Wednesday, April 16, 2008

New York ad agencies progress in "diversity"?

The New York Times' vet ad columnist Stuart Elliott wrote today on how the big ad guys are doing in meeting their self-policed campaign to become more "diverse" - whatever that means.

They were forced to at least acknowledge their lack thereof a few years ago when the NYC Human Rights Commission threatened hearings on their almost exclusively"whites only" hiring policies in their professional and upper management ranks. Elliott's article today mentions a report the commission released yesterday on what progress has been made. According to Elliott, the agencies are making some progress, if not meeting some of their more ambitious goals.

The story is interesting to me because 16 years ago I instigated a similar examination of the business nationwide. Even more interesting is the fact that no other source, including the NYCHRC itself seems to think the issue is important enough to even mention. I googled "New York City Human Rights Commission - Diversity" and there was nothing about their report anywhere else, even on their own sight.

That fact and the fact that none of the successful hires are broken down into racial, ethnic, age, gender or sexual orientation tells me even their modest success is padded with diversifiers not of the...er...ah...let's just say "darker hues".

Call me paranoid but it looks like diversity perversity.

Business and BS as usual.

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