Tech’s Troubling New Trend: Diversity Is in Your Head – The New York Times

2017/10/18 Leave a comment

While agree that racial, gender and religious diversity will not necessarily result in cognitive diversity (minorities may conform to the dominant workplace culture), Williams is right to note that it could be used as a smokescreen:

Discussing her work at Apple at an event last week about fighting racial injustice, Denise Young Smith, the company’s vice president of diversity and inclusion, said, “There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse, too, because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.”

That’s right: a dozen white men, so long as they were not raised in the same household and don’t think identical thoughts, could be considered diverse. After a furor erupted, Ms. Smith clarified her comments in an email to her team that was obtained and published by TechCrunch. It reads in part, “Understanding that diversity includes women, people of color, L.G.B.T.Q. people, and all underrepresented minorities is at the heart of our work to create an environment that is inclusive of everyone,” and “I regret the choice of words I used to make this point.”

But Ms. Smith wasn’t the first to endorse the view in her initial statement. Those of us in the tech industry know that the idea of “cognitive diversity” is gaining traction among leaders in our field. In too many cases, this means that, in the minds of those with influence over hiring, the concept of diversity is watered down and reinterpreted to encompass what Silicon Valley has never had a shortage of — individual white men, each with their unique thoughts and ideas. This shift creates a distraction from efforts to increase the race and gender diversity the tech industry is sorely lacking.

This overlaps with the sentiments expressed in a screed by a Google software engineer that critiqued the company’s race and gender diversity efforts and ascribed the unequal representation of women in tech to “biological causes.” It included the line, “Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity.”

If our focus shifts to cognitive diversity, it could provide an easy way around doing the hard work of increasing the embarrassingly low numbers of blacks and Latinos in the ranks of employees, in leadership roles, as suppliers and vendors, and on boards. The leadership of Apple, where Ms. Smith works, was only 3 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic in 2016. A recent report by Recode found that women made up at most 30 percent of leadership roles and no more than 27 percent of technical roles at major tech companies. The percentages of black and Latino employees in leadership was even more dismal, ranging from 4 percent to 10 percent.

The shift toward focusing on viewpoint or cognitive diversity may trace its roots back to the 1978 Supreme Court decision Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which set the stage for schools to consider race in admissions because of the educational benefits of diversity, rather than to redress prior discrimination. It is understandable that because the public discourse around affirmative action shifted along these lines, some came to believe that any kind of diversity — including cognitive diversity — must be equally valuable. But that means that the most meaningful ways through which this is formed (cultural, religious, sexual orientation, socioeconomic, ability and especially gender and racial differences) may be forgotten.

If this happens, we could lose an important check on the tendency of people who work at tech companies to hire more people like themselves. According to the Society for Human Resources Management, employee referrals accounted for over 30 percent of all hires in 2016. Employees typically recommend people similar to them in racial identity and gender, so it requires dedicated effort to recruit and hire people who don’t already have identities that match up with those of current employees. Counting up variations of “viewpoints” — however one might do so — won’t achieve that. And, to potential applicants from underrepresented groups, statements about “cognitive diversity” will send an unwelcoming message about a company’s real priorities for inclusion.

As my former Facebook colleague Regina Dugan said recently, even if cognitive diversity is a company’s ultimate goal, “we can’t step away from the idea that diversity also looks like identity diversity.” The effort to hire people with different points of view must not come at the expense of hiring members of actual underrepresented communities who add tangible, bottom-line value — and who deserve to work in tech as much as anyone.

Ms. Smith said in the email clarifying her remarks, “Our commitment at Apple to increasing racial and gender diversity is as strong as it’s ever been.” That kind of diversity — the old-fashioned kind, that still remains elusive — is what I hope my industry won’t abandon.

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Diversity in the public service’s executive ranks

2017/10/17 Leave a comment

My latest, looking at how women, visible minorities and Indigenous people are represented in the highest ranks of the federal public service (DMs and EXs).

The following two charts summarize the historical evolution of how transparency and regular reporting have resulted in a more diverse public service at the overall and executive levels:

Source: Diversity in the public service’s executive ranks

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MacArthur Fellow Wanted To See If A Radio Soap In Rwanda Could Make People More Tolerant : NPR

2017/10/12 Leave a comment

Another part of the toolkit, using popular culture to affect change:

What will it take for the people of this world to drop their prejudices, to move past intolerance — and just get along?

