Twenty-one-year-old Madeline Sola hasn’t graduated from college yet. But the mechanical-engineering major already has her first employer lined up.

If she wants it, Sola has a job waiting for her at Pratt & Whitney, an aircraft-engine, space-propulsion-system and gas-turbine maker in East Hartford, Conn., when she graduates from Massachusetts’s Worcester Polytechnic Institute next year. Not a bad position to be in, given the job market for new grads.

Many undergraduates have had a particularly hard time landing jobs lately because of competition from experienced candidates, says Bill Krutzen, director of operations at HireDiversity.com, an Internet job board. “What makes matters worse is that the experienced jobless are prepared to take a newly graduated person’s salary as they are so desperate for work,” he says.

But information-technology and engineering graduates of color have an easier time in the job market “because there’s so few of them,” says Stephanie Blaisdell, director of diversity and women’s programs at Worcester Polytechnic, an engineering university. “Nationally, only 6.6% of African-Americans and 7% of Hispanics pursue engineering,” she says. “And less than 1% [of engineers] are Native American.”

Employers’ interest in diversity hiring helped all of WPI’s minority 2003 graduates secure jobs quickly. Even during the downturn, recruiting minority students remained a priority for many companies, says Sharon Lutz, director of the Ford Careers Center at the University of Texas in Austin. She adds that many employers are “extremely aggressive” about hiring them.

Degrees Can Dictate Demand

Demand for minority students varies by discipline but is particularly strong for those in engineering and technological fields, says John Miller, president and publisher of Equal Opportunity Publications Inc., which publishes Hispanic Engineer, Woman Engineer and other magazines. Recruitment ads in the company’s minority engineering titles were up 25% in 2003 from fall 2002, he notes. The job market for minority graduates should improve further by spring 2004, raising the company’s ad revenue another 5% to 10%.

Lucrative government contracts have caused this latest recruiting surge for minority engineers. The government requires contractors to meet guidelines regarding minority employment. For defense contractors, $380 billion in business is at stake, and many companies need diversity to win a share, Miller says. That means “proving to government watchdogs that a good-faith effort is [being] made to recruit diversity,” he says.

Meanwhile, savvy global marketers, such as Xerox Corp. and Dell Inc., are hoping to hire more employees of color to address changing customer demographics. Consumers in the U.S. are becoming more diverse, and global markets are growing more important to overall revenues.

Companies Get Competitive

At Rutgers University in New Jersey, career-services director Richard White meets weekly with representatives of such companies as Johnson & Johnson, IBM Corp., Pfizer Inc. and Citigroup, which have diversity programs designed to entice the best students of color, he says. Hispanic, African-American and Native American students who have good academic records and relevant internship experience are especially prized recruits.

“Although we aren’t hiring as much as before [the recession], when we do, the emphasis is on quality, high-performing students,” says Joe Hammill, Xerox’s manager of talent acquisition. Xerox starts forging relationships with minority undergraduates when they start their degree programs, he says. “To get the highfliers early, we have to win over the best candidates well before they graduate, because the competition, particularly for talented technical undergraduates, is extremely intense,” he says.

Xerox taps into the pool of talented minority students by maintaining relationships with historically black colleges and universities with significant Hispanic-student populations. The company also recruits through its black and Hispanic college liaison programs and chapters of professional organizations such as the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, says Hammill.

The Role of Liaison Officers

Liaison officers are Xerox employees and alumni of the particular universities. They visit campuses to meet with faculty and students to discuss potential careers opportunities at Xerox and to assist students with developmental needs. “We also help out with resumes, access to mentors and possible internships,” says Xerox employee and liaison officer Kelia Peña, 31. The program gives Xerox an advantage “because it provides us with links and access to the best students of color,” she says.

Peña joined Xerox five years ago after completing undergraduate and graduate degrees in industrial engineering at the University of Buffalo. She was inundated with job offers from various employers, but Xerox’s liaison program won her over, and she became part of the company’s asset-management diversity program for African-Americans and Hispanics. She has held positions in project management, manufacturing engineering, supply-chain management and human resources. Her next role is project manager of service development for Xerox global services.

Prospects for Nontechnical Grads

In fields less technical than engineering, some students of color have it just as tough or tougher in the job market than nonminority graduates. Aquyla Walker, a 22-year-old African-American, has been job hunting with little success since graduating in May from Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., with a dual degree in English and world literature and fiction writing.

