MWPRINCight: NAACP head wants N.Y. Post editor, cartoonist axed

MWPRINCight Comments can also be found in the USA Today article.

Comment 1:
My issue with their apology is that it was not sincere. It was more an act to eliminate the headache they created. And, my concern with the NAACP, Sharpton and others is that they might mismanage the opportunity by just demanding folks loose their jobs, that makes them instant "stars"....they will find another gig, i.e. Don Imus. The opportunity I refer to is that of "REAL" talk about race. Bump the sensitivity training...folks at the NY Post and elsewhere need to really get an understanding of where those who were offended, mainly African Americans are coming from. That is IF they care to. And, we, African Americans need to open our minds to the thought of educating those who don't have a clue. Now, once they have a clue, if they choose to continue to be insensitive, than they must go. And, do be clear, I am trying to give the editor-in-chief and cartoonist the benefit of the doubt.....but, its hard.

Comment 2:
Now, after scrolling down and reading some of the other comments, it I am officially afraid. There is hatred and ignorance within the comments on this topic and that shows that folks just don't care to heal. The NAACP was created BECAUSE African Americans (or as we were refere to 100 years ago, "colored" had no voice in education, social, political or civic rights). So, we took the word that was given us and used it for our power. As for the references to "BOY"...that right there shows that you know what you are doing and saying. There is no ignorance here, there is just plain old hurt and meanness. God help us all.


NAACP head wants N.Y. Post editor, cartoonist

NEW YORK (AP) — The head of the NAACP on Saturday urged readers to boycott the New York Post, calling a cartoon that the newspaper published an invitation to assassinate President Obama.

Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called on the tabloid to remove editor-in-chief Col Allan, as well as longtime cartoonist Sean Delonas.

APOLOGY: 'N.Y. Post' editorial addresses cartoon
CARTOON: 'N.Y. Post' depiction of dead chimpanzee stirs outrage

Earlier this week, the newspaper apologized to anyone who might have been offended by the image printed Wednesday, which some say likens Obama to a violent chimpanzee gunned down by police in Connecticut.

Jealous said the cartoon was "an invitation to assassination."

On Thursday, after protests by notable figures including director Spike Lee, the paper posted an editorial on its website saying the cartoon was meant to mock the federal economic stimulus bill, but "to those who were offended by the image, we apologize."

A spokeswoman for the newspaper referred the Associated Press to the paper's editorial when asked Saturday about the proposed NAACP boycott.

Jealous called the editorial "a half of an apology, without elaboration."

The drawing, he said, "picks off the scabs of all the racial wounds."

He spoke as the NAACP gathered for its annual meeting in New York, where it was founded a century ago.

NAACP officials said that if the Post does not take "serious disciplinary action," they would reach out to organizations across the country to join them in their efforts against the tabloid.

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond called the publication of the cartoon "thoughtlessness taken to the extreme. ... Anyone who is not offended by it does not have any sensitivity."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

MWPRInsight: A Great Story about a Great Man

First black b-ball player reflects
By: Holden Slattery
Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: News






Julius Pegues' name will not turn up in any NBA record books or highlights, and that's fine with him. But he will turn up in a search for the first black man ever to play basketball for the Pitt Panthers. He'll also turn up as a distinguished consultant for the Federal Aviation Administration.Pegues used basketball scholarships to earn an aeronautical engineering degree from Pitt and never looked back. This past Sunday, Pitt honored Pegues at the Pitt-Louisville game. This year marks the 50th anniversary of his graduation. At center court of a packed Petersen Events Center, Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg handed Pegues a commemorative basketball. "I was humbled, and I'm still in awe of how they put all of that together to observe my 50th anniversary and being the lone black player," Pegues said Wednesday from his home in Tulsa, Okla.

Pegues was impressed with the crowd at Sunday's game, especially the student section known as the Oakland Zoo."If we had 1,300 people in our arena, we probably would have had a better record than we did," Pegues said. "The atmosphere is great!"Pegues, 72, played for the Panthers from 1954 to 1958 - one year on the freshman team and three on varsity. He is now the 34th leading scorer in Pitt history. He said he started every game in his four seasons at Pitt and helped the team win its first Big East title.

Because of segregation laws at the time, Pegues was unable to play basketball for any college in his home state of Oklahoma except for Langston University, a historically black college that did not offer engineering. But a Tulsa oil man named E. Alex Phillips helped him get to Pitt.

When Pegues was playing at Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa, Phillips used to watch the team play. Phillips helped to pay for Pegues' first year at Pitt, and after an impressive season on the freshmen team, Pegues received a full scholarship.