That’s a question Princeton psychologist Betsy Levy Paluck — one of the 24 MacArthur Fellows announced on Wednesday — has dedicated her career to answering.

Back in 2002, when Paluck was a graduate student at Yale University, her adviser asked: “What does psychology say about how to reduce prejudice and conflict?” She and her adviser were teaching a class about hate speech and political intolerance, and he wanted to give students examples of ways to counteract those things.

Paluck searched and searched. And she drew a blank. “There actually weren’t any rigorous studies looking at solutions.”

So she designed one herself, looking to see if a radio soap opera could help bridge the divides in post-genocide Rwanda.

We asked Paluck about her research, as well as her plans for the $625,000 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (which is among NPR’s financial supporters).

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Through the course of your research, you’ve worked with some deeply divided societies — including post-genocide Rwanda, where members of the country’s Hutu majority had slaughtered 800,000 minority Tutsis. What did you learn there about how to re-unite such a fragmented society?

Something my adviser and I were teaching in that class at Yale was the Rwandan genocide and particularly the media’s involvement in directing and inciting violence during the genocide. That’s when I came across this radio soap opera that was basically trying to do the flip side.

In other words, to make peace? How did you proceed?

I called them up and I said: Can I help study the effects of your program?

I went to Rwanda interested in just looking at how people understood messages that come through pop culture and mass media.

I set up a study where I randomized exposure — so some people heard [New Dawn], a soap about a divided society that ultimately reconciles. And others listened to a different soap about health and HIV.

People loved New Dawn — people were so engaged. They thought of these characters as representatives of Rwandans like themselves.

What I found was they were aware of the social messages that were coming through this radio program — and they would often disagree with them.

In the soap, there’s an interethnic relationship between a man and a woman from different communities [the story didn’t refer to Hutus and Tutsis directly]. It’s this Romeo and Juliet story, but instead of meeting untimely deaths they start a peaceful revolution.

And people would say, “This is clearly something that Rwandans are into. They’re into this relationship on the soap. I may not personally believe in letting my daughter marry someone from the other ethnicity, but I’m going to let her — because that’s what we as Rwandans are doing now.”

So I found that people’s behavior changed even when their personal beliefs stayed the same.

And that’s what you published in your 2009 study in the American Political Science Review. You found that both groups — those who watched New Dawn and those who watched the other soap — overwhelmingly agreed that there was mistrust in their community. But in discussion groups, those who watched New Dawn were more likely to suggest or support efforts to welcome newcomers and work together to solve local problems.

We’re not lemmings — we’re not conformists. But we really don’t want to seem wrong or odd to other people. When other people’s ideas of what’s right and wrong change, or their rules about how you can be change, that makes a big difference.

I’ve been really interested in this idea: That how we behave is actually much more influenced by what other people think than by our own personal ideas. I think everybody’s had the experience of doing something because they thought it was expected of them.

There’s no more powerful example of this than Rwandans describing what the violence was like. Many of them said, “Before the genocide we didn’t hate our Tutsi neighbors. But after the genocide started, it was like violence was the law.”

In come cases that was literally true. Some people were being recruited by authorities to incite violence. But when people said violence was law, they meant something more. They meant that it was a social law.

Who sets these social norms?

Based on our findings, I think at times mass media and popular culture can do that. Government policies can do that as well. Recently, we studied a U.S. Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage, and we found that after the Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, people were more likely to think that other Americans supported same-sex marriage even if their personal beliefs didn’t change.

Your research looks at how people can use mass media to change how people think. Is there a dark side to that proposition?

I’ve had people say to me, “Aren’t people going to take your findings and use them for evil purposes?” And my response is they’re already doing that. There’s negative media, there’s propaganda. There are people advocating for really negative causes.

I’m interested in whether we can respond to that: Can you use those same tools to diminish conflict?

Is that what you plan to do with your MacArthur grant money?

It’s still early, but I have two goals.

