17363: BHM 2026—Mickey D’s.

 

Is Mickey D’s celebrating BHM 2026 at all? A search on McDonalds.com yielded no results. And Black & Positively Golden features content from 2024—although students can apply for the annual HBCU scholarships.

17045: Empower To The People…?

Is The Coca-Cola Company concealing its DEIBA+ heat shields by renaming the performative initiatives “empowerment programs”?

 

If the patronizing promotions are pro-DEIBA+ stunts, President Donald J. Trump might rethink his Diet Coke button.

16537: BHM 2024—Macy’s.

 

Macy’s has got all the BHM departments covered: 1) Supporting Black-owned brands; 2) Allyships with HBCUs, and; 3) Awarding minority scholarships. The iconic retailer has given over $3.1M to UNCF since 2021. Gee, what happened that year to inspire such cultural commitment?

 

14548: BHM 2019—Regions Bike History Month…?

Celebrate Black History Month with the Regions Riding Forward Scholarship Essay Contest. Bonus points for entrants who spot the typo in the promotional advertisements.

14533: BHM 2019—Coca-Cola Serves Scholarships To Servicemen And Servicewomen.

Coca-Cola allied with the USO and Mondelez to salute Black History Month via the Share Your Service Story promotion—featuring a chance to win a $5000 or $1000 scholarship.

14395: Talking Shit (And Ship) About Diversity.

Advertising Age published a lackluster look at the advertising industry’s state of diversity, ultimately exposing the advertising industry’s state of denial. Other key states in the exclusive union include delegating, diverting and discriminating.

The net takeaway: racial and ethnic minorities are being recruited, but not retained—and this only applies to entry-level workers. Gee, what a newsflash.

Yep, it looks like all the minority internships, college scholarships, inner-city high school apprenticeships and embryonic courtships are bringing in shiploads of colored candidates. Unfortunately, newbies quickly discover the typical White advertising agency is no Love Boat, so they bail out. The Ad Age report didn’t include hard figures, incidentally, so the youth-related summations are questionable and suspect too.

Speaking of questionable and suspect, the article gathered insights from the usual suspects—specifically, Chief Diversity Officers. It’s ironic that these individuals noted the lack of mid- to senior-level minority hiring, as “diversity and inclusion executive” seems to be the sole role that White advertising agencies are quick to fill with mid- to senior-level people of color. To compound the problem, White advertising agencies are even quicker to let CDOs launch kiddie internships, scholarships, apprenticeships and courtships—and then proclaim mission accomplished.

Most disturbing are the closing comments from Omnicom SVP CDO Tiffany R. Warren:

“It’s about recognizing and considering people of color in ways that their white counterparts are being considered. Is there equity in how we deal out the retention and leadership opportunities? It just takes a quick audit and review of who’s within your agency now, who’s ready for that step up. … I want to be really clear: It’s not that difficult.”

Um, Warren’s been steering the ship since 2009. If it’s not that difficult—and she’s working for a Pioneer of Diversity and restlessly ambitious diversity defender—why hasn’t Warren managed to turn Omnicom into a multicultural Mecca?

Cue the colored crickets chirping.

Why diverse talent is being found and hired, but not sticking around

By I-Hsien Sherwood

More than 1,000 people, most of them young marketers, gathered last month near Manhattan’s Penn Station for The One Club’s cheekily named diversity conference, Here Are All the Black People.

Part job fair, part speaker series, the event brought people of color looking to break into or advance careers in advertising face-to-face with recruiters from dozens of agencies. Senior creatives critiqued portfolios, and panelists from the 3% Conference and brands like Facebook and Diageo discussed how to tackle racism, sexism and ageism in the workplace.

Industry events like this now dot the calendar, and they’re increasingly popular, with big names behind them. In September, 1,200 people attended the 12th annual AdColor Conference in Los Angeles, a gathering jointly sponsored by Microsoft and Omnicom Group. In August, 750 people showed up for a luncheon to celebrate the latest crop of high school and college students to come out of the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Multicultural Advertising Internship Program, an initiative that’s in its 45th year.

But the progress made by diversity and inclusion efforts in the industry has largely been concentrated at the entry level. The problems come later: While diverse talent is being found and hired, it’s not being sufficiently supported or groomed to reach senior levels.

Falling short

According to an Association of National Advertisers survey published earlier this month, 9 percent of administrative, clerical and entry-level staff at member companies that responded are African-American, but only 4 percent of senior level staff are African-American. While 6 percent of overall employees at ANA member companies are black, only 3 percent are CMOs.