“I began my search initially for a career in public relations, and then extended it to a diversity-related role, preferably at an academic organization, but despite an intensive job search, I have not had much luck in either,” says Walker. “Nor have fellow students who pursued business degrees.”

Employers say they want diversity, but Walker challenges these claims. “Students like myself believe that firms are doing little more than paying lip-service to diversity,” she says.

How to Boost Your Odds

Still, students of color can improve their odds of getting professional jobs by graduation, especially if they start their searches early, says Chuck Knippen, campus-diversity-programs manager at Monster Worldwide Inc., an Internet job-posting firm based in New York City.

Large companies are making an effort to demonstrate that their environments are conducive for minority hires and that there’s potential for advancement, says Knippen. Minority students can improve their prospects of joining such companies by seeking them out, he says.

“Attend career fairs and build a relationship with the companies you want to work for,” he advises. “Do some research to find out exactly what the recruiting standards are and what type of attributes they’re looking for and work towards that. If you do it early, even in the second or third year of [college], you won’t have to put so much pressure on yourself in the senior year.”

Many employers also are looking for relevant experience on resumes. Internships are highly recommended, because they make students more marketable, says Peña, but some students can’t afford to participate in them because they’re unpaid.

A Student Does It All

Sola sought every advantage she could. She worked with Inroads Inc., a national organization, based in St. Louis, Mo., that helps students of color find internships, particularly in science, engineering and business fields. “They hooked me up with Pratt & Whitney, and I interned for several semesters with them since high school,” she says. The internships, plus taking advantage of other diversity programs, helped her win the job offer, she says.

Students of color also can sidestep the competition by using diversity-oriented Internet job sites. “If you use a diversity or profession-specific board, you’ll not only be targeting jobs more carefully, but improving your odds of getting a job,” says Krutzen.

Even if employers are seeking graduates of color in your field, don’t become complacent, says Lutz. Whether or not demand is strong, minority students still must be competitive. Take advantage of campus career resources, prepare thoroughly for interviews and present a professional image, she advises. By doing so, you’ll have myriad opportunities open to you and be in the enviable position of choosing the career of your dreams.

About the Author

Ms. Sappal, the former editor of GlobalHR magazine, is a free-lance writer in London.

Source : College Journal

And that’s just the beginning. “All American art is a function of the hybrid culture that resulted from centuries of immigration to this nation,” says David Ross, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art. “We’re just more dramatically aware of it today.” American culture used to be depicted as a Eurocentric melting pot into which other cultures were stirred and absorbed. The recent waves of newcomers have changed that. Today it seems more like a street fair, with various booths, foods and peoples, all mixing on common sidewalks.

The new cultural carnival is most apparent in music. The New York-based, Irish-American group Black 47, which mixes rap, reggae and traditional Irish melodies, has appeared on both the Tonight Show and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The Los Angeles rap trio Cypress Hill, which includes an Italian American, a Cuban American and a member who is of Cuban and Mexican descent, released a hit album this year that started out at No. 1 on Billboard magazine’s album chart. Latin music has become such a significant force in pop music that MTV recently launched MTV Latino as a separate Spanish-language edition.

Cuban-born Estefan, with her dance-floor blend of R. and B. and Cuban polyrhythms, has established herself as the queen of the new Latin sound. Arriving in Miami from Havana when she was two years old, she grew up in a household immersed in traditional Cuban ballads. By the first grade, she was also listening to British-invasion bands. “It was natural to blend both elements,” says Estefan. “When immigrants come to America they bring their culture, and that culture becomes part of a new country. It makes everyone stronger.”

Her success helped launch other Latin acts. Cuban-born singer Jon Secada, who co-wrote several of Estefan’s best-selling songs, has since recorded his own hits, which combine elements of Cuban music, Top 40 and gospel. Says Secada: “Artists who want to experiment find a way of incorporating the things that are worthy from all types of music, like reggae, salsa and African sounds. And it finds a way onto the charts.”

The fashion industry has also felt the impact of newcomers. Immigrants from Asia have brought a clean, elegant new look to clothing design. Among them is Han Feng, who left Hangzhou, China, only eight years ago. Now head of her own design company, she sells easy-to-wear, simply shaped clothes to Bloomingdale’s and Saks. “Designers have been looking for a style for the ’90s,” says Kal Ruttenstein, senior vice president for fashion direction at Bloomingdale’s. “The simplified Oriental-inspired look might be a major look.”