One goal is to find creative ways to promote collaboration between activists, NGOs and social scientists. It’s hard for activists to take a break from what we’re doing to evaluate — are we doing this in the best way? Social scientists are answering those kinds of questions. Perhaps NGOs could have social-scientist-in-residence programs, the same way that many universities have artist in residence programs.

I also want to promote and train the next generation of scholars to do this kind of work.

What got you interested in fighting intolerance in the first place?

I was raised by parents who were deeply interested in social justice. And it never really occurred to me that that shouldn’t play into the kinds of research that I do.

Source: MacArthur Fellow Wanted To See If A Radio Soap In Rwanda Could Make People More Tolerant : Goats and Soda : NPR

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Why Canada’s political pipeline leaves little room for anyone but white men

2017/10/02 Leave a comment

Good study by Erin Tolley (disclosure: know Erin from our time together at CIC/IRCC and we remain in contact):

For women, the toughest hurdle is at the nomination level, the first checkpoint into the political realm.

Racialized minorities come up against barriers further along, beginning at the candidate selection stage.

That’s according to Erin Tolley, who teaches political science at the University of Toronto.

Tolley is among the first to map the race and gender of more than 800 people vying for a political party’s nomination ahead of the 2015 vote in 136 of the country’s most diverse ridings, where racialized minorities make up at least 15 per cent of the population, half of which are in Ontario. (Her tally uses Statistics Canada’s definition of “visible minority” and therefore does not include Indigenous nomination contestants or candidates.)

Wannabe politicians must first successfully compete for their choice party’s nomination in order to become the candidate in an election.

Though Tolley’s project is still in the works, early findings suggest political parties aren’t doing enough to diversify the pool of candidates.

“The dynamics for women and racialized minorities are different,” she said. “That’s important for parties to know because they therefore need to have different strategies if they want to attract and want to run women or racialized minority candidates.”

Women make up 52 per cent of the population, but only accounted for 33 per cent of nomination contestants across those 136 ridings. The proportion of female election candidates ticked up slightly, to 36 per cent, and 31 per cent of elected MPs in those districts were women.

That suggests women are less likely to throw their hat in the ring, but once they do, they fare well.

“Maybe women don’t want to run, they don’t want to be called ‘Barbies,’ for example,” Tolley said, citing veteran MP Gerry Ritz’s now-deleted and apologized-for recent tweet that referred to Environment Minister Catherine McKenna as “climate Barbie.”

Tolley put the onus on political parties.

“Political parties don’t do sufficient work to identify women candidates and encourage them to run,” she said. “Frankly, not enough fingers are pointed at political parties. We don’t need to change the electoral system to get women into politics. All parties need to do is nominate more women. It’s actually pretty simple.”

Racialized minorities don’t experience the same obstacle.

According to the data, minorities declare their candidacy in proportions that match their presence in the population. However, by the time Canadians go to the polls the share of MPs of colour is far below that.

“They want to be nomination contestants, but then the party is less likely to select them, and voters are even less likely to select them,” Tolley said.

Across the 136 ridings, racialized minorities comprised 38 per cent of the population and 37 per cent of nomination contestants. That dwindled to 33 per cent of election candidates, and to 29 per cent of MPs — an eight-point gap between the number of hopeful nominees and those who won a seat on the Hill.

A contributing factor is one Tolley has previously explored — that minority candidates tend to compete against each other in battleground districts.

That’s because racialized minorities are more likely to run, and win, in more diverse ridings, Tolley said. For instance, three candidates of colour may vie for their party’s nomination in an ethnically-rich district, and split the ballot.

“So, you have this big pool of people who are interested, but they’re competing against each other, essentially cancelling each other out — and that’s happening at each level,” she explained.

As for white men, their political possibilities widen.

Thirty-nine per cent of nomination contestants in those diverse ridings were white men, and they comprised 40 per cent of candidates on the ticket. Nearly half, 48.5 per cent, of those who won a seat were white males.

Source: Why Canada’s political pipeline leaves little room for anyone but white men | Toronto Star

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Pluralism is a path to lasting peace and prosperity: Outgoing Governor General Johnston

2017/09/30 Leave a comment

Well stated:

A predecessor, Vincent Massey, once said: “Canada is not a melting pot. Canada is an association of peoples who have, and cherish, great differences but who work together because they can respect themselves and each other.” Today we call this pluralism, and I believe Canada’s opportunity lies in its ability to show the world how pluralism is a viable path to lasting peace and prosperity. Canada is a social innovation, a constantly evolving work-in-progress based upon the notion that diverse peoples can live and work together toward an ever-more inclusive, fair and just society.

