Brand-new “Addicted to Race” episode out now (#43)!
by Jen Chau and Carmen Van Kerckhove
A brand-new episode of Addicted to Race is out! If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes. Click here to launch iTunes and subscribe today, it’s absolutely free.
RANT
The “ohmygodyou’rejewishnoway!” reactions Jen receives each year around the Jewish holidays are the subject of her rant today.
INTERVIEW: RACISM IN THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY
Carmen interviews Matthew Creamer, a reporter for the industry publication Advertising Age, about the New York City Human Rights Commission’s investigation into the advertising industry’s hiring practices. The staffs at ad agencies are so lacking in diversity that the entire industry is under investigation. For more about this story, check out HighJive’s post on Racialicious.
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Duration - 47:55
File Size - 19.3 MB
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Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
HighJive wrote:
Great job on the Matt Creamer interview. For people outside of the business, it seemed like a pretty decent overview. Just a couple of initial reactions (sorry in advance for the lengthiness, as well as the probably incoherent and flawed thinking — plus any typos):
The excuse general market agencies use involving the alleged preference to team up with minority agencies versus hiring minorities is total bullshit. First of all, these team-up scenarios are very rare. Someone should challenge the general market agencies to show how often they’ve encountered these situations in the past five years. Any agency claiming more than even two instances is a fucking liar. And the overwhelming majority of agencies NEVER find themselves having to team up for government contracts. It’s that rare. Even if it were a common occurrence, why would that prohibit a general market agency from seeking an inclusive workforce? A diverse staff would only make them stronger teammates in these fairy-tale partnerships.
Related to this, some (mostly biased morons) might argue that minority shops skew the opposite direction in terms of diversity. This is semi-true, although most minority agencies are still more diverse than general market agencies. But in the case of minority shops, there’s a legitimate reason — despite the fact that it’s all led to the industry’s current ghetto structure. These shops are paid to offer specialized expertise, which usually involves having minorities on staff. In many ways, these shops reflect the audiences they target. General market agencies do not reflect the audiences they target, otherwise there would be no problems requiring intervention from organizations like the New York Human Rights Commission. General market agencies need to realize the general market is not White culture.
There are more messes involving the issue of agency ownership. It’s true that most minority agencies are owned by major holding companies. Merger mania is not unique to the advertising business. However, this industry’s segregation has created legal and political challenges. Because minority agencies do receive certain benefits for their minority status (including winning the favor of clients seeking to use such shops to satisfy their own corporate minority goals), holding companies often play the game of allowing these shops to retain a majority ownership. On paper, minority officers usually hold a 51 percent share to make it all legit.
Matt Creamer seemed to imply that advertising executives have made strong off-the-record comments. Perhaps I misinterpreted what he was saying. But if true, it’s really disturbing. God only knows what is actually crawling around in their heads. Until everyone is open to being honest, despite the uncomfortable awkwardness, there will be no progress.
Posted 09 Oct 2006 at 7:11 pm ¶
hadji wrote:
Awesome blogs, folks. I’m knew to it. hope to spread the word. It’s racialious! And someday it’ll be “beige-a-riffic!”
Posted 09 Oct 2006 at 10:47 pm ¶
S wrote:
Huh? You mean someday I will have to lighten my skin so I be “beige” enough to visit this site?
Aah, man! Jen, Carmen, how come you didn’t tell me this BEFORE I threw away my bleach cream! LOL!
Posted 10 Oct 2006 at 10:35 am ¶
dcase wrote:
Good show and a really great interview; I was not previously familiar with the details of the problems in the ad industry.
Inherent in all these discussions of minority hiring - you and Mr. Creamer touched on it a bit- is the idea that they must lower standards to get more minorities. The reason that this belief and others like it have been codified into the discussion ( and not deemed patently racist) is due primarily to people in my field ( Economics) trying to explain jobmarket discrimination in economic (mathematical) models with
“rational ” agents.
For readers who aren’t familiar with economics, there are several streams of logic here but the general idea is that discrimination in hiring against an otherwise qualified person on the basis of race ( a non-productive factor) is “irrational” in a competitive economy. Thus,one economic
(and note I’m not being very precise here)
explanation is that holding education, experience,etc. constant, blacks — on average– have went to inferior schools, had inferior family lives, inferior parents, and so on since birth and thus are inherently less productive than whites and therefore less likely to be hired.
Another one is the classic statistical discrimination argument: we don’t know anyone’s true productivity when we are considering them in the hiring process, we only observe some imperfect signal(education level, experience,etc.) . So we must combine information on their personal characteristics and the average productivity of their group. Hence, if on average their group has lower productivity and we weight that information more, we won’t hire said person from that group unless they have truly fatanstic personal credentials to overcome their group’s low average productivity. Or, on the other hand, the person has average credentials but comes from a group seen more productive on average and thus gets the job. Sounds familiar, no?
The most famous theory (among the theoretical research that led to Gary Becker winning the Nobel in econ) is that at least one group of relevant market agents (employers, employees, consumers) have some preference (taste) against a particular group which in turn imposes additional costs ( in the abstract) on employers in hiring that group member. Only if the costs are relatively low relative to the alternative will individual employers hire an outgroup member.
The point I’m making here is that in economic theory there is no need for animus/prejudice on the part of employers to still get discriminatory behavior. Similar arguments exist for wage discrimination. If you look closely, you can see how many of this arguments have permeated our general discourse. Interesting, huh?
Posted 11 Oct 2006 at 3:02 pm ¶
macphotog wrote:
Great interview.
Here’s another article at AdAge
http://adage.com/smallagency/article?article_id=112437
on “Small Agencies and the Diversity-Hiring Issue.” What is disturbing to me is, in the discussion of ‘diversity,’ Asians are not even in the mix! That is very telling about how the Industry sees ‘diversity!”
Posted 11 Oct 2006 at 3:37 pm ¶