As graduation season swings around, many HBCU graduates are trying to figure out the first steps in their careers. One federal agency is hoping they consider a career in government.
As part of the White House Initiative on HBCU schools and graduates, agencies inside the U.S. Department of Labor, including the Women’s Bureau and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), are reaching out to HBCU grads.
Roxanne Griffith, a regional administrator with the women’s bureau, told WTOP that the agency is looking for HBCU grads with a wide range of degrees.
“For example, if someone happens to go to school for women’s studies, that would be beneficial to the Women’s Bureau,” Griffith said.
Griffith added the agency is also looking for HBCU graduates with degrees in political science, business, economics, and STEM. The agency has been holding webinars and career events to inform students and parents about opportunities within the federal government to recruit HBCU grads. The department is also holding a virtual career fair on June 24.
The labor market is at a weird point due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which left millions unemployed overnight, but eventually led to higher wages, benefits, and perks for employers amid a scramble for workers last summer. According to the Associated Press, there were more than 11 million job openings in March alone.
HBCU graduates have also been in high demand since the Black Lives Matter movement and focus on social equity. Large companies in everything from technology, banking and finance, and other industries have been recruiting HBCU talent to fill their open positions and create more diversity in their employee ranks.
Additionally, some companies are creating youth and community partnerships that can lead to HBCU scholarships and a career pipeline after graduating.
HBCU graduates are some of the most accomplished Black men and women in the world. HBCU grads account for 80% of Black judges, 50% of Black lawyers and doctors, and 25% of all Black graduates in STEM.
Large companies inevitably have scores of metrics they use to gauge how well they are performing. Elements such as workplace safety, customer satisfaction indices, and employee engagement survey results are just a few examples of what a major corporation might track to ensure things are going in the right direction. A woke company such as The Walt Disney Company has undoubtedly established a multitude of ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’ standards as well. Such is the world we live in.
But make no mistake – at the end of the day, after all the peripheral issues have been examined by a company, and once the dust settles from the fluff of the tangential priorities being pushed by its various departments, there is nothing more important to Disney or any other company than the reports that come from one group: Finance and Accounting.
If a company’s financial performance is up to par, executives might focus on “employee sensitivity” initiatives and “social responsibility” objectives. But if a company’s income statement starts to tank, those secondary concerns get put aside in a hurry. And after all their wokeness and virtue-signaling, the Disney Company now has a financial dumpster fire on its hands.
According to Bloomberg News, shares of Disney stock this year have dropped by a remarkable 28% as of Friday, only one-third of the way through the year. As Breitbart explains, 23.5% of that decline has come since the beginning of March, around the time when Disney CEO Bob Chapek inexplicably decided to bow to the wokesters in his company and pick a fight with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Since that time, Disney has lost the special autonomous privileges in Florida that had previously made their operations there akin to the Vatican and the rest of Italy. They’ve lost over $60 billion in market capitalization. And Disney stock is the single worst-performing stock making up the Down Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) during that period.
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For a company on the DJIA, these results are catastrophic, and there’s little doubt that America’s rejection of wokeness is a driving force. Consider this video of Chapek and how such fawning plays with a majority of Americans:
NEW: Disney CEO Bob Chapek grovels, apologizes, and pledges to “be a better ally for the LGBTQ+ community.” He delegated the company’s moral authority to the “LGBTQIA+ Advisory Council” and now those internal activists have taken him as an ideological hostage. pic.twitter.com/efOSOmb47a
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 7, 2022
How do you think that video plays in Peoria? Or Akron? Or Topeka? And don’t think investors haven’t noticed, as well as other companies.
Ultimately, this result is what must happen. It’s a difficult lesson for Disney and an exceptionally costly one as well. Other CEOs at other companies have taken note and are examining how they should proceed so that they can avoid being the next Disney, and for those executives, we have this advice:
1. Don’t inject you or your companies into a political debate unless it directly relates to your industry. For instance, if Chapek had weighed in on labor regulations, that would have been fair game.
2. Know your customers. Disney used to be a company that was adored by parents as an American icon and for its traditional values. That veil has been lifted, and their reputation destroyed.
3. Don’t allow your inmates to run the asylum. Employees don’t decide company policy; you and other members of your leadership team do. Tell employees who don’t like your policies to take a hike.
