed that increasingly, general-market agencies are taking away ethnic-specific segment assignments—on the African-American front at any rate.

“We think it is the general desire of general-market agencies to put us out of business,” he said. Recently, Mr. Morris wrote an open letter on behalf of the Association of Black-Owned Advertising Agencies to the Association of National Advertisers, urging marketers to give equal opportunities to African-American agencies.

“Unless African-American agencies become part of the mainstream, our community would definitely suffer,” he said, noting that African-American businesses make an economic contribution to the African-American community—a critical capital boost that general-market agencies do not do.

“There are people who think that because Barack is president, that that solves all the problems of the African-American community,” said Mr. Morris. “Perhaps it spiritually uplifted African-Americans, but it has not economically lifted the African-American community. It has not solved our problems yet.”

“The only people who can change this are the clients themselves,” Mr. Morris said.

Essay 4751

From The Chicago Tribune…

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

On race issues, we should ask better questions

By Dawn Turner Trice

Say you were contacted for a national survey and this was one of the questions: Which of these statements comes closer to your view -- even if neither is exactly right: Blacks today can no longer be thought of as a single race because the black community is so diverse OR blacks can still be thought of as a single race because they have so much in common.

How would you answer? Could you answer? We’ll revisit this in a moment.

This month, the Washington-based Pew Research Center released the results of a much-talked-about survey, “Optimism about Black Progress Declines, Blacks See Growing Values Gap Between Poor and Middle Class,” that included the above question.

The study showed that Hurricane Katrina and the Jena 6 controversy, among other things, have African-Americans feeling pretty down about racial progress in America.

From Sept. 5 through Oct. 6, the folks at Pew contacted a diverse group of Americans with a larger sample of African-Americans. Interview questions addressed the economic prospects of blacks, their values, politics, and experiences with discrimination, integration, the criminal justice system, affirmative action.

One theme Pew wanted to focus on was the trends in income disparity for African-Americans since the civil rights movement. In 1970, the percentage of blacks with incomes of $50,000 and above, adjusted for inflation, was just 18 percent. In 2006, nearly 1 in 3 African-American households had incomes that high.

Indeed more and more blacks have seen their incomes move into the middle class and upper middle class ranges. Still, the gap between the black middle class and black lower class is increasing. And this is what served as the basis of the various questions relating to values.

The Pew researchers asked whether over the last decade values held by middle class blacks and poor blacks had become more similar or dissimilar.

Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the center, told me that when the values question was asked 20 years ago, about 50 percent of the respondents said the values among blacks of various incomes were more similar. This time there was a striking difference. By a ratio of 2 to 1, respondents said the values of poor blacks and wealthier blacks have grown more dissimilar over the last 10 years.

So, now to that original question up top: Should blacks be thought of as a single race or not?

I’m a fan of the Pew Center, but I found the question quite disturbing. First off, it’s a bad question because you have no clue what is meant by a “single race.”

Race is such a loaded term whose meaning is both based on genetics and a social construct. Either way, you’d have to believe that it’s possible for some people, based on their values (or, I guess, anything else), to splinter off. Impossible, right? So, what’s the point?

To ask whether blacks can be a single race, implies there’s an alternative. Is there?

Taylor said that researchers try not to direct people being surveyed, so they didn’t attempt to clarify any of this.

It all seems ludicrous actually.

There’s always been diversity within every racial group. There have always been people with questionable values up and down the economic scale. This is what sent entertainer Bill Cosby scurrying a few years ago to clean up his comments about poor people not holding up their end of the bargain in terms of racial progress. He was forced to stress that he meant some poor people, so that he wouldn’t unfairly paint all poor people with the same brush.

Perhaps what was more disturbing than the question were the answers. Thirty-seven percent of African-Americans said blacks shouldn’t be considered a single race.

Fifty-three percent of the black respondents said there should be no splintering off.

Taylor said both of these groups were diverse, with respondents spanning the class spectrum. Does that surprise you? It surprised me.

But maybe it shouldn’t. There are those who think that separating somehow can be a solution to the ills affecting black folk.

Distancing aggravates an already bad situation. There are many questions we should be asking to better understand what ails us. The above question really isn’t one of them.