According to an ANA survey from earlier this year, Asians make up 10 percent of ANA member company employees but just 5 percent of CMOs. The ratios are similar for Hispanics: 8 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

The success that recruitment efforts are seeing isn’t translating to better representation at the top because the attrition rate for people of color in the industry is so high. “I don’t think there’s a problem at the junior level,” says Carl Desir, diversity and inclusion director at R/GA and former VP for talent initiatives at the 4A’s. “Where it gets more difficult is in the mid-to-senior executive levels. If they don’t stay, we can’t groom them for leadership.”

Yet agencies and brands continue to focus on building out the diversity “pipeline.” There seems to be a new internship program or portfolio school initiative unveiled every few weeks. But while these programs and events are both good and necessary, these days the pipeline isn’t the problem, say the people responsible for diversifying agency rosters. Poor retention and a lack of leadership are driving people of color away from the industry—or failing to keep them—almost as fast as they can be recruited.

“We are very gung-ho about finding and encouraging these young people and getting them super excited, and then we kind of throw them to the wolves to figure it out,” says Tiffany Edwards, engagement and inclusion director at Droga5. “That leads to what we call the ‘leaky bucket.’ You can funnel in as many people as you want, but within the first one to two years, they all slowly start to leak out the bottom.”

The focus on bringing students and diverse young talent into the industry can mask institutional problems that no amount of recruitment can fix. Certainly it’s easier for an agency to show up at job fairs than to analyze and correct an environment that isn’t welcoming to people who don’t fit a particular mold.

“It becomes a way for organizations to make the focus external instead of internal,” Edwards says. “Instead of figuring out why we’re not promoting people of color or hiring people of color into senior positions, let’s go find a bunch of the most promising high school students and say we’re ‘doing diversity.’“

And if the newcomers aren’t happy in their positions or don’t feel they’re getting the right kind of support professionally or culturally, it’s only natural to see them as the problem, rather than the organization and all its built-in biases, Desir says. “Advertising has been a straight white man’s world since it was created,” he notes. “People are attracted to and drawn to people who look, act, think just like them. So when you have this shift where culture and society is becoming more diverse and the industry is not, and people feel like they’re losing what they’ve built—whether that’s true or not—you’re going to have pushback.”

Plugging the leaks

In advertising, quality is subjective. Copy, art and strategy don’t lend themselves to dispassionate appraisal, especially in an industry where people work in small close-knit groups. “When you get a team who feels comfortable, it’s easy,” says Kelly Davis, global chief human resource officer at Droga5. “But if you get a team filled with people that are different from you, how do you get the best from them?” Managers need to be trained to value opinions and ideas that feel unfamiliar to them, she says, and to appreciate cultural references that may not resonate with them but will with a broader audience.

It’s a task that becomes easier to accomplish the more it’s already been accomplished—a classic virtuous cycle. Tapping diverse talent for promotion puts them in leadership positions. As creative directors or account directors, they’re in a position to more easily recognize the contributions of other underrepresented talent. In turn, entry-level staffers have people higher up in the organization whose career paths they can emulate and who can serve as mentors and advocates.

But that means creating space within organizations for new kinds of people. The traditional hiring model seeks a person to fill a position, usually one that’s been recently vacated or one created by the current teams. Instead, companies looking for new ideas should build positions around the right people, Edwards says.

“We’re still trying to shape the talent to fit our very old model of what advertising is, instead of actually helping them develop their creativity and flourish and figure out why they’re valuable,” she says. “They’ve been told there’s this cookie-cutter way to be in advertising: this is what a portfolio should look like, this is what good work looks like. They’re not trained to be their authentic selves.

By now, most companies recognize the value in having diverse teams, or at least give lip service to the idea. A January 2018 study from McKinsey & Co. showed that executive teams with the highest ethnic and cultural diversity were 33 percent more likely to lead profitability in their industries. Companies that lacked diversity were 29 percent less likely to pull in high profits. But the question remains: How much diversity is enough?

When it comes to women’s representation, 50 percent parity is an easy metric to settle on because women are half the population, says Tiffany R. Warren, Omnicom senior VP and chief diversity officer and the founder of AdColor. For people of color, demographic data can help. African-Americans are 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, and Hispanics make up 18 percent. But in the areas where advertisers and their agencies are clustered, the numbers are much higher. Only 45 percent of New York City and 50 percent of Los Angeles are white, according to the census. Minneapolis is only 64 percent white, the census found, while 74 percent of employees in the ANA survey at member companies are white.