Is this advice too late for Disney? Almost certainly, unless they do an abrupt about-face and backtrack quickly. But hopefully, other companies will get away from kowtowing to vocal but vastly outnumbered leftist employees and resume focusing on what’s best for their company.
The 2022 Gerber Baby Photo Search winner is here, and she’s just totally adorable. Seven-month-old Isa Slish of Oklahoma boasts incomparably cubby cheeks, big ole eyelashes, and a beaming smile.
She’s also the first Gerber baby in the company’s 95-year history to have a limb difference — and her parents hope that the spotlight will increase awareness and help educate the public as Isa takes her position of official spokesbaby.
“As Gerber’s newest CGO (Chief Growing Officer), Isa’s most important responsibility is to inspire joy, sharing happiness with a big smile, giggles, and her lovable personality,” Gerber shared in its announcement.
The winner was officially announced on TODAY, where the hosts spoke with parents Meredith and John — and announced that she had won live on air.
“Isa is a strong, amazing little girl that loves to interact with the world around her and nothing will stop her,” her mom told TODAY. “Her smile lights up the room and her laughter is irresistible.”
Isa loves playing with her hippo stuffy and hanging out with her big sister, Temperance, 4. She also likes raspberries, being rocked by her mother, and feeling the breeze on her face.
Her parents hope that Isa’s story sends a message of diversity and inclusion.
“Before she was born in September of 2021, we knew Isa was special, and she has shown us that every day since she came into our lives,” Meredith shared on the Gerber website. “We found out when I was 18 weeks pregnant that Isa would be born without a femur or a fibula in her right leg. We hope Isa’s story can bring more awareness for limb differences and create greater inclusion for children like her. Because, just like Isa, they too can be or do anything they want!”
There were over 225,000 entries to the contest this year, which is open to kids under 4 years old in the United States and Puerto Rico. Gerber awards $25,000 to the winner — and the prize money will be set aside for Isa’s medical care.
“One of the things that has been so special for us, is that she was chosen for her wonderful personality, her smile, her cheeks, her giggles, but also as a baby who represents diversity,” Meredith told TODAY. “We are so happy that she can hopefully bring awareness to children born with limb differences and that is really special for us.”
Gerber is also matching the prize money with a $25,000 March of Dimes’ maternal and infant health programs.
Joseph Kahn edited his high school’s paper and went on to serve as president of Harvard’s undergraduate daily, The Crimson, before graduating in 1987 with a degree in history. He briefly covered Plano, Texas, for The Dallas Morning News. But inspired by a professor’s observation that China could be the great story of the next decade, Mr. Kahn re-enrolled at Harvard in a master’s program for East Asian studies and began learning Mandarin.
By 1989, he was writing freelance articles from Beijing for The Morning News. After covering the Tiananmen Square protests, he persuaded his editors in Dallas to keep him in China as a correspondent. His reporting was not without risks: He was detained by the Chinese authorities at one point and ordered to leave the country. In 1994, he shared in a Pulitzer Prize awarded to The Morning News for international reporting.
By then, Mr. Kahn had been hired by The Wall Street Journal, where he was assigned to Shanghai. After a stint as the editor and publisher of The Far Eastern Economic Review, a now-defunct weekly owned by The Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones, Mr. Kahn jumped to The Times in 1998.
He covered Wall Street and economics before moving back to Shanghai; in 2003, he became the paper’s Beijing bureau chief. He spent the next five yearsin China, sharing another Pulitzer, in 2006, with the Times correspondent Jim Yardley for an investigation into China’s flawed legal system.
Mr. Kahn returned to New York in 2008 as a deputy foreign editor and was appointed international editor in 2011. He oversaw a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation in 2012 into the hidden wealth of China’s ruling elite, prompting the Chinese authorities to block access to The Times’s website and expel some of its journalists.
In elevating Mr. Kahn to managing editor, Mr. Baquet described his charge in bold terms: “to lead our efforts to build The Times of the future, and to grapple with questions of what we cover going forward.”
In recent remarks at an internal Times gathering, Mr. Kahn laid out some priorities.
