U.S. Advertising Industry Sees Rise in Discrimination
By Janine Fondon, UnityFirst.com
A new study of America's advertising industry has found dramatic levels of racial discrimination throughout the industry, with bias against African-American professionals found in pay, hiring, promotions, assignments and other areas. The study was initiated by a coalition of legal, civil rights and industry leaders who created the Madison Avenue Project.
Cyrus Mehri, Project leader and prominent civil rights lawyer, called the findings "absolutely astonishing in this day and age." Angela Ciccolo of the NAACP, another Project partner, commented that "the time has come to stand up to change this industry." Overall, the findings reveal that racial discrimination is 38% worse in the advertising industry than in the overall U.S. labor market, and that the “discrimination divide” between advertising and other U.S. industries is more than twice as bad now as it was 30 years ago.
Specific findings include:
- Black college graduates working in advertising earn $.80 for every dollar earned by their equally qualified White counterparts
- Based on national demographic data, 9.6% of advertising managers and professionals should be African-Americans. The actual percentage in 2008 is 5.3%, representing a difference of 7,200 executive-level jobs
- About 16% of large advertising firms employ no Black managers or professionals, a rate 60% higher than in the overall labor market
- Black managers and professionals in the industry are only one-tenth as likely as their White counterparts to earn $100,000 a year
- Blacks are only 62% as likely as their White counterparts to work in the powerful "creative" and "client contact" functions in advertising agencies
- Eliminating the industry's current Black-White employment gap would require tripling its Black managers and professionals
An appropriate response, the study concluded, "will require fundamentally transforming the workplace culture of general market advertising agencies." Specifically, agencies must root out the stereotypes that make race, not ability, determine employment potential; halt the "buddy system," in which personal relationships and social comfort often count for more than job performance; and eliminate the assumptions that racial minorities can't succeed in non-ethnic markets.
The Madison Avenue Project is led by the NAACP and attorney Cyrus Mehri, of Mehri & Skalet, PLLC, who has won several multimillion-dollar discrimination settlements against such corporations as The Coca-Cola Company, Morgan Stanley and Texaco Inc.; with the cooperation of Sanford Moore, a former advertising executive, current New York City talk radio co-host and longtime advocate for racial parity in advertising. "Today we are sending a message to the advertising industry: this conduct is unacceptable and must change," Mehri said.
"I have witnessed firsthand the mendacity and machinations that have kept African-Americans invisible on and to Madison Avenue for over four decades," Moore said. "Madison Avenue has created and perpetuated a 'separate and unequal' marketing paradigm which is reflected in their advertising, their workforce and among their executive ranks. Even though our dollars provide the profits, the industry is still afraid of the dark."