“If you’re in a majority-minority town, and your agency or company is at 4 percent, you have to examine yourself,” says Warren. “What, systematically, is happening that you’re not reflecting the cultural diversity of the city that you’re in?”

A simple solution

For all the hand-wringing about diversity and where the industry has gone wrong or is falling short, the fixes are relatively straightforward, Warren says. Spend the time required to build out diverse teams. Spend the money required to hire talented senior-level people from underrepresented groups.

“It’s about recognizing and considering people of color in ways that their white counterparts are being considered. Is there equity in how we deal out the retention and leadership opportunities? It just takes a quick audit and review of who’s within your agency now, who’s ready for that step up,” she says. “I want to be really clear: It’s not that difficult.”

14008: BHM 2018—Regions.

Regions recycles its BHM message—although this year, the scholarship essay contest is being more clearly communicated and promoted. Don’t expect an entry from the former Regions Senior VP who probably isn’t celebrating BHM anyways.

14007: BHM 2018—Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola celebrates BHM by bragging about its minority scholarship programs.

13613: V&F Is B&S.

Adweek published a lengthy piece on a Grey London stunt intended to spark industry-wide diversity. What’s the breakthrough concept? Rename the agency after its founders—two White men of Jewish descent—who opened the flagship New York shop in 1917 when anti-Semitism was prevalent. Okay, but in that very same year, Blacks held a silent march in Harlem to protest getting lynched, beaten and burned. Lawrence Valenstein and Arthur Fatt feared their names could cost them business. Blacks feared their skin color could cost them their lives—and it would take 30-40 years before Blacks would actually be hired at New York advertising agencies. Oddly enough, the Grey London scheme is intended to woo racial and ethnic minorities. So to perhaps offset all the Old White Guys imagery, the bold initiative includes minority scholarships and high school outreach efforts. Gee, how original. Sorry, but even in 2017, White men of Jewish descent have a much better and easier chance of landing jobs at Grey London than racial and ethnic minorities—and this would still be the case if the shop suddenly hired Gustavo Martinez as its CEO.

Grey London Renames Itself Valenstein & Fatt, After Grey’s Jewish Founders, in Call for Diversity

Office will take the name for 100 days, urges industry to change too

By Tim Nudd

Grey London is using the agency’s own 100-year-old origin story as a springboard for an industry-wide call to embrace diversity and acceptance via a self-branding campaign, launching today, in which it will rename itself, for more than three months, as Valenstein & Fatt, after its Jewish founders.

It’s 1917. New York is booming. Two young Jewish entrepreneurs, Lawrence Valenstein and Arthur Fatt, set up a company. But anti-Semitism is rife. Their names could cost them business. So they call it Grey, after the color of the wallpaper.

The London office will fully operate as Valenstein & Fatt—changing its office signage, stationery and business cards, answering its phones that way, even operating under that name in pitches—for the next 100 days.

The initiative is happening just as the British government is triggering Article 50 and begins the process of disconnecting the U.K. from the European Union. It is also launching as “xenophobia is raising its ugly head once more, along with political isolationism,” the agency adds.

Also, the symbolic gesture of the name change is being backed up by more concrete plans, including the following steps, in the agency’s own words:

1) We are publishing our diversity data. Progress cannot be made without clear measures and transparency about who we are today. Our new study is independent and in-depth and is based on the voluntary responses of 305 individuals, which represents over 60 percent of the agency and reported according to standards set by the British Office of National Statistics (ONS). Research developed in partnership with PSB examines roots, identity, education and lifestyle. It will be measured and shared annually and we are encouraging other agencies to take it up as their methodology.

2) We are launching a cross-industry taskforce to identify the barriers to recruitment and retention of talent among ethnic minorities. The first gathering will be co-chaired by Trevor Philips OBE and CEO Leo Rayman, and we are inviting leading organizations in this space and the most progressive agencies, including chairwoman of Mediacom, Karen Blackett, to join us in agreeing industry-wide initiatives and targets. We will also commit to targets for our advertising output, to ensure that it is nationally representative.

3) We are launching the Valenstein & Fatt Bursary to pay a year’s rent for up to two young people from ethnic minority and disadvantaged backgrounds. To qualify, candidates must have been offered a job at Grey, be state educated and live outside of greater London. Applications are open from this summer.