He cited maintaining editorial independence in an age of polarization. He reiterated a commitment to build a work force that represented diversity of thought, gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic backgrounds. And he charted an ambitious path for The Times’s place in the news business, saying the paper should consider itself a direct competitor to dozens of news outlets, ranging from global television networks like CNN and the BBC to niche upstarts like The Marshall Project and The Information.
Sandra Altiné has been named Vice President, Workforce Diversity & Inclusion at Facebook.
Prior to Facebook, Altiné was the Managing Director of Global Diversity and Inclusion for Moody’s. As a member of the HR Leadership Team, she had responsibility for advancing Moody’s commitment to global diversity and inclusion. In partnership with the Moody’s Global Diversity Council, she sets the diversity and inclusion strategy for the firm. Under Sandra’s leadership, Moody’s was recognized for four years in a row, as one of the Human Right Campaign’s Best Companies for LGBT Equality. In addition, Moody’s partnerships with Morehouse College and Howard University have yielded summer internships and full-time opportunities for students of color.
A frequent speaker on emerging diversity and inclusion strategies, Sandra has spoken at the Conference Board’s D&I Conference; Women of ALPFA (Assoc. of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting) Leadership Conference; INROADS Executive Roundtables, OutLeadership – London, Wharton HR Forum and the Global D&I Conference in Zurich. Sandra was also a guest professor of Organizational Development at Morehouse College Business School.
Sandra has over fifteen years of diversity and human resources-related experience. Prior to joining Moody’s, she was the Chief Operating Officer and a senior consultant at The Future Work Institute, a global diversity and inclusion consulting firm. Sandra started her career at J P Morgan Chase as a manager in Global Trade Operations. Sandra transitioned to Human Resources and held a variety of leadership positions. While there, she was a key architect of the firm’s diversity agenda and ensured that diversity was linked to all HR processes. Her roles also included Leadership Development Manager overseeing management development curriculum design and delivery across the U.S., Europe and Latin America and HR Change Management Practice Lead.
Sandra is a board member of Coro NY and sits on the advisory board of The Families and Work Institute. She is a member of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC) and in 2015, Sandra was an Inductee of the 1804 Haitian RoundTable list of Haitian-American Change Makers. Sandra holds a M.S. in Organizational Development from Fordham University and a B.A. in International Relations from Long Island University.
Employee health and safety must be the foremost consideration of any business during the coronavirus pandemic. But one of the greatest challenges is understanding the needs and circumstances of employees who themselves are diverse in all of the traditional measures, but also are affected by widely varying life, work and family conditions, writes Lloyd W. Howell, Jr., in this opinion piece. He is chief financial officer and treasurer of Booz Allen Hamilton, a global technology and management consulting firm.
As an African American engineer and businessman, I’ve seen firsthand the impact of diversity on organizational and financial success, but in my current role as CFO of a Fortune 500 company, I’ve never been more convinced that diversity is essential for successful leadership in times of crisis. With the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus, and the health uncertainties, sudden disruption and roiling financial markets that have come on its heels, businesses across the nation are struggling to make fast, hard decisions, often serving highly diverse customer bases, with no time to spare.
Beyond that, business requirements and operational modes are changing drastically in an instant, with standard decision processes cast aside and few models immediately available to quickly understand the financial and operational impacts of decisions. Who’s on tap to chart a new course, and their life and career experience, can be as important as the course itself.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the financial industry was the best performing sector in its study of the link between financial performance and diversity across S&P 500 companies. The Journal’s study determined that the 20 most diverse companies — dominated by banks and insurers — had an annual stock return of 10% over five years, compared to 4.2% for the 20 least diverse companies.
As a CFO overseeing a finance organization of 1,300, I find those financial sector results promising, but I think it’s essential we leave nothing on the table. In my own group, we’ve made progress on improving core measures of diversity, particularly in mid-levels and leadership, and we are committed to do more across the financial organization. First, we are focusing on having consciously unbiased discussions about potential rising stars and supporting them with promotion opportunities, mentorship, special projects and visibility with leadership to bring them higher into the organization. Ensuring that recruits see our diversity when they meet us is essential, too.
But here’s where we look to take the potential impact to the next level: We find an even greater impact on business performance comes from giving the same level of attention to finding and developing staff with diverse skillsets and training them on how to apply their unique professional expertise to higher level financial problems or business crises within our firm.