African clothing, filtered through rap culture, influences fashion as well. The L.A.-based firm Threads for Life (also known as Cross Colours) sells hip- hop fashion inspired by urban youth and African designers, such as overalls with colorful kente-cloth patches. “It becomes not just a pair of jeans, but something that means something,” says firm co-owner Carl Jones. Company sales rose from $15 million in 1991 to $89 million in 1992.

The Joy Luck Club, born as a best-selling book, leads a recent surge in popular new movies written or directed by Asians. They include M. Butterfly, written by David Henry Hwang, the U.S.-born son of Chinese immigrants; the comedy Combination Platter, directed by Chinese-American filmmaker Tony Chan; and The Wedding Banquet, a comedy directed by Ang Lee, who moved to the U.S. from Taiwan. Asian-style kickboxing movies have found an eager audience in the U.S. Recently one of Hong Kong’s best filmmakers, John Woo, relocated to Los Angeles to direct the action movie Hard Target (which stars Belgian-born martial-arts hero Jean-Claude Van Damme).

These Asian films are already spawning would-be imitators. “When something becomes a commercial success,” says novelist Tan, “it automatically opens the door, or at least the possibility, for other similar ventures. Already, in Hollywood, I’m hearing about people saying, ‘We think this will be another Joy Luck Club,’ about films they want to get produced.”

Hispanics in Hollywood, despite barriers, have also met with recent success. Latino actors Andy Garcia and Rosie Perez have become sought-after talents; the movie La Bamba grossed more than $50 million and sent the signal that Latino movies can be moneymakers. “In American society, transmitting culture is done in the marketplace,” says Gary Puckrein, editor in chief of American Visions, a magazine that covers culture in the U.S. “You see it in food, fashion, music and art.”

Other talented Latinos seek the big break. Actress Marga Gomez’s one-woman show, Memory Tricks, which deals with her father, a Cuban comic, and her mother, a Puerto Rican dancer, has been praised for its humor and startling candor. Gomez helped found the Latino comedy group Culture Clash (the troupe has a new series airing on Fox TV, where Gomez has made guest appearances), and she is adapting her show into a screenplay. “I think the essence of my $ work is that I come from some very strong backgrounds — gay, Cuban, Puerto Rican,” says Gomez, “and I don’t feel like I don’t fit into any one of them.”

In the visual arts, cultural outsiders often see what insiders miss. Japanese-born painter Masami Teraoka combines elements of European art and Japanese ukiyo-e wood-block imagery. From his unique perspective, he creates gothic halos around the heads of AIDS patients and condoms in the bedrooms of samurai. In his Harlem neighborhood, Jamaican-American artist Nari Wood collects discarded baby carriages and ties them together with fire hoses, making monuments to loss.

Such outsider viewpoints — from new Americans and even Native Americans — can influence others to see the world in a different light. To dramatize how the forces that ravaged the buffalo still exist, Native American sculptor Bob Haozous constructed 100 steel buffalo, then videotaped art-gallery patrons fighting to buy the pieces before they were sold out. Korean-American Nam June Paik, whose influential multimedia artworks incorporate TVs and computers, says he was talking about the information superhighway in his own work long before it became a catchword. And architect Maya Ying Lin, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, designed the black wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a stark monument that compels visitors not to revel in the glory of war, but to reflect on its sorrows.

Other artists have turned their sights on the nature of the immigrant experience itself. Choreographer Fagan’s touring show Griot New York features sets by noted sculptor Martin Puryear and music by trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis. Employing a multiethnic troupe, Griot seeks to capture the drama of immigration. Says Fagan: “It’s a celebration of New York City, of West Indians, Indians and Africans, of big urban metropolises that are always being dumped on.” Fagan also wrote a poem to illustrate the show’s theme of diverse people traveling difficult routes to come together in one nation:

Ships Hold/ No Class

Reservations & plantations

concentration . . .

You/me/them/us/brethren/we/be

Celebrate

The celebration was a long time coming. To be an immigrant artist is to be a hyphen away from one’s roots, and still a thousand miles away. But it is often that link to a foreign land — another way of seeing things — that allows such artists to contribute ideas to American culture that are fresh and new. That slim hyphen, that thin line that joins individual Americans to their past, is also what connects all America to its future.

With reporting by Greg Aunapu/Miami and Georgia Harbison/New York

Source : Time.com

IN the days of blithe racial assumptions, flesh crayons were the color of white people. “Invisible” makeup and nude pantyhose were colored in the hues of Caucasian skin. The decision by manufacturers to ignore whole segments of humanity went unchallenged for decades before the civil rights movement came along and nonwhite consumers started demanding their place on the color wheel.

