Monday, September 19, 2005
Racism Real, if Not Intentional
Source: TV Week CNN "American Morning" co-anchor Soledad O'Brien threw the question out to the panel during the closing session of the 2005 National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications Conference last week in New York. She wanted to know "Who is behind what we see on television?"
"The white man," snapped Reginald Hudlin, getting a big laugh from the multiracial audience.
The quip by Mr. Hudlin, a veteran producer who earlier this year was named head of entertainment for Viacom's BET Network, was funny. But it also made an important point. It was a reminder about the symbolic elephant in the room that nobody talked much about during what the Walter Kaitz Foundation had dubbed Diversity Week. Still, it couldn't be denied.
After two days of NAMIC workshops, what came out again and again was that the extent of diversity in the real world is still an issue. Out among the office workers, technicians, managers, engineers and executives, diversity is still mostly a goal, not a reality.
With the exception of Richard Parsons at Time Warner, the top executive suites in cable, and on Wall Street where it gets financed, and in the law offices that do the transactions, and the accounting firms who track them, and even the media companies who write about them, are still mainly white and mostly male. MORE
"The white man," snapped Reginald Hudlin, getting a big laugh from the multiracial audience.
The quip by Mr. Hudlin, a veteran producer who earlier this year was named head of entertainment for Viacom's BET Network, was funny. But it also made an important point. It was a reminder about the symbolic elephant in the room that nobody talked much about during what the Walter Kaitz Foundation had dubbed Diversity Week. Still, it couldn't be denied.
After two days of NAMIC workshops, what came out again and again was that the extent of diversity in the real world is still an issue. Out among the office workers, technicians, managers, engineers and executives, diversity is still mostly a goal, not a reality.
With the exception of Richard Parsons at Time Warner, the top executive suites in cable, and on Wall Street where it gets financed, and in the law offices that do the transactions, and the accounting firms who track them, and even the media companies who write about them, are still mainly white and mostly male. MORE
# posted by ATN @ 7:42 AM 