Of course, we have no cause for complacency. Intolerance does exist here and it is essential that we resist efforts to reduce diversity and restrict inclusiveness. Canada’s progress as a country has always grown from a commitment to diversity, inclusiveness and pluralism. Success in such a vast, diverse and challenging land requires that we work together. This is the story of our country and it’s important that we know and understand its uniqueness, significance and how embedded the principles of partnership and compromise are in the very fabric of Canada. This is the path forward.

There are two related, critical elements that Canada should pay close attention to in the years to come: learning and trust. As a lifelong student and teacher, I believe education is the key to ensuring equality of opportunity for all Canadians and to achieving the pinnacles of excellence that allow us to innovate and lead in a technologically advanced world. From early-childhood education and literacy to reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples to research at the outer limits of knowledge, we must make learning a central part of our lives. Doing so will reinforce the second critical element – trust – by which I mean trust in one another and in the institutions which are the glue that binds Canadians together. Inequalities and the rapid changes brought about by globalization have undermined trust in Canada and throughout much of the world, but a society that learns and works together in an inclusive manner will see the basis for that sense of mistrust replaced by a sense of hope.

So, what have I learned as Governor-General? One, while Canada still has much work to do in building a more inclusive society, our diversity is a strength and a comparative advantage in the world. Two, in Canada, past, present and no doubt future, we’re stronger and more prosperous when we compromise and work together. And three, despite our many cultures, ethnic origins and languages spoken, we all have a great deal in common – a great deal called Canada. Let this be a country that draws on the diverse talents and abilities of all its peoples in steering a course through this complex, changing world.

Source: Pluralism is a path to lasting peace and prosperity – The Globe and Mail

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Promoting diversity and inclusion, and how to tell the difference: RBC Neil McLaughlin

2017/09/27 Leave a comment

McLaughlin, head of personal and commercial banking for the Royal Bank of Canada, on how to leverage and benefit from diversity:

Canada is one of the world’s most diverse countries. Business gets it.

Diversity and inclusion are part of our values. They’re critical to the future prosperity of our country. They’re a business imperative and key for growth and innovation.

We know this. So what are we doing about it?

That’s a growing challenge for Canadian businesses as we come to grips with twin revolutions in the technology we use and the society we serve.

This summer, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and the Institute for Canadian Citizenship surveyed 64 leading organizations – from hospitals to technology firms – that collectively employ 1.2 million Canadians to ask them about diversity and inclusion: how they define it, how they go about promoting it and how they measure it.

The survey results will be released at the 6 Degrees Conference in Toronto on Sept. 26, and the findings are both encouraging and concerning. Canadian business gets diversity, but we’re struggling with inclusion – an imprecise and ambiguous word that most employers don’t know how to approach. Diversity is often considered to be what we see. It’s a fact. Inclusion is what we hear – how we value, respect and involve everyone. It’s a choice.

Nearly 90 per cent of organizations in the survey strongly believe diverse and inclusive teams make better decisions. And, as we deal with whipsaw changes in the digital revolution, we realize we need more diverse perspectives than ever.

Here’s the rub. Where the majority of organizations see themselves as diverse, and go to great lengths to foster diversity, few have found a way to come to grips with inclusion strategically.

The numbers tell the story: 65 per cent strongly agree that leveraging diversity is fundamental to organizational performance, but only 10 per cent say they’re taking full advantage of a diverse work force. Only 20 per cent tie diversity and inclusion results to performance objectives and only 10 per cent measure the effects of diversity and inclusion on innovation.

In roundtables across the country, we heard shared concerns from different and diverse companies. A mining giant saw attracting more women as an answer to the problem of an aging work force – and then realized at its mine sites it didn’t have goggles or helmets that fit them properly. A state-of-the-art hospital in a low-income neighbourhood discovered that many of the residents its serves view it as the “castle on a hill” rather than a health-care partner or potential employer.