Nowadays the cultural landscape is well populated with actors, musicians, media moguls and candidates for the American presidency drawn from the 30 percent of the American population that is not white. Yet, if there is one area where the lessons of chromatic and racial diversity have gone largely unheeded, it is fashion. This reality was never plainer than during the recent showings of the women’s spring 2008 collections in New York and Europe.

Although black women in the United States spend more than $20 billion on apparel each year, according to estimates by TargetMarketNews.com, it was hard to discern an awareness of this fact on the part of designers showing in New York, where black faces were more absent from runways than they have been in years.

Of the 101 shows and presentations posted on Style.com during the New York runway season, which ended a month ago, more than a third employed no black models, according to Women’s Wear Daily. Most of the others used just one or two. When the fashion caravan moved to London, Paris and Milan, the most influential shows — from Prada to Jil Sander to Balenciaga to Chloé and Chanel — made it appear as if someone had hung out a sign reading: No Blacks Need Apply.

“It’s the worst it’s ever been,” said Bethann Hardison, a former model who went on to start a successful model agency in the 1980s that promoted racial diversity.

AMONG the people she represented were Naomi Campbell and Tyson Beckford, the chiseled hunk who broke barriers in the 1990s by becoming the unexpected symbol of the country-club fantasia that is a Ralph Lauren Polo campaign.

“It’s heartbreaking for me now because the agents send the girls out there to castings and nobody wants to see them,” said Ms. Hardison, referring to black models. “And if they do, they’ll call afterward and say, ‘Well, you know, black girls do much better in Europe, or else black girls do much better in New York, or we already have our black girl.’”

Last month in New York, Ms. Hardison convened a panel of fashion experts at the Bryant Park Hotel to discuss “The Lack of the Black Image in Fashion Today,” an event she will reprise Monday at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. “Modeling is probably the one industry where you have the freedom to refer to people by their color and reject them in their work,” she said.

The exclusion is rarely subtle. An agent for the modeling firm Marilyn once told Time magazine of receiving requests from fashion clients that baldly specified “Caucasians only.”

The message is not always so blatant these days, but it is no less clear. Take for example the case of two young models, one white, one black, both captivating beauties at the start of their careers. Irina Kulikova, a feline 17-year-old Russian, appeared on no fewer than 24 runways in New York last month, a success she went on to repeat in Milan with 14 shows, and in Paris with 24 more. Honorine Uwera, a young Canadian of Rwandan heritage, was hired during the New York season for just five runway shows.

While Ms. Uwera’s showing was respectable, it was not enough to justify the cost to her agency of sending her to Europe, where most modeling careers are solidified.

“We represent a lot of ethnic girls,” said Ivan Bart, the senior vice president of IMG Models, which represents a roster of the commercially successful models of the moment, among them black superstars like Alek Wek, Ms. Campbell and Liya Kebede.

“We have new girls, too,” Mr. Bart added, young comers like Ms. Uwera, Quiana Grant and Mimi Roche. “We include them in our show package, give them the same promotion as any other girl, and get the same responses: ‘She’s lovely, but she’s not right for the show.’”

Although, in fact, Ms. Roche and Ms. Grant, both black, were seen on runways in the last five weeks, the reality was that only one black model worked at anything like the frequency of her white counterparts: Chanel Iman Robinson, 17, who is African-American and Korean. Particularly in Milan and Paris, Ms. Robinson’s was often the only nonwhite face amid a blizzard of Eastern European blondes.

It is not just a handful of genetically gifted young women who are hurt by this exclusion. Vast numbers of consumers draw their information about fashion and identity from runways, along with cues about what, at any given moment, the culture decrees are the new contours of beauty and style.

“Years ago, runways were almost dominated by black girls,” said J. Alexander, a judge on “America’s Next Top Model,” referring to the gorgeous mosaic runway shows staged by Hubert de Givenchy or Yves Saint Laurent in the 1970s. “Now some people are not interested in the vision of the black girl unless they’re doing a jungle theme and they can put her in a grass skirt and diamonds and hand her a spear.”

And some people, said Diane Von Furstenberg, the designer and president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, “just don’t think about it at all.” Ms. Von Furstenberg herself has always employed models of all ethnicities on her runways. (This September, she hired seven black women, more perhaps than any single label except Baby Phat and Heatherette.) Yet she is increasingly the exception to an unspoken industry rule.