4) We will inspire the next generation, by working with 100 primary and secondary schools to introduce students to a career in the creative industries. Working with exec head Michelle Williams and education therapist Jodie Cariss and starting with the New Wave Federation primary schools in London’s Hackney, we will offer a tailor-made program for the schools involved, from assemblies to full-day workshops, coaching and agency open days.

5) We will develop our diverse talent. Recognizing that recruiting people with different start points isn’t enough, 50 individuals identified as ones to watch will be matched and formally mentored by our executive and senior leadership. In parallel we will run community mentoring workshops open to any member of the agency who wants to participate.

[This video explains more about the project.]

Adweek spoke to Sarah Jenkins, chief marketing officer at Valenstein & Fatt, about the initiative.

Where did this idea come from?

We’re an agency that is feeling the craziness of the last 12-18 months. The world feels a little bit uglier. A little bit less welcoming. So we wanted to make sure we were celebrating difference. And getting diversity right into the heart of our organization. Coincidentally it’s a big year for Grey this year—100 years old. So the Valenstein and Fatt story feels relevant and meaningful in the context of business and society today. Subsequently celebrating them, and telling their story, was the right way for us to make a definitive statement about our diversity commitment moving forward.

While a great gesture, this idea will also clearly cause confusion here and there. Is dealing with that confusion an embodiment of the kind of hard work needed to commit to diversity?

It’s definitely got some risk, but good ideas are hard work and generally require a healthy kick of bravery. Which is a lovely parallel with the spirit of our founders. It definitely helps that we are in the communication business, so hopefully, for the vast, vast majority of the time, we can avoid confusing people.

Tell us why the concrete steps you are also taking will make a difference.

We should first talk about what we are going to get wrong. Diversity is complex, nuanced and gnarly. So they might not all make the difference we are wanting. We’ll fail fast and go again and tell everyone what’s gone wrong, so they don’t make the same mistake.

That said, we have worked hard to get our first initiatives right. We have talked to some brilliant and smart organizations like Channel 4 and the Social Mobility Foundation. Progressive agencies like Mediacom. People who have spent years thinking about the problem and the solutions, like Trevor Phillips. And we’ve backed our own instincts.

When you break down the initiatives, it’s hard not to see them working in some form. One-hundred schools. That’s at least 1,000 kids we are going to hang out with, possibly closer to 5,000 or even 10,000—how can they not help inspire kids to stay curious and think about a career in our industry?

A bursary to help kickstart your first 12 months in—how can they not help us attract some of the best state-educated kids in the country?

Dedicated time and investment to ensure all our diverse talent are able to develop and a clear leadership program to ensure all the glass ceilings are smashing and stay smashed—how can that not inspire the next generation of young leaders, no matter what their background and who they are?

Working with the best agencies and businesses in our industry to push the diversity agenda, so that the smartest, most creative minds are applying themselves to a big gnarly comms and behavioral challenges—how can that not shift the diversity dial in ad land?

What metrics will you look at to gauge the improvement in diversity, both at Grey and across the industry?

As an agency, we will gauge success by seeing more diverse talent coming into the building. And that is any diverse talent. We would love to encourage more people from BAME backgrounds. And more people who are state-school educated. To have more diverse talent identified as future leaders. Future leaders we then keep in our agency, or at the very least we keep in the industry.

As an industry… for agencies to stop fudging their diversity numbers and realize that diversity is a genuine commercial win, not a marketing headline or some weird, point scoring exercise. For advertising to be seen at the forefront of diversity in business, particularly in attracting the best young talent. I mean, fair play to the accountancy firms for leading from the front, but surely, with our insane communication and creative skills, we should be helping them set the bar, not be running behind them.

13146: TTFN TMCF.

Advertising Age published a perspective titled, “Let’s Stop Talking About Diversity—Let’s Start Taking Action: The Ad Industry Needs to Invest in Diversity Programs—Like Apple and TMCF.” The column was co-written by Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. and Steven Wolfe Pereira, who believe the solution is to offer financial support to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, an initiative that will accomplish the following:

TMCF can guarantee it will marshal the collective resources of the country’s HBCUs to deliver a comprehensive solution that will include a highly selective talent acquisition strategy to ensure these same conversations [about the dearth of diversity in the advertising industry] are not occurring at next year’s 4A’s conference.