These firms recognized that while they’re surrounded by diversity, they’re not harnessing it and, therefore, are not moving at the pace of change of the communities around them. We all know we have more talent, more ideas, more passion, more perspectives than we use. In business, we’d call it a stranded asset.

When you consider that Canada accepts 300,000 immigrants annually, that one-fifth of Canadians are visible minorities and that 60 per cent of Canadian females between the ages of 25 and 64 have post-secondary degrees, the survey numbers tell us we need to do better. Add to that the fact global talent is highly mobile, and it’s clear: We need to do better now.

At RBC, we’ve seen incredible creativity and innovation through a co-op program, Amplify, that encourages students – two-thirds of whom were born outside Canada – to solve some of RBC’s most complex business challenges. We’re taking that diversity of thought and trying to leverage it for better business results. That’s inclusion.

It’s not about relying on the “smartest person in the room” but the talent of many. It’s about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. As our Amplify program shows, a diverse group of engaged people is more likely to solve a challenge than a genius lone wolf. This diversity of thought is where you get innovation.

If we are to tackle challenges such as climate change and health care, we need to cultivate the talents of all our best minds. We need to see inclusion not as an employee-engagement tool, but a core part of corporate strategy and a way to build stronger communities.

So, how can Canadian employers leverage the country’s diversity to come up with new ways of thinking and working? Here are some ideas we heard in conversation with organizations across the country: Get the strategy group to make diversity and inclusion their own priority. Adopt innovation metrics to see how inclusion is paying off. Make it a central part of every leadership discussion. Promote a questioning culture, to engage the minds of the many, not just those who think they’ve got it figured out. Measure, measure, measure. Compensate accordingly. Repeat.

Canadian business gets it. Now we need to act on it.

Source: Promoting diversity and inclusion, and how to tell the difference – The Globe and Mail

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Evolving the diversity and inclusion discussion: eBay Canada

2017/09/21 Leave a comment

E-Bay Canada’s Chief Diversity Officer Damien Hooper-Campbell (but without their diversity numbers):

I’ll admit – I didn’t grow up with a chief diversity officer “hero” poster on my bedroom wall, and didn’t ask my college guidance counsellor about prerequisites for a CDO job.

It was entirely through my personal and professional life experiences that I decided to do this work.

Today, more and more businesses are realizing that diversity and inclusion (D&I) isn’t just a nice-to-have or a moral necessity: It’s a business imperative. At eBay, it’s the foundation of our business model and critical to our ability to thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape. For us, D&I is about making sure that our current and prospective employees and millions of buyers and sellers all have a fair shot at great opportunities. Yet, just like the vast majority of businesses, our D&I journey will be long term and iterative.

Diversity and inclusion are a strategic focus for our company, and we’ve embarked on a multiyear journey that will require the commitment of all of our people around the world. Our strategy ensures global consistency with a local fit.

For example, since joining the company, a large portion of my time has been spent visiting our offices around the world (most recently, Toronto, Madrid, London, Sydney, Shanghai and Seoul) to hear directly from employees about what diversity means and what inclusiveness feels like to them, locally.

The purpose is to offer a common starting place from which all of our people can join the conversation. What D&I means in our Israel office is sure to be different than what it means in our Canadian office. Only by giving our people opportunities to have open conversations about what D&I means to them can we get broader participation from them and, as a result, better outcomes from the programs we launch.

I don’t impose rules or judgments on how employees should think about D&I, but I do guide discussions around three areas of focus:

Our work force

Who we hire and how we hire matters, so we’re embedding D&I into our work force by focusing on our hiring practices and hiring decisions, the processes we undertake to evaluate potential employees and where we go to recruit them. For example, late last year we deliberately moved our university recruiting team to reporting to me.

As a result, we’ve broadened the set of universities, career fairs and external partnerships we recruit from to ensure D&I is an inherent part of our student-recruitment strategies.

We’re also looking at technology-driven hiring solutions to help our global recruiting teams and hiring managers mitigate bias throughout the hiring process. Things such as name-blinding résumés and facilitating structured interviews can be effective process improvements.

At its core, embedding D&I into our work force is about getting access to the best pools of talent out there.

Our workplace

Once we’ve hired great people, we want to keep and develop those great people, so we’re focused on how employees feel within the walls of eBay.