To read full article go to The Pitt News

Media Credit: Courtesy Pitt Media Relations
In 1954, Julius Pegeus became the first black man to play on Pitt's basketball team. He averaged 17.6 points per game, he said.

Helpful Info: Multicultural Marketing

Survey: Marketers still don't get how to do multicultural marketing
By Beth Snyder
BulikAdAge.com
(February 25, 2008)

Marketers are hiring more talent and spending more money than ever to chase multicultural consumers, yet they are divided on how to reach them -- and unsure they're getting good returns on their investments. While 84% of the marketers believe multicultural marketing is "critical to my business," almost 40% said they don't know the financial value of multicultural groups to their companies, according to a study for executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles by Brandiosity.

They also had a variety of opinions on which agencies to hire to reach the Hispanic, African-American and Asian groups. Of the 60 companies that were surveyed on which shops they use for multicultural-marketing services, 58% said they tap general-market-research firms; 51% said they use multicultural agencies; 42% use general-market agencies; and 35% use multicultural-research firms. 'Same stuff' as 20 years agoIn fact the overall picture painted by the survey suggests there's still a good deal of confusion about the multicultural market.

Pepper Miller, president of Miller Hunter Group, a market-research and planning group in Chicago, said marketers really don't understand it any better than they did 20 years ago. "I entered the business in 1985. The other day I found a paper I wrote back then, and I read it and I thought, 'Man, this is the same stuff we're saying now!'" More than two-thirds of the respondents were chief marketing officers or senior VPs of marketing. Another 14% were VPs, managers or directors. They represented a wide variety of industries including retail, consumer package goods, telecom, financial services, fast food and apparel. Carla Palazio, partner at Heidrick & Struggles, said the recruiting firm commissioned the study to discover what companies need -- particularly what sort of talent they're looking for -- to target multicultural segments, specifically through the eyes of the CMO.

What it found was a disconnect: Multicultural marketing is perceived as very important -- but there are still a lot of companies that lack a real companywide strategy to address it. "The root of this is the lack of awareness at the organization. While the CMO understands it well, they almost have to evangelize [the value of multicultural marketing] to the rest of the company," Ms. Palazio said. Indeed, among the 20 biggest challenges executives expressed, almost half could be categorized as problems proving merit inside the company. They listed roadblocks such as "explaining to management their importance," "getting buy-in and support from company leadership," and "getting senior level marketers to understand that the world is changing." Mike Fasulo, CMO of Sony Electronics, said he has experienced some of the disparities the study uncovered. "I can respect some of those statistics, because it took us two years before we went to market because we wanted it to be comprehensive and sincere."

Mr. Fasulo's group made multicultural marketing a priority about three years ago and today has an internal team dedicated to it, as well an outside multicultural agency, research and insight initiatives, and retail partnerships. Undervalued worthHowever, he was surprised that more companies didn't know the financial worth of multicultural segments, because the data are there. In electronics, for example, he said many product categories overindex for multicultural groups vs. the general population, including flat-panel TVs, satellite radio and video gaming. And though the economy has slowed, both disposable income and growth of multicultural segments "far exceed" the general market, Mr. Fasulo said. Respondents also were asked which minority segment was most important to their businesses. The majority selected Hispanics first at 65%, followed by African-Americans at 30% and Asians at 24%.

However, the respondents were split over the idea that it "takes a Latino to market to a Latino." Some 35% agreed, while 39% disagreed. "For myself, I believe I've had an easier time," said Alberto J. Ferrer, managing partner at the Vidal Partnership. "But I see many non-Hispanics do well. They tend to be open, willing to listen to the agency, and they don't live in the land of clich�s -- or, as I wrote in one of my blogs, the land of sombreros and maracas." As for using general-market researchers rather than multicultural agencies or researchers, Ms. Miller said: "That is such a big mistake. I'm still so frustrated with general-market research. So much of it is disrespectful, and it's just too vanilla -- and not just for African-Americans but for Latinos and for Asians, too." Lack of structureBut why the disparity between increased efforts and lower perceived effectiveness? One reason may lie within the study, in that 44% of the executives said their companies were not effectively organized to handle multicultural marketing.

So new hires and ad-budget increases become lost or marginalized in a system not structured to handle them. Isaac Mizrahi, director of multicultural marketing at Sprint and one of the survey participants, agreed that the results seem contradictory. "When I see results like this, it makes me wonder what exactly is their definition of multicultural marketing," he said. The findings indicate "there is still a significant amount of education that needs to happen," he said. "There are a lot of preconceived ideas about multicultural markets. And to be honest, it's not an easy area. It takes a lot of time, a lot of insight and research, and truly understanding the marketplace before you even propose something." Ms. Palazio said multicultural marketing will grow when other marketers see the results of companies such as Home Depot, Verizon, Bank of America and ING. "They're already seeing 10% to 12% of revenue coming from this segment," she said. "That's the easiest way for other companies to have a reality check."