Um, do these gentlemen have any familiarity with Madison Avenue, where such endeavors are executed on a regular basis—with minimal results? Has Howard University succeeded in similar efforts at all? Minority scholarships and internships are the contrived clichés that have served as smokescreens for decades.

The duo closed their proposal by declaring, “Let’s make 2016 the year that we stop treating ‘the diversity issue’ like a hot potato. Let’s stop talking about the issues. Let’s take action to fix them.” Okay, but let’s start with an original idea versus regurgitating the failures of the past.

It would be more effective to wish Thurgood Marshall would rise from the dead and take on Madison Avenue before the Supreme Court.

13130: Mad Ave’s Murky Mischief.

“Why the Picture of Diversity on Madison Avenue Is So Murky: Companies’ varying reporting methods make it tough to discern the racial and gender makeup of the ad industry” are the headline and subhead of a lengthy report from The Wall Street Journal. There’s nothing new presented in the article—including the figures showing Black representation in the industry has actually declined in recent years. Guess the minority scholarships, internships, high schools, inner-city outreach programs and ADCOLOR® awards aren’t working after all. But you’d never know it, thanks to the smokescreens, diverted diversity, Chief Diversity Officers, EEO-1 data dodging and other assorted schemes Madison Avenue executes to conceal the truth.

13055: BHM 2016—Wells Fargo.

How to diversify a workforce: Offer a credit-bearing training course for minority students at a historically Black college—as opposed to, say, hiring qualified minorities right now.

11364: Not A Bright Idea.

In this ad for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, why is the White bulb more prominent than the dark bulbs?

10167: Criticizing Diddy Warbucks.

From The Chicago Tribune…

Diddy’s son isn’t the problem, inequality is

By Clarence Page

Seldom has anybody’s scholarship kicked up so much controversy.

Critics are outraged that UCLA, strapped for cash in California’s budget crisis, awarded a $54,000 merit-based athletic scholarship to Justin Combs, son of hip-hop impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs, who hardly needs the cash.

You don’t have to live in the Golden State to understand the outrage. Soaring college costs, battered state budgets and shrinking opportunities for rising income are a national crisis.

But, as they say in hip-hop culture, let’s be real.

Justin’s scholarship money doesn’t come from taxpayer funds, UCLA says, and wouldn’t even tickle the state’s projected $16 billion deficit if it did.

And picking on Diddy’s fortune or his son’s hard-earned achievements distracts us from the issue burning at the core of the discontent: How do we make higher education more affordable for young strivers who don’t have wealthy parents?

No question that Diddy is rich. In April he topped Forbes’ latest of the wealthiest moguls in hip-hop with an estimated net worth of $550 million, which makes Justin’s scholarship sound like pocket change. On the youngster’s 16th birthday in 2010, daddy gave him a $360,000 Maybach, which is to cars what Beverly Hills is to neighborhoods.

Yet Justin, to his credit, defies the slacker-rich-kid stereotype. He finished his senior year at Iona Preparatory School in New Rochelle, N.Y., with a reported 3.75 GPA and football scholarship offers from at least four colleges.

That’s why he tweeted last week to all the haters out there: “Regardless what the circumstances are, I put that work in!!!! PERIOD.”

Indeed, it appears that he did. While a good ethical argument can be made for directing scholarship money to students based on their economic need, another also can be made for motivating students toward excellence with rewards that are based on their own achievement, regardless of their family’s wealth or lack of it.

In the best of times, colleges have enough money to offer both. These are not the best of times. With that in mind, we can only hope Diddy will become a generous football dad, creating new scholarships in his son’s honor to show his appreciation. Just a suggestion.

After all, I suspect the rage over Diddy and Son largely has been inflamed by the way daddy Diddy symbolizes our society’s unresolved issues of income inequality, class divisions and culture wars. The rap music mogul embodies the “1 percent” that Occupy Wall Street protests and the hip-hop industry that outrages cultural conservatives.

Yet, the real source of our national frustration is less glamorous and more widespread. Upward mobility in America is not what it used to be. It’s easier to climb the socioeconomic ladder in many parts of Europe than it is in the U.S., according to recent reports from Brookings Institution, Pew Research Center and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In other words, today’s aspiring youths on average have an easier time moving up the socioeconomic ladder in many parts of traditionally class-conscious Europe than here in the home of the American dream.