Looking for ways all of our employees – those from both minority and majority communities – can feel more included in the workplace is something we spend a lot of time thinking about and working on.

For example, we started by asking all employees around the world to participate in a survey focused on D&I so we could use the feedback to create better initiatives. We also enhanced our “Communities of Inclusion,” which are employee-led, leader-sponsored groups that promote a culture of belonging at eBay.

Our communities focus on age, disability status, ethnicity, gender, religion, military status, parental status, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression. With chapters all over the world, these communities provide a safe space for employees to discuss topics and participate in activities. Most important, all of our employees are welcome to join them, regardless of how they self-identify.

Our marketplace

Diversity and inclusion at eBay extends to the customers and communities we serve.

We’re being more deliberate to ensure the diverse perspectives and needs of our current customers and communities are taken into consideration. This includes, for example, designing products or creating services for niche or underserved markets, or creating our first-ever multicultural marketing lead and seller diversity program manager roles to help us include a broader set of buyers and sellers in our marketing and business initiatives.

We’re also focused on figuring out how to be inclusive of the customer groups we aspire to serve in the future.

Taking a comprehensive, global and human approach, we’ve greatly evolved the way we talk about and approach D&I at our company. That said, we haven’t cracked the code on this yet.

It’s important to realize that there are no quick fixes here.

Diversity and inclusion challenges are complex, involve a number of factors and cannot be solved overnight. But if you start with real, honest and nonjudgmental conversations with your employees about what D&I means to them, you’ll help to reposition your D&I journey from being seen as a challenge to being embraced as an invaluable opportunity to make your people, business and customers stronger.

Source: Evolving the diversity and inclusion discussion – The Globe and Mail

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Emmys: How to Get Away With the Bare Minimum of Diversity

2017/09/20 Leave a comment

Sharp commentary:

Sunday morning, hours before this year’s Emmys ceremony, Being Mary Jane actress Gabrielle Union tweeted: “I’ve been doing TV since 1995. This will be my 1st time going to the Emmys & I’m presenting an award! 22 yrs later. #OvernightSuccess.”

The actress’ first credited appearance was in an episode of Saved by the Bell: The New Classand while that might not be the type of show that garners you an Emmys invite, it’s surprising that in 22 years as a successful actress Union hasn’t even been at the ceremony. But then again, she’s a black woman in Hollywood, so it’s not really surprising, is it?

This moment for Union comes two years after Viola Davis gave her a shoutout in her historic win as the first black woman to win a best actress in a drama Emmy. Awarded a statue for her role in How to Get Away With Murder, Davis who traded in roles like the one in The Help where she played a maid, Davis put her community to task for its lack of inclusion. “In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me, over that line. But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line,” Davis said, quoting Harriet Tubman. She followed the quote by saying: “The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there. So here’s to all the writers, the awesome people that are Ben Sherwood, Paul Lee, Peter Nowalk, Shonda Rhimes, people who have redefined what it means to be beautiful, to be sexy, to be a leading woman, to be black. And to the Taraji P. Hensons, the Kerry Washingtons, the Halle Berrys, the Nicole Beharies, the Meagan Goods, to Gabrielle Union: Thank you for taking us over that line. Thank you to the Television Academy. Thank you.”

Two years after the first best actress in a drama Emmy was awarded to a black woman shouldn’t be the year you pat yourself on the back. Especially not when Lena Waithe on Sunday was the first black woman to win an Emmy for best writing in a comedy. Or a night when Donald Glover was the first black male to win for comedy directing. Or a night where Riz Ahmed was the first male actor of Asian descent to win an acting Emmy. When we’re still in a business of firsts, you can keep your congratulations and you can keep your jokes about diversity, too. Sunday’s host, Stephen Colbert, followed in the footsteps of many white awards-show hosts who love making jokes about diversity to a room where there’s less black people in it than Williamsburg.