Within my department, we have staff trained in tax accounting, Sarbanes Oxley regulations, treasury functions, government accounting, compliance and other areas. But to raise this diversity of training from a slate of staff with functional skills to the level of influential strategic business partner requires development, mentoring, and fostering an environment of credentialization. An important part of diversity in a financial organization is supporting and encouraging diversity in credentials and certifications that provides a level of trust and confidence to the larger organization we serve.
We ask our financial staff to look at larger problems with a “CFO mentality,” meaning that every individual decision by staff at every level should be made as if they are sitting in my own chair, looking more broadly at impacts across our company and market. To get there, as an example, we train our professional staff to look beyond the mechanics of cash collections, to understand the end-to-end process and impacts, starting with client issues related to payment timing all the way to the impact on cash deployment and guidance to investors. With that context, their diverse core skillsets have greater influence and inclusion in corporate decision-making.
This charge, and the positive impact of diversity in all its iterations, is particularly powerful as we come together as a team to consider larger issues that directly impact financial performance. Take capital deployment strategy as an example area that would be reviewed through the lens of a crisis: In my group, a respected, credentialed treasury team looks at balance sheet capacity, tax experts review those considerations, accounting and reporting teams have a role, and the operational staff weighs in on issues of banking and payroll. In capital deployment, many decisions are of a highly judgmental nature — it’s never black and white; there are many options. To get to the right answer requires diversity in personal and life experience layered with diversity in deep professional expertise, along with the willingness to be inclusive of other ideas.
And already I see the value in the context of our more thoughtful responses to COVID-19, a crisis which reflects the increasingly complex, interconnected nature of business today. These types of crises won’t get any easier. Our employees, the communities we serve, and our shareholders expect us to use every possible tool to address them, most importantly the full scope of diversity of the very people in decision-making seats.
Madison Ballet’s 40th anniversary season closes this weekend and next with a program titled Turning Pointe, which, the company’s website says, “celebrates the company’s past, while it steps into a brilliant future.”
Leading the way into that future are two Black men: Jacob Ashley, who was named director of the company’s ballet school in January, and Ja’ Malik, the company’s incoming artistic director, who’ll take over for the outgoing Sarah Schumann, in July.
“It shows that we are present,” Ashley says of the historic hires. “It shows that we are part of this as well.”
The two men contrast in many ways; Ashley has been familiar to Madison audiences for 15 years, while Ja’ Malik had never set foot in Wisconsin before interviewing for this job. Ja ‘Malik started dancing at 4 or so; Ashley was a teenager before he took a ballet class. But both say they hope to build a more diverse company, broaden the audience’s horizons and create something truly special right here in Madison.
“An 80s Baby”
“I’m an 80s baby. I grew up enamored with Michael Jackson. He inspired a generation of dancers,” Ja’ Malik says. At just 3 or 4 years old, he memorized the entire dance sequence from the video of Jackson’s Thriller – and performed those now-iconic steps for everyone in the neighborhood. Regularly.
“I was doing them to the point where the neighbors and everyone was like, ‘please go take that child somewhere else. Let him learn some other dances so we can stop watching Thriller every day,’” he says. “Literally, I would do it every day. I was obsessed with it.”
At that age, dance became his means of communication.
“I was not a talker,” he says. “I could speak but I didn’t like to talk as a kid. I was probably 9, almost, when I really just would have a conversation with people. Before that, I would just try to avoid conversations at all costs. I just didn’t like talking. But I loved expressing myself through dance.”
So he joined a local dance school in Harlem, where he was usually the only boy. He enjoyed it and excelled, but never thought of dance as a career path – until he was 12 or 13 and went to Cleveland to visit an aunt, who took him to a performance of The Nutcracker with a Black lead.
“He was just everything that I could see in myself,” he says. “And so having that representation on stage and seeing that let me know, oh, this is more than just a fantasy of enjoying making up dances in your bedroom or dancing around the neighborhood. It was like, you can actually do this as a profession.”
After that, Ja’ Malik was all in.
“I literally went up to the director (of my school) and was like, ‘I want to be pushed. I need to learn how to do everything that he did on that stage,’” he says.
His teachers, all women, were very supporting and encouraging, but the school – and the art form – still didn’t seem to hold a future for him.