Without some schooling beyond high school, it is becoming increasingly difficult to enter the middle class or stay in it. Yet Washington has been gridlocked in budget fights or simply brain-dead about new ideas that can lead to comprehensive remedies.

The partisan fight over student loan interest rates, for example, is expected to lead to short-term solutions. Raising interest rates would be too unpopular for lawmakers to allow in an election year, even though student loan debt already is breaking records.

While lawmakers argue, hundreds of thousands of low-income students will lose their Pell Grants as of July 1. That’s because of a little-noticed congressional decision to save $11 billion over 10 years by reducing or eliminating aid to the most effective program for helping low-income students move up the educational ladder.

As we see doors closing on opportunities for advancement, Diddy and his kid’s scholarship are only visible symbols of our frustration. We can’t all be leaders of hip-hop or other industries, but we all deserve to have a chance to try. That used to be the American dream. We hate to see it go, but it’s slipping away.

9558: Win A PhD From Dr Pepper.

AdPulp spotlighted the Dr Pepper $1,000,000 Tuition Giveaway, and the ad blog remarked, “‘Dr Pepper is changing lives’ is not the kind of promotional come-on we’re used to hearing from a large packaged goods brand.” Um, it’s actually an extraordinarily common phrase uttered by nearly every large packaged goods brand, although usually to target minorities. From Coke to Pepsi, Mickey D’s to Burger King, Verizon to AT&T, State Farm to Allstate, GM to Ford, Procter & Gamble to Johnson & Johnson and more, doling out scholarship loot is a seemingly annual affair for multicultural marketers. Guess skyrocketing student debt means White kids are looking for financial assistance too. Plus, it all makes for a natural tie-in to Dr Pepper’s sponsorship of collegiate football. Ironically, AdPulp featured four videos of female tuition recipients. The irony comes when considering the recent launch of Dr Pepper Ten, hyped with a tagline that reads, “It’s Not For Women.”

8960: Cultural Scholarships Derby.

The New York Post reported on a Texas program that awards scholarships to White males. Meanwhile, Advertising Age spotlighted a New York program that awards scholarships to minorities. Ironically, the Texan honorees have a better chance of landing a job on Madison Avenue than the New York students.

Winner in controversial ‘white man’ scholarship

NEWSCORE

SAN MARCOS, Texas—A non-profit organization has awarded the second of five academic scholarships to a Texas man who met their controversial criteria—which includes that he be white and male, FOXNews.com reported Saturday.

The group sponsoring the scholarship says it is the only scholarship of its kind in the United States.

The award was presented by a group called the Former Majority Association for Equality. Its president, Colby Bohannon, says he has been called a racist and compared to the KKK.

“We’re not racists. We have no agenda for bigotry,” said Bohannon. “We’re not trying to take away anything from any other group. We’re just trying to help poor, Caucasian males afford college.”

Recipient Brendan Baird is studying to become a physician’s assistant, and the awarded $500 check will help him to pay for schooling.

To win, he had to demonstrate a high grade point average, community service, sports ability and financial need. But what really sealed the deal is the fact that he is a white man.

“If anyone wants to say it’s an issue of color, it’s the color of green,” said Baird. “And we all need it.”

The group’s vice-president, Marcus Carter, is black. There are also two women and a Hispanic man on its board.

“Right now everybody else has their own specific scholarship: Minorities, left-handed people, people who like the color green,” said Carter. “I don’t feel the animosity of helping this group.”

Critics say while some funding programs are geared toward specific genders or races, others are need-based. One of the state’s largest, the Texas Grant Program, is geared toward low-income students.

Over the past decade, the program has spent about $2 billion to help 310,000 white men.

Bohannan, meanwhile, says he plans to expand his scholarship fund to $25,000 for another 5,000 recipients who may need the money.

::::

Promoting Diversity: First GroupM Scholars Selected

Agency Awards Scholarships in Professional Development Initiative With City College of New York

GroupM North America has named the first three honorees in the GroupM Diversity Scholarship program it established with City College of New York late last year as part of an ongoing effort to promote diversity and inclusion within the media and advertising industry.

The scholarship fund is providing tuition to three CCNY students majoring in advertising and PR who plan to pursue careers in the media and advertising: Rahel Araya, Cory Rainford and Salwa Sayed. Among other criteria, recipients must be full-time students in CCNY’s ad/PR program entering their junior or senior year and must maintain an overall GPA of at least 3.0.