Because for an industry that loves to pretend it’s inclusive and diverse whenever awards season rolls around (like when Moonlight won an Oscar this year), it’s the bare minimum of diversity. The shows that these diverse nominees are awarded at are usually full of white people. The hosts are usually white—there hasn’t been a non-white Emmys host since Bryant Gumbel (don’t ask) in 1997. And the diversity usually extends to white women and black men. It’s true, women probably wouldn’t win any damn awards if they didn’t have separate acting categories, but the women that are nominated in these categories are usually white. When Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, and Laura Dern make pleas for more television starring women, it’s a lovely sentiment until you remember that the only black woman in Big Little Lies was Zoe Kravitz and there’s been three or four ensemble actress television shows starring white women since Charlie’s Angels. When Sex and the City was popular on HBO, we got a ton of knockoffs. Meanwhile, HBO has another female-led hit on its hands with Insecure, but there’ve been no influx of television series starring black women and HBO would rather greenlight bullshit like Confederate.

Meanwhile, out of all the black people who’ve won Emmys, the overwhelming majority are black men. Hollywood is a white world and it’s a man’s world. It usually benefits white men, white women, and then black men. There will plenty of more shows like Big Little Lies on the air, but will there be more like Being Mary Jane? Jane the Virgin? Fresh Off the Boat? Master of None? Asian-American actors are barely on television at all, and when they are, they usually portray terrorists in shows like 24 and Homeland.

True diversity in Hollywood means that it will have to step beyond the parameters of the usual suspects and start telling stories that look like the rest of America. I mean, it was absolutely shocking seeing some of the pairings chosen to give out awards—Gina Rodriguez and Shemar Moore, Riz Ahmed and Issa Rae, B.D. Wong and Matt Bomer (two openly gay men and one of them Asian?! You didn’t even see that on Looking)—and then realizing that you never see that kind of diversity on TV. Hell, these awards were on CBS and it was the most diverse thing you’ll ever see on this white as hell network.

Take this for instance: RuPaul and Tituss Burgess were included in two of Colbert’s comedic bits and they stole the show. Moonlight won an Oscar this year, but how long until we see a queer person of color hosting one of these damn things? No, Hollywood won’t know what real diversity is until people of color stop being bit parts or window dressing (like Superior Donuts’ Jermaine Fowler as the emcee) to make their awards shows look more “hip.”

Getting back to Gabrielle Union: Being Mary Jane has been on the air since 2013 and was created by Mara Brock Akil, a black woman and TV veteran. Union’s work has yet to be recognized by her peers. Will it ever be? Or do we only notice women of color like Viola Davis when they star in television shows on a white network like ABC, in a show written by a white man?

Source: Emmys: How to Get Away With the Bare Minimum of Diversity

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TIFF 2017: At film festival, the truth is out there – if you know where to look – The Globe and Mail

2017/09/12 Leave a comment

Interesting:

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival is filthy with films boasting socially progressive bona fides. Battle of the Sexes, starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell, tackles chauvinism in the sports arena. Kings, with Halle Berry and Daniel Craig, looks at racism through the prism of the Rodney King riots. The same-sex romance Call Me by Your Name aims to be this year’s Brokeback Mountain. Hollywood, don’t you know, is all about speaking truth to power.

TIFF itself is even positioning itself as more socially “woke” than usual, with its Share Her Journey campaign aimed at remedying the unbelievable gender imbalance in the industry (last year, only 7 per cent of the top 250 films were directed by women).

Yet year after year, it’s the less-glitzy documentary program that exhibits true social awareness. It makes sense; with smaller budgets, lowered aesthetic expectations, and a cinematic form built on real-time urgency, documentaries are better positioned to act as a mirror to the current culture.

It was a notion I kept returning to this past weekend, as TIFF lurched from one glitzy, questionable star vehicle to the next – where were the incendiary films that could unite audiences to stand up and cheer? Where were the movies that might actually make a difference in this heightened political climate? As ever, the doc lineup provided the answer, with one of the most culturally conscious selection of films in recent TIFF memory.

Even putting aside its achievement in near-gender parity – 41 per cent of 2017’s doc programming is directed by women, versus the festival’s total programming of 33 per cent – this year’s offerings are impressive, even intimidating, in their progressiveness.