“I realized that ballet is wonderful and beautiful, and as much as I love it, it was still also very non-inclusive to me,” he says. “I didn’t really see a path forward other than Dance Theater of Harlem, which, there’s nothing wrong with that. But for me, I didn’t want to go to where everybody said, ‘Oh, well, you go to Harlem Dance Theater, because you’re Black.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I want to go where I want to go because I’m good.’”
And where he went was a performing arts high school in Cleveland, where he also studied on a full scholarship at a ballet school, and then back to New York to attend The New School as a member of the first cohort of students to earn BFA degrees through the university’s partnership with the Joffrey School. At the same time, he began studying with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, all while working at Starbucks. It made for very long days.
Soon he started to think about choreography as well, also inspired by witnessing a performance.
“I saw Ulysses Dove’s piece Urban Folk Dance at the Ailey company, and I was blown away,” he says. “I mean, I was sitting there in tears at what I was watching on stage, I was so moved by what he created. I was like, whatever it is that he did to create that, I want to do that.” After taking on a few small projects with peers and classmates, he staged a piece called “The Hour Before,” which earned him positive reviews and prompted New York Magazine to call him “a choreographer to watch.”
Shortly thereafter, renowned dancer Alan Barnes, principal dancer with the Frankfurt Ballet, spent the summer in New York working with the Ailey company. At the end of the summer, he evaluated the dancers.
“In his evaluation – I’ll never forget, I still have it – ‘Ja is a fantastic dancer who shows great potential to be an amazing leader one day, given the opportunity.’ And that stuck with me. Literally, I still have that sheet of paper,” Ja’ Malik says. Since then, he’s worked with companies across the country, including Cleveland Ballet, Oakland Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Nathan Trice Rituals, City Dance Ensemble, Ballet Hispanico, and Ballet X. Just over two years ago, Darwin Black, a friend and collaborator who’d been a guest artist with Madison Ballet, told him the company was looking for a new artistic director. Ja’ Malik reached out … and then the pandemic happened, putting the process on pause. But almost two years later, it resumed, and the company was still interested. Ja’ Malik did a little checking up on Madison, though, as he’d never been to Wisconsin – and was warned that there wasn’t a lot of Blackness here.
“I had moved a few times for certain jobs. And I just wanted to make sure that this was going to be the right move. You know, I don’t want to commit to something just because. I want to commit to something because I was passionate about it,” he says. “If I’m happy doing the work, I can live anywhere.”
“A fight for respect”
Jacob Ashley didn’t get quite as early a start. As a high school football player, he needed some work on his lateral movement; the coach suggested he take up either ballet or volleyball.
He’d already learned some dance; he started out just watching the West Indian Folk Dance Company when company director Alfred Baker said no more watching.
“One day he stopped class and was like, you can’t watch anymore. You got to take a class. And in that class, two dancers were from Chicago Academy for the Arts,” Ashley says. So, when he got the advice to try ballet to get better at football, that’s where he went.
He never went back to football.
“My coach and my father were not happy campers,” he says with a laugh.
Just a couple years later, one of his teachers, Guillermo Leyva, was working with the Chicago Festival Ballet and needed “a few extra guys,” Ashley says. “It was sort of like my big break, and the time to really see what it was like to be a professional dancer. And from then on, I was like, alright, I think this is where I want to be.”
Like Ja’ Malik, he often found himself one of just a few dancers who weren’t of purely European heritage.
“It was a fight for respect,” he says. “I just had to work really hard to be seen. Just like with anything, just like in football, if you’re good, people know who you are. You work hard, people will know who you are.”
He first appeared as a guest artist with Madison Ballet in 2007, after impressing former artistic director W. Earle Smith at an audition in Chicago in 2006. He traveled the country as a guest artist with various companies until deciding to join the company here in Madison a few years ago, performing as well as teaching. Late last year, outgoing artistic director Schumann urged him to put his hat in the ring for the open job as school director.
“I’ve been here for so long. The rapport that I have with everyone, just a familiarity with Madison. It was a difficult decision, because it takes me away from the stage. It was a pretty good decision. I think it was worth it,” he says. “The connections that I’ve been able to make have been great. I’ve never received this sort of attention for teaching and being in a teaching role. The biggest thing for me is the kids, the students that I have. A lot of them have been involved with Madison ballet for a very long time. And they’ve seen me grow, and their parents have seen me grow. And the support that they’ve given has been out of this world.”