“It’s a privilege to support CCNY,” said GroupM North American CEO Rob Norman in announcing the recipients. “We may be a global company but we are also part of a local community. The students we have met are passionate and committed, and we hope this program will help them develop great careers in our industry.”

Under the scholarship initiative, GroupM is providing 10 $1,000 annual scholarships to be awarded in the spring and applied to tuition payments the following fall, covering as much as 40% of a single semester’s tuition. This year’s remaining scholarship money will be given to fall 2011 candidates applying for spring 2012 scholarships.

The second element of this diversity initiative, known as the GroupM Student Enrichment Fund, benefits a number of ad/PR majors beyond the scholarship program. Students chosen by CCNY’s ad/PR faculty based on their GPA and the level of their intent to pursue a career in advertising will participate in professional development opportunities in their junior or senior years. Earlier this year, two students were hosted and mentored by Norman at the 4A’s Transformation Conference in Austin, Texas, as part of this initiative.

8623: Not UNCF.

From The Los Angeles Times…

‘Whites-only’ isn’t diversity

A Texas scholarship that excludes nonwhites betrays ignorance of the point of minority aid: an attempt to counter centuries of white privilege.

If there are scholarships and loan programs and government contracts set aside for blacks and Latinos, can there be similar set-asides for whites?

That’s one of the questions raised by a small organization in Texas that has decided to offer white men $500 college scholarships. “In a country that proclaims equality for all,” says the Former Majority Assn. for Equality, “we provide monetary aid to those that have found the scholarship application process difficult because they do not fit into certain categories or any ethnic group.”

Aware that a whites-only policy would inspire questions about racism, the organization insists: “We do not advocate white supremacy, nor do we enable any individual that does. We do not accept donations from organizations affiliated with any sort of white supremacy or hate group.”

We accept the organization’s assurances that it is not motivated by racism. But we still find the idea of whites-only scholarships offensive (even if they are legal), and the organization’s underlying understanding of race is even more so.

That understanding is sometimes called the “symmetrical view” of race. It holds that whites and minorities are similarly situated and that programs that exclusively benefit whites are as legitimate as those that serve minorities. Sometimes, as with the Texas scholarship, there is an additional argument that changing demographics have reduced the advantage of being white in this society.

This symmetrical view ignores history. Scholarships and other arrangements that favor racial minorities are generally an attempt to counter the effects of centuries of white privilege. And despite what some people might believe, those effects haven’t gone away. This country has done much to overcome its history of racism, but gaping disparities in education and wealth persist. Scholarships and other programs seeking to close those gaps naturally will focus on blacks and Latinos.

Many Americans cringe at the phrase “whites only,” and for good reason. Historically the exclusion of nonwhites was inextricably tied to notions of white supremacy. The time hasn’t arrived when “whites only,” or any policy predicated on it, can be regarded as just another patch in the quilt of diversity.

We don’t begrudge any young men scholarship aid from the Former Majority Assn. for Equality. But we wish the organization would offer its largesse on a nonracial basis.

Essay 4894

Callie Herd is a woman dedicated to helping minority students find information on college scholarships and more.

Herd said, “What I’m doing is trying to educate them. It’s not that Blacks and Latinos don’t want to go to college or need scholarship money; they just don’t know what is going on. At the advice of my son, I started a blog to get past writing individual letters. That just about wore me out. But the blog reaches so many.”

“It is located at www.ctherd.blogspot.com. There are millions of dollars available, just waiting for those who know how to ask for them. … It’s all about knowing, and that’s all I’m trying to provide. Well-used knowledge is part of the solution.”

Deadlines are fast approaching for many scholarships, internships, fellowships and summer programs. Get moving and spread the word to others.

Essay 4439

In 2005, MultiCultClassics published a column by Stanley Crouch that spotlighted Callie Herd, a woman dedicated to providing college scholarship information for Black and Latino students.

Herd said, “What I’m doing is trying to educate them. It’s not that Blacks and Latinos don’t want to go to college or need scholarship money; they just don’t know what is going on. At the advice of my son, I started a blog to get past writing individual letters. That just about wore me out. But the blog reaches so many.”

“It is located at www.ctherd.blogspot.com. There are millions of dollars available, just waiting for those who know how to ask for them. … It’s all about knowing, and that’s all I’m trying to provide. Well-used knowledge is part of the solution.”

Herd has updated her blog with new internships, summer programs, scholarships, etc. Some of the deadlines are approaching.

Spread the word. Click on the essay title above to visit Herd’s blog.