According to this article from FoxNews, the NAACP issued its business report cards on racial diversity, today. Apparently, Mitsubishi Motors North America, which got the lowest score of the companies that responded to the NAACP’s request for information, got its poor score due to the lack of blacks on the board of directors or in recruiting and the failure to spend money advertising with “black media.”

For one thing, blacks represent only 12.9% of the U.S. population; the lack of blacks on a particular company’s board is hardly shocking, statistically. Compounding the relatively low representation in the general population is the fact that blacks are less likely to have attended college, which would increase access to corporate leadership roles; certainly, this indicates that there are problems in our society, but it does not mean the core problem is in the board of MMNA.

As for “black media,” as long as there is such a thing, American cannot and will not be fully integrated. The assumption behind “black media” is that the rest of the media is “white media” (since “whites” are the majority). When the mainstream media is balanced enough that we don’t even notice race - when the media simply serves as a mirror of society - then, and only then, will we have an integrated society.

[In case anyone who doesn't know me is reading this, I am hardly a racist; I have lived in countries where I was in a micro-minority and some of my best friends are non-white.]

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2005 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.