There are films on iconic figures in the black community (Boom for Real, about Jean-Michel Basquiat; Grace Jones: Bloodlight & Bami; The Gospel According to Andre, focusing on fashion icon Andre Leon Talley; Sammy Davis Jr.: I Gotta Be Me; and Sighted Eyes / Feeling Heart, which chronicles the life of playwright Lorraine Hansberry); movies examining LGBT issues (Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood); and the expected, though no less appreciated, docs pivoting on here-and-now politics, including The China Hustle, Cocaine Prison, Silas and The Final Year.

On paper, that list might read like a compacted semester on the most liberal campus imaginable. Yet the films are more dynamic than didactic. It is a testament to the programming prowess of TIFF’s longtime documentary expert, Thom Powers – especially when the rest of the festival is crowded with temptations of glossier, more escapist fare.

“Sometimes these things come together as a coincidence,” says Powers, who has been programming docs for TIFF for the past twelve years, and has also worked with the IFC Center in New York, the DOC NYC festival and the Miami International Film Festival. “The Grace Jones film, I’ve been following that for ten years. And then there happened to be a cluster of films, like the Jean-Michel film and the Andre film.”

Although he prefers not to trumpet certain connective themes in his doc selection, Powers admits that this year offers a notable cluster of films that cannot escape the current political climate. “The films come in waves, and outsiders may not see the connections like I do, but there is a notable cluster of films in the program about figures of resistance,” he says. “They come from very different countries and very different filmmakers, but each of the central characters in something like Silas, they impressed me for their courage and eloquence in standing up to larger forces.”

“Right now, in North America, we see people hold up signs of ‘resist’ and rally around this idea of resistance,” he continues. “I think these figures, and these films, have a lot to teach us.”

On the issue of gender parity, Powers admits the doc medium simply makes it easier for female filmmakers to make headway in a notoriously hostile and sexist industry.

“There’s no question there, with budget being a very big factor,” he says. “It takes a lot less money and fewer gatekeepers for women to get started on a documentary project. Or any director, because you don’t have to wait for someone to give yourself permission. You can just get it going with less resources to begin with.”

Source: TIFF 2017: At film festival, the truth is out there – if you know where to look – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

In Silicon Valley, data trumps opinion — even with gender parity – Recode

2017/08/29 Leave a comment

Jewelle Bickford, Ellen Kullman and Sandra Beach Lin of Paradigm for Parity make the diversity case:

In Silicon Valley — and in corporate America generally — data trumps opinion, making gender diversity a no-brainer. As the controversy at Google illustrates, turning diversity goals into positive business realities is hard — but it isn’t as hard as one would think, even in Silicon Valley. As with any initiative that improves the bottom line, paying lip service to diversity isn’t enough. You need a plan.

Despite the fact that the tech industry remains overwhelmingly male, Silicon Valley is actually uniquely suited to transform rhetoric into results. For instance, Silicon Valley companies understand that happy employees deliver better business results — and are willing to make the necessary investments. These companies have free food prepared by nutritionists and famous chefs, wellness centers offering employee massages, and even employee housing. Why not add free child care to the nearly endless menu of benefits? When women have support from employers in the form of affordable child care, they are more likely to stay in the workforce and progress to senior leadership roles.

Additionally, engineering is actually a field that is particularly well-suited for women. Engineers often function independently and they are able to do their jobs successfully in or out of the office. The flexibility that engineers get is exactly the type of flexibility that allows women to rise up and reach the highest levels of corporate America — and reach them more frequently.

When we started the Paradigm for Paritycoalition in 2016, we recognized the need for undeniable, measurable results and for clear, implementable steps to get there. While many organizations support gender equality and call for enhanced diversity in the workplace, the Paradigm for Parity coalition is unique in that it outlines a specific set of concurrent actions a company can take to achieve gender parity across all levels of corporate leadership by 2030, including measuring targets and maintaining accountability by providing regular progress reports. Today, we represent 56 member companies with approximately five million employees in every corner of the U.S. and around the world.

Quantitative evidence shows us why diversity is imperative: You can’t have economic growth unless everyone is included. We must work with clearly defined quantitative targets, like those outlined by the Paradigm for Parity coalition, to make diversity in business a statistical reality. In more ways than one, Silicon Valley has succeeded in making the world a better place, and we are confident it can succeed in making it a more equal one too.

Source: In Silicon Valley, data trumps opinion — even with gender parity – Recode

Filed under gender, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

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