It felt all the more worth it when a parent wrote him a note after a recent class, letting him know the little girl hadn’t stopped dancing long after they got home from class.
“That makes me feel so good about what I’m doing. And it also lets me know I’m doing the right thing, and I’m really reaching out to the kids,” he says. “And it’s not just me – the lovely team of teachers that I have as well, I try to encourage them to dig deep in their personalities, even though we get tired, even though we had a long day. You got to make it happen for the babies.”
Ja’ Malik and Jacob Ashley watch over dancer Michelle Ramos. Photo by Darren Lee, courtesy Madison Ballet.
“We have a lot to say.”
Ideally, Ashley will identify and develop talent that can feed into the performance company, which Ja’ Malik says will usually have about 21 members. Both say they hope to diversify the company’s membership to present a more inclusive product.
“I just want to give us a really strong brand identity. So you know that this is a ballet company that is not just a classical company, but can perform a wide variety of ranges within the genre of contemporary, modern, postmodern, neo classical and classical ballet,” Ja’ Malik says.
He also wants Madison Ballet to become known as inclusive and accessible.
“A lot of people think it’s a very elitist art form. It’s only for a certain demographic, a certain sociological background, economic background,” Ja’ Maik says. “I just want to help demystify that, you know, and let people know that (ballet) is for everybody. One of my main goals is in the next two years to really lift the profile of the company, to attract the talent and the talent of color that we need here. I want (dancers) to think there’s this amazing company in little old Madison, Wisconsin. It might be a small city, but the work I want to do here is on that same level of power, passion and precision. I think the plan that I have will attract more dancers of color. It’s just a matter of giving us a little bit of time to execute that.”
“We have people with different pronouns, gay, lesbian. We have so many different people from all walks of life,” Ashley says. “And everyone has been included here.There’s never been any typecasting. We want our audience to broaden its horizons. To know that there are more Black dancers that are working hard to get to the professional level to present themselves at the highest caliber.
“Our presence is rising, but it’s still small. We have a lot to say, too,” he adds.
He says he especially hopes, in a very sports-centered town, young Black boys can find a home in his school, the way he did in Chicago as a teen.
“I want them to know that it’s okay to express themselves, it’s okay to be themselves,” he says. “And then, because we’re in a profession where you have to fulfill a role, if you’re not in tune with being yourself, you get to be someone else for an hour. I just encourage them to just really, really dig deep and be themselves.”
For Ja’ Malik, the commitment to diversity isn’t just among the dancers.
“We want to be a leader in providing a space for new and emerging choreographers, especially choreographers of color, more female choreographers, for sure,” he says. “And we also want to be a place that preserves our heritage, which is classical ballet. We don’t want to eliminate those, but … my vision is to make them more inclusive.”
“It’s for everybody.”
Both men said Madison audiences are ready to take in more ballet, even if they don’t think so.
Ja’ Malik says it’s like watching the Olympics – you don’t have to know anything about gymnastics or figure skating to enjoy it.
“You don’t have to know everything that’s going on. But you watch it for a reason,” he says. “You either like the athleticism of it, or you like the music, the costumes, the theatrics of it, there’s something you find appealing about watching the Olympics. It’s the same when it comes to ballet. But for some reason, when we think about ballet, we think, ‘Oh, that’s beyond my imagination or my means, this is not for me.’ And I’m like, it’s for you. It’s for everybody.”
“Ballet has its European history, but know that we have two people of color here in (leadership roles at) this institution,” Ashley says. “I don’t want anyone to feel as if they’re left out, or they can’t be here. Or feel as if they are singled out because their skin color is different. We don’t promote that. We can’t have that here. But I definitely want people to know: come, come, come. We’re here. The doors are open.”
It’s not out of bounds to say that Woody Allen movies are pretty damn white. The filmmaker has never been known for his radical inclusion of diverse characters or actors in his projects. And for the most part, that has largely been accepted. However, with inclusion and diversity becoming hot button issues in recent years, studios and filmmakers have made strides in trying to be more diverse with content.