“I always want to do that,” she said, referring to the casting of women of color. “I can make a difference. We all can. But so much is about education and to talk about this is an important beginning.”

But isn’t it strange, she was asked, that she would have to invoke the rhetoric of racial inclusiveness at a time when Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in media, and Barack Obama is running for president?

“Why did we go backward?” Ms. Von Furstenberg asked.

Agents blame designers for the current state of affairs. Designers insist agents send them nothing but skinny blondes. Magazine editors bemoan the lack of black women with the ineffable attributes necessary to put across the looks of a given season.

The current taste in models is for blank-featured “androids,” whose looks don’t offer much competition to the clothes, pointed out James Scully, a seasoned agent who made his mark casting the richly diverse Gucci shows in the heyday of Tom Ford. In today’s climate, it is far more difficult to promote a black woman than her white counterpart.

“You want to sell the model on the basis of her beauty, not her race,” said Kyle Hagler, an agent at IMG. Yet when he sends models out on casting calls based on what he terms a “beauty perspective,” omitting any mention to potential clients of race, “You always get a call back saying, ‘You didn’t tell me she was black.’”

THE reasons for this may seem obvious, and yet the unconscious bigotry is tricky to pin down.

“I’m not pointing a finger and saying people are racist,” said Ms. Hardison, who nevertheless recounted a recent exchange with the creative director of a major fashion label: “She said to me, ‘I have to be honest with you, when a girl walks in, I just don’t see color.’ Meanwhile, they have one girl, or more likely, none in their show.”

Ms. Hardison explained: “‘I don’t see color?’ Does that mean, you don’t want to see?”

There is something illustrative of the entire issue, and the state of the industry, to be found in this September’s Italian Vogue.

Just one image of a black model appears in the issue, midway through a 17-page article photographed by Miles Aldridge and titled the “Vagaries of Fashion.” In it, the glacial blond Anja Rubik portrays an indolent, overdressed Park Avenue princess with a gilded apartment, a couture wardrobe, two towhead children and a collection of heavy rocks. The sole black model in the pictorial is more modestly attired, in an aproned pinafore.

She plays the maid.

Source : The New York Times

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Despite all of the professed interest in diversifying newsrooms, almost three-fourths of American newspapers employer fewer people of color than they did in earlier years, according to a new study.

An analysis done by Bill Dedman and Stephen Doig for the Knight Foundation, a Florida-based organization affiliated with a major newspaper chain, concludes: “Among the 200 largest newspapers, 73 percent employ fewer non-Whites, as a share of the newsroom jobs, than they did in some earlier year from 1990 to 2004. Only 27 percent of these large dailies were at their peak as 2005 began.”

The Baltimore Sun is a case in point.

“In the Sun’s newsroom, meanwhile, employment of journalists of color peaked back in 1991 at 19.6 percent of the supervising editors, reporters, copy editors and photographers,” the report states. “That fell to 14.2 percent the next year, struggled back up to 18.0 by 1996 and has drifted lower, setting this year at 15.9 percent of the staff.”

Other top papers that are below their peak include: The San Francisco Chronicle (peaked in 1998), Newark Star-Ledger (1998), New York Daily News (1995) Cleveland Plain Dealer (1995), USA Today (1994), the Wall Street Journal (2000), the Washington Post (2004) the New York Times (2003) and the Los Angeles Times ( 2000).

Herbert Lowe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), says the problem extends beyond declining numbers.

“I think the greater issue is when we get folks into newsrooms, what more can be done to keep them there,” he says. “We have only 34 more Black journalists working in mainstream newsrooms than 2000 or 2001. We know that there are people getting hired everyday, so if the numbers are so low, that means that people are leaving.”

Lowe works as a courts reporter for Newsday, which had its most diverse staff in 2002. He notes that African-Americans leave the industry at a higher rate than White journalists.

“I think it has much to do with the lack of advancement or lack of opportunity for advancement,” he explains. “Our members have consistently said they want a chance to be involved with big stories whether it’s across the city, across the state, across the country or the world.”

Philip Dixon, former managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and now chair of the Journalism Department at Howard University, left journalism after working for top papers such as the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer, is not surprised that the industry is having a hard time retaining quality reporters of color.

“It’s not surprising because I’ve been seeing people leave the business for a long time. I left the business. I think part of it is that it’s hard and it takes so much of your life – I left because it wasn’t fun anymore,” Dixon says. “You retain people by being straight with them and by having transparency in your system. No, every game is not fair, but you can tell everyone safely how the game is played – that if you want to be a foreign correspondent, you need to do these things. Not all newsrooms do a good of telling people how to get what they want.”