Mr. Ferrer said: "There is a bona fide business opportunity here, and if you don't see that, you're not a smart businessperson. It's not about being a bigot; it's about being smart. ... I understand people not doing [multicultural marketing] because of tight budgets or [lack of] company support, but not knowing is just silly."

Survey: Marketers still don't get how to do multicultural marketing

MWPRInsight: A Lesson in Diversity PR

Corporate America -- Don’t Preach Diversity, Practice It

New America Media, News Analysis, Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Posted: Oct 31, 2007

Editor's Note: Stanley O’Neal, forced out of the top job at Merrill Lynch, is the highest ranking casuality of the sub-prime loan fiasco -- even as diversity in corporate America is still an issue.

With the forced retirement of Merrill Lynch CEO E. Stanley O’Neal, the ranks of African-American top gun Fortune 500 company CEOs was sliced from six to five. O’Neal’s fall had nothing to do with race, but rather questionable investments that caused the company’s stock to plunge, and supposedly being a loner type in a corporate culture that thrives on “good old boy” insider networking. But the demise of O’Neal, for whatever reason, still raises fresh questions about how committed many corporations are to making diversity a reality in their boardrooms and in management.

The answer varies widely from corporation to corporation. Fifty companies appear on Fortune Magazine’s list of corporations with the best track record for diversity. Minorities made up almost 21 percent of their boardrooms in 2003, compared with 11 percent two years earlier. The figures almost certainly have edged up even more since then. But for every one of the 50 corporations that makes diversity more than a buzz word, there are dozens more that pat themselves on the back for having one Latino, Asian or African American on their board, or for hiring a handful in lower-level management positions.In recent years, some of America's biggest and best-known corporations that have been widely praised as having a good track record on minority hiring and promotions have been plastered with discrimination lawsuits. Texaco, Coca-Cola, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Toyota have been thrust into the legal hot seat and have made costly settlements or signed consent decrees with the EEOC.

Forty years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that forbade workplace discrimination and Executive Order 11246, signed by Lyndon Johnson in 1965, that prodded firms to promote management diversity, many companies still practice their own subtle brand of workplace apartheid. Despite the well-publicized rise of O’Neal and other black executives at AOL-Time Warner, American Express and Aetna, black CEOs are still a rarity at most of the Fortune 1000 corporations.

The overwhelming majority of senior managers at these companies are white males, and as is evident from the rash of management discrimination lawsuits, women and minority managers are still paid less on average than their white, male counterparts. They are still just as likely to be pigeonholed in departments such as head of “special markets” or “minority affairs.”An embarrassing and highly publicized corporate discrimination case may bring the issue onto the public radar, but then it’s back to business as usual. That business, more often than not, is discrimination. It takes place quietly and far out of public view. The worst offending corporations employ a variety of tactics to mask discrimination. They issue glowing press releases, brochures, assorted handouts and annual stockholder reports loaded with pictures of smiling women and minority employees that tout their commitment to diversity. With much public fanfare, they establish minority and women hiring and training programs.

The refusal of many companies to make diversity the watchword in middle and upper management is bad enough, but even worse is the relentlessly hostile environment that many companies create and maintain toward minorities.Since 1990, the number of complaints of racial harassment toward employees has climbed. Black and Latino employees have been poked with sticks, called racial slurs, have had pictures of burning crosses and white sheets placed near their lockers, have discovered the initials KKK carved on tables and benches, and even found nooses hanging at or near their desks.

Most CEOs are not hypocrites when they say that they work hard to hire and promote more minorities and women. But the degree of real commitment to diversity hinges on the commitment of a corporation’s top CEO and its board. When CEOs implement an outreach program that includes a diversity task force, aggressive recruiters, and a mentoring program aimed at moving talented female and minority employees up the corporate career ladder, diversity will be readily apparent in the company’s hires and promotions.O’Neal’s departure was disappointing, given the still relative paucity of minority and women Fortune 500 CEO leaders. But even if O’Neal had stayed in good grace with Merrill, and had a long shelf life there, the challenge to corporate laggards on diversity wouldn’t change. And that is, don’t just preach it – practice it.

New America Media Associate Editor Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press). Corporate America -- Don’t Preach Diversity, Practice It - NAM