But according to the filmmaker’s memoir (via Vulture), he doesn’t see a problem with how he casts films. In fact, he considers himself a pretty big ally and supporter of diversity in his private life, even if it’s not evident on screen.
“I’ve taken some criticism over the years that I didn’t use African-Americans in my movies,” wrote Allen. “And while affirmative action can be a fine solution in many instances, it does not work when it comes to casting. I always cast the person who fits the part most believably in my mind’s eye.”
He continued, “When it comes to the politics of race, I have always been a typical liberal and sometimes maybe even radical. I marched in Washington with Martin Luther King, donated heavily to the ACLU when they needed extra to push the Voting Rights Act, named my children after my African-American heroes and said publicly in the 1960s that I was in favor of African-Americans achieving their goals by any means necessary. Anyhow, when it comes to casting, I do not go by politics but by what feels dramatically correct to me. “
Interestingly, this is a similar defense presented for why Allen isn’t concerned about his #MeToo controversies. Back in September, the filmmaker opened up about how he supports #MeToo, in spite of folks claiming that he’s an example of why the movement exists, and why his past regarding women shows how great of a supporter he is. Clearly, this is the same idea that he presents to defend his lack of diversity.
We’ve seen folks like Zoe Kravitzcriticize Allen for his lack of diversity in the past. This explanation will probably do little to convince her and other detractors that the filmmaker is actually an ally. But we shall see.
Land use changes forced chimpanzees and bats near human food resources. Credit: Shutterstock
The COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the world is a crisis of our own making.
That’s the message from infectious disease and environmental health experts, and from those in planetary health – an emerging field connecting human health, civilisation and the natural systems on which they depend.
They might sound unrelated, but the COVID-19 crisis and the climate and biodiversity crises are deeply connected.
Each arises from our seeming unwillingness to respect the interdependence between ourselves, other animal species and the natural world more generally.
To put this into perspective, the vast majority (three out of every four) of new infectious diseases in people come from animals—from wildlife and from the livestock we keep in ever-larger numbers.
To understand and effectively respond to COVID-19, and other novel infectious diseases we’ll likely encounter in the future, policymakers need to acknowledge and respond with “planetary consciousness”. This means taking a holistic view of public health that includes the health of the natural environment.
Risking animal-borne diseases
Biodiversity (all biological diversity from genes, to species, to ecosystems) is declining faster than at any time in human history.
We clear forests and remove habitat, bringing wild animals closer to human settlements. And we hunt and sell wildlife, often endangered, increasing the risk of disease transmission from animals to humans.
The list of diseases that have jumped from animals to humans (“zoonotic diseases”) includes HIV, Ebola, Zika, Hendra, SARS, MERS and bird flu.
Like its precursor SARS, COVID-19 is thought to have originated in bats and subsequently transmitted to humans via another animal host, possibly at a wet market trading live animals.
Ebola virus emerged in central Africa when land use changes and altered climatic conditions forced bats and chimpanzees together around concentrated areas of food resources. And Hendra virus is associated with urbanisation of fruit bats following habitat loss. Such changes are occurring worldwide.
What’s more, human-caused climate change is making this worse. Along with habitat loss, shifting climate zones are causing wildlife to migrate to new places, where they interact with other species they haven’t previously encountered. This increases the risk of new diseases emerging.
COVID-19 is just the latest new infectious disease arising from our collision with nature.
Due to its ability to spread at an alarming pace, as well as its relatively high mortality rate, it’s the sort of pandemic experts have been warning will arise from environmental degradation.
We saw this in 2018, for instance, when disease ecologist Dr. Peter Daszak, a contributor to the World Health Organisation Register of Priority Diseases, coined the term “Disease X”. This described a then-unknown pathogen predicted to originate in animals and cause a “serious international epidemic”. COVID-19, says Daszak, is Disease X.
Earlier this year, all eyes were on the extensive, life-threatening bushfires and the resulting blanket of smoke pollution. This exposed more than half of the Australian population to health harm for many weeks, and led to the deaths of more than 400 people.
For infectious diseases such as COVID-19, air pollution creates another risk. This new virus causes a respiratory illness and, as with SARS, exposure to air pollution worsens our vulnerability.