The Knight study also pierced the myth that large newspapers are making major improvement while small-circulation dailies have less impressive records.

Dori Maynard, president and CEO of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, a group that helps news media reflect America’s diversity in staffing, content and business operations, is surprised that most of the small and mid-sized papers are the ones doing the most to diversity their staff.

“I thought that was really interesting because for a long time in the industry there has been this feeling that people of color won’t go to small markets. It turns out, there is something you can do because people are getting people of color to go to small and mid-sized markets, which give you the foundation to work in the bigger papers,” Maynard says. “This is a great sign for the industry. People should look to their colleagues, figure out what they’re doing right and do the same thing. This is not the intractable problem that people make it out to be.”

Only 18 percent of all newspapers currently employ their highest number of journalists of color. Among them: the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Arizona Republic, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Detroit Free Press, the Oregonian, the St. Petersburg Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Sharon Rosenhause, diversity chair for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the group that publishes an annual employment census of newspapers, says that some papers are working diligently to diversify their staffs.

“A number of newsrooms around the country, my own included, continue to increase their numbers,” she says. “In almost four years, we have just about doubled the numbers in our newsroom – we’re almost at 30 percent now. The problem for some newspapers is that the communities are changing so quickly, we can hardly keep up with the pace,”

However, many papers appear to be making no effort to make their newsrooms mirror the communities they cover.

“The number of newspapers reporting an all-white newsroom declined a bit. There were 346 newspapers this year, 374 last year,” the report found. “Although many of these all-white newspapers are small, they have a combined weekday circulation of 3,337,478 – about the total of USA Today and the New York Times combined.”

Rosenhause, who works for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, says. “I think it’s possible to not have the most diverse staff and still be very sensitive in how you cover diversity and diverse communities. It’s just easier if the people on your staff speak the languages and have those cultural connections.”

Dixon of Howard University agrees.

“I think in many places it’s not a glass ceiling, it’s a stone ceiling. It’s a concrete ceiling,” he explains. “On other occasions, I’m not sure how much of it is the ceiling and how much of it is the person. When you start competing for the top jobs in journalism, it’s really fierce competition and you have to really want it and you have to do the things it takes to get it. You have to give up pieces of your life. You don’t have to give up your dignity, but you have to say I’m in this game and I’m playing to win.”

In order to advance, Dixon says, African-Americans can’t rest on their laurels.

”I found as a manager that too often Blacks, Latinos and Asians thought they did their work and did it very well the right thing would happen to them,” Dixon states. “That’s not always the case because how would people know what the right thing is for you if you don’t tell them? I can count on one hand the number of times that people of color have come at me and confronted me, saying give me a raise, give me a better assignment. White folks do it all the time. Managers are not going to go out their way and tell people to come ask for a raise.”

Maynard says it’s no secret what African-American journalists want.

“People want to be listened to, they want to be challenged and they want to see room for advancement,” she states. “Without that room for advancement, why would you stay in a career that you view as a dead end?”

For Rosenhause, diversity is not simply about numbers.

“A good newspaper should want its pages to look like its community. People should be able to pick up the paper, see themselves in stories, and hear their voices in stories. If you are writing a story about investing and you only write about White middle-class people that are investing and your community is broader and deeper than that, you’ve failed,” she said. “This is real practical. It’s not about being politically correct. The more diverse your community is it seems to me that practically you want your newsroom to be diverse.”

Source : BlackPressUSA.com

By Michelle Simonelli

So many television programs. so little diversity. From sitcoms to dramas, traditional networks to cable, television shows are so heavily Caucasian that African-American activists are demanding — and starting to get — acknowledgment of the need for change.

Ever since the NAACP called last year for more diversity at the major television networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox have begun to initiate subtle changes both onscreen and off.

The hope, they say, is to improve diversity not only in their programming, but in their organizations as well.

Last summer Kweisi Mfume, president and CEO of the NAACP, took aim at the four networks in a press conference, calling their fall program lineups “a virtual whitewash.” Of 26 new shows launched last fall, not one had a minority actor in a starring role.

The African-American community has also recognized the problem, giving sarcastic monikers to the networks such as Nothing But Caucasians (NBC), Why Bother? (WB), and Underpaid Negroes (UPN). Fox featured the NBC and UPN monikers on an episode of its program “MAD TV.”

Small Steps Toward Change - Agreements Reached Between NAACP and Networks

Mfume threatened a NAACP boycott of at least one of the networks if it did not take immediate steps to diversify its programming. Representatives of the organization met with each network individually in the fall, resulting in a set of agreements announced in January and February.

Though the central concern is still programming, immediate plans call for more behind-the-scenes jobs and a stepped-up recruitment initiative. NAACP spokesperson John C. White says the non-profit organization is optimistic that the end result will be diverse programming.

“The agreements focused on writers, producers, and directors, but we believe that it will ultimately result in more roles for minorities [on television],” he said. “We think that the agreements, while not perfect, were a good first step.”

NBC plans to fund an extra writing position for every show in its second season which a minority writer will fill. ABC promised to establish by July grants aimed at discovering and providing support for minority writers and directors. Among plans at Fox is one to add a minority trainee to the writing staff of both new and returning network programs. And CBS has tied executive compensation directly to efforts to diversify the workforce.

“It’s not a question of looking at the numbers [of minorities on TV shows],” says Kassie Canter of NBC. “We’re looking at the whole picture.”

Committment to Diversity - Networks Discuss Racial Makeup of Shows

The networks consider this broad-stroke approach to be the best way to enact long-term change. As Tom Tyrer of Fox put it: “You want to treat the disease rather than the symptoms.”

Tyrer said the only way the network programming will improve is by changing the entire process, not just individual elements. Creating a workforce that embraces diversity, he said, in turn will help generate more diverse programs.

Kevin Brockman, vice president of media and artist relations at ABC, agrees. “It’s something we are trying to do across the board,” he said.

While all four networks concede that they need to add more ethnically mixed programs to their lineups, each highlighted examples of existing programs as proof of their commitment.

Canter cited two NBC dramas, “Law & Order” and “Third Watch,” as evidence of the networks’ commitment to diversity. “Law and Order” centers around detectives and attorneys investigating and prosecuting crimes, while “Third Watch” follows a group of police officers, paramedics, and firefighters that work the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. Both shows feature ethnically mixed ensemble casts.

“We understand that there is more that we can do, but we feel that the network is doing a good job with its programming and showing minorities in positive roles,” Canter said.

Tyrer pointed to Fox’s upper-class legal comedy-drama “Ally McBeal,” and ensemble cast members Lisa Nicole Carson and Lucy Liu. The African-American Carson portrays a lawyer named Renee Radick who recently opened her own firm, while the Asian American Liu plays Ling “with a soft ‘L’” Woo, a lawyer at the Cage & Fish firm. Tyrer says the diverse ensemble is what gives the show its quirky feel and is a good part of the reason for its wide appeal.

Brockman of ABC said the same was true of his network’s successful law drama “The Practice.” Its ensemble cast includes black actors Lisa Gay Hamilton and Steve Harris. Hamilton stars as Rebecca Washington, a paralegal/office manager at Donnell, Young, Dole, & Frutt. Harris portrays Eugene Young, one of the firm’s partners. The network has also recently reached a development deal with another well-regarded black actor, former “Homicide” star, Andre Braugher.

But Brockman acknowledged that the most popular show on television, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” is a concern for the network. Since its debut last year, the show’s contestants have primarily been white males. “It is one of the least diverse, and that’s an interesting issue for us right now,” said Brockman, acknowledging that the network had not yet found a way to ensure a more mixed group of contestants.

Gil Schwartz, senior vice president of communications at CBS, said his network was proud of its No. 1 standing with African-American audiences for the fall. A study released in February by Manhattan-based media buyer TN Media found that CBS airs nine of the top 20 primetime programs watched in African-American households, including “Touched By An Angel.”

“We integrate African-Americans, Asians, and Hispanics into our programs so that if they succeed they are diverse and appeal to a diverse audience,” he said. While some of the other major networks use a similar approach, networks like the WB and UPN still rely on casts made up entirely of minorities to attract the African-American viewer.

Schwartz believes that the mixed cast formula featured in popular programs on major networks works better than so-called “ghetto programming,” or shows based entirely on minority casts. He cited “Touched By An Angel” with Della Reese and “Martial Law” with Arsenio Hall and Sammo Hung as successful examples of the mixed cast format. In “Touched By An Angel” Reese portrays Tess, a tough angel who serves as an assignment supervisor to Roma Downey’s character, Monica. Hung stars on “Martial Law” as Sammo Law, a Los Angeles police officer, while Hall plays Terrell Parker, a former LAPD public relations officer who assists Law on his cases.