Particles of air pollution also act as transport for pathogens, contributing to the spread of viruses and infectious disease across large distances.
A wake-up call
It might be clear to readers here that human health depends on healthy ecosystems. But this is rarely considered in policy decisions on projects that affect natural ecosystems—such as land clearing, major energy or transport infrastructure projects and industrial-scale farming.
The current COVID-19 pandemic is yet another warning shot of the consequences of ignoring these connections.
If we are to constrain the emergence of new infections and future pandemics, we simply must cease our exploitation and degradation of the natural world, and urgently cut our carbon emissions.
Controlling the pandemic appropriately focuses on mobilising human and financial resources to provide health care for patients and prevent human to human transmission.
But it’s important we also invest in tackling the underlying causes of the problem through biodiversity conservation and stabilising the climate. This will help avoid the transmission of diseases from animals to humans in the first place.
The health, social and economic consequences of COVID-19 should act as a wake-up call for all governments to take stock, carefully consider the evidence, and ensure post COVID-19 responses reverse our war on nature. Because—as pioneering 20th century conservationist Rachel Carson argued – a war on nature is ultimately a war against ourselves.
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Coronavirus is a wake-up call: our war with the environment is leading to pandemics (2020, March 31)
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Media mogul Byron Allen is preparing a bid to buy the Denver Broncos, according to reports. If the bid is successful it would make Allen the first Black majority owner of an NFL team. Allen says Roger Goodell and Robert Kraft told him 2019 to look into buying a team and it looks like he’ ready now.
“NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft came to me in November of 2019 and asked me to take a good look at buying an NFL team,” Allen, chairman and chief executive officer at Allen Media Group, said in a statement. And after serious consideration, I strongly believe I can help effectuate positive changes throughout the league. And for that reason, I will be making a bid for the Denver Broncos.”
Allen and his group will be competing with several groups including two led by Broncos’ Super Bowl winning quarterbacks John Elway and Peyton Manning.
Whichever group emerges successful will be paying a hefty price for the franchise. Current projections have the franchise at a purchase price of $4 billion-plus, twice the $2.275 billion sum David Tepper paid for the Carolina Panthers in 2018.
The NFL is in need of a minority owner for a number of reasons, the bad press around its minority hiring practices being one of the biggest. If Allen’s bid is successful and he’s approved it would be a step in the right direction, but it won’t solve the league’s diversity and inclusion problem overnight.
Commissioner Roger Goodell addressed the league’s poor track record on diversity and inclusion in his Super Bowl LVI press conference on Wednesday.
“We look at the same numbers,” Goodell said when asked about the number of franchises in the 102 year history of the league that haven’t had at least one Black head coach. “They are part of the effort in looking at how do we become more effective in our policies and procedures. We work really hard. We believe in diversity, we believe in it as a value…We just have to do a better job. We have to look is there another thing we can do to make sure we’re attracting that best talent and making our league inclusive.”
The NFL says diversity, equity and inclusion are part of its core principles. The numbers say otherwise, so I asked @nflcommish about it. pic.twitter.com/IJYl7EGdN0
Allen will have to build consensus among his fellow owner peers, an “old boy network” if ever there was one. Having the backing of Goodell and one of the more influential owners in Kraft is a good start though, and something he can build off.
But we have a long way to go before we get there. The process of securing financing, vetting, and approval is not easy.
As a media titan, Allen’s company owns the Weather Channel and recently invested $1 billion in local television stations. He recently signed a multi-platform partnership with Google, and has bid for the regional television operator Tegna Inc. He is a champion for diversity and inclusion and has gone against the biggest television advertisers for discrimination against Black owned media outlets.
The Bowlen family led by the late Pat Bowlen purchased the Broncos in 1984. Pat was CEO of the Broncos until 2014 when he stepped down after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Bowlen died in 2019 and the team has been run by the Bowlen Trust, which includes team CEO Joe Ellis among two others: Vice President and General Counsel Rich Slivka and lawyer Mary Kelly.
Pat hoped that one of his children would take over and keep the franchise family run. None of the Bowlen children could come to an agreement, and after some in-fighting and court battles, the trust made the decision to put the team up for sale.
Denver billionaire Black entrepreneur Robert F. Smith, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Alec Gores also are going to be bidders.