But the network does occasionally stray from its racially mixed casting formula. “City of Angels,” which premiered on CBS midseason, received a lot of media attention for being a drama with a primarily minority-based cast. Since the program premiered after the NAACP’s threatened boycott, the media considered it a leader in the new wave of diversity programming. However, Schwartz says there is no direct link between “City of Angels” and the NAACP initiative, since the program was in the works with creator Steven Bocho prior to the threatened boycott.

The Slippery Slope of Sucess - The Uncertain Future of Diversity Programming

Schwartz maintains that “City of Angels” has as good a shot at succeeding midseason as it would had it premiered in the fall. While the show has been reporting only average Nielsen ratings, its 8 p.m. Wednesday timeslot could make it a ratings winner. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show has netted a 23 percent improvement over what CBS was averaging with sitcoms at that hour.

While outsiders view “City of Angels” as a minority show, Schwartz said the casting pertains to the show’s premise, not to the overall need of the network to bring African-American actors into the fold. “The show is based in an inner city hospital, so it has to mirror that society,” Schwartz said. “[City of Angels] is the most bold and aggressive attempt to put a show of that nature on TV.”

Still, Ian Maitland, professor of film and television at New York University, says television’s diversity efforts are lagging, especially when compared to the film industry.

“I believe the thrust [for diversity in film] came from the Screen Actors Guild, who check each film they are contracted on to see if blacks are seen in a positive role, and that they are featured as much as possible,” Maitland said. “Television is far more worried about the ratings than the positive image.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, shows with largely African-American casts have had a difficult time succeeding with national audiences. The most recent one to achieve long-term success was NBC’s sitcom “The Cosby Show,” which followed the lives of the Huxtables, an affluent African-American family, for eight seasons.

Bill Cosby is currently featured in CBS’s comedy, “Cosby.” The fourth-year program follows the life of Hilton Lucas (Cosby), a former airline employee, as he interacts with family and friends. The show had decent ratings in its original Monday timeslot but has not fared well since moving to Fridays, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

UPN is another network that has also done well with African-Americans, coming in second behind CBS in African-American viewers in the TN Media study. The NAACP has said that it will also look to reach diversity agreements with UPN and the WB, according to The New York Daily News. But Paul McGuire, senior vice president of media relations at UPN, says the organization had not yet contacted the network.

McGuire says UPN continually tries to include minorities in its programs. He cited sitcoms like “Moesha” and its spinoff “The Parkers” as among those that appeal to African-American viewers. Both shows revolve around young, middleclass African-American women coming of age. The TN Media study found that both the WB and UPN sitcoms are between 15 and 18 times more popular among African-Americans than whites.

“Our network is always trying to reflect the nation [in its programming],” McGuire said. “I think it’s more about what these shows are about that is the biggest draw.”

The increased media attention to every development deal and diversity initiative does not bother the networks. While Brockman admits that “pretty much any deal gets covered these days,” he acknowledged that diversity issues should be getting extra media coverage because of the important role they play in network programming and organizational structure.

Schwartz agrees. “It’s an important issue. We are the mass media and we should be diverse. To the point that we’re not [diverse] it’s a problem,” he said.

Meanwhile the networks are beginning to develop their programming for next season. While it’s too early for network officials to know how their fall lineup will crystallize, all are confident that there will be no repeat of last year.

“We’re just as committed to scheduling diverse programming now as we were before,” Schwartz said. The NAACP will not be keeping a tally on the diversity of CBS’s fall shows, according to Schwartz, but it will continue to work with the network to meet expectations.

White says the NAACP will check on the networks’ progress by requesting information such as employment statistics and other records to which they have previously been granted access.

Canter says that while putting minority actors in lead roles is important for all of the networks, it is an ongoing process. Rather than having “token” minority characters onscreen simply to fill need, the networks are looking for quality. Canter says NBC wants the roles for its shows to be well developed and the characters to be good role models.

Tyrer believes the NAACP’s involvement has had a positive impact on all of the major networks. “When [the networks] put together their schedules last May we collectively looked around and said, ‘this shouldn’t have happened,’” Tyrer said.

The NAACP hopes its efforts will eventually result in a permanent change in programming whereby shows are all-inclusive and representative of the nation as a whole.

“Ideally the end result would be that American television reflects American society,” White said. “This would include all minorities, not just African-Americans.”

Source : Journalism at NYU