Hasta La Creative!

When Kevin Roberts dismissed gender equality, referring to it as a “non-issue,” I was reminded of Ad Age editor Ken Wheaton’s recent column on the positive role women might play in what is often referred to as the “diversity problem.”

Mr. Wheaton is relying on change coming from those women with “hiring power,” which, in effect, means white women. I appreciate his optimism and his faith in my gender but, in my experience, which spans three decades in multicultural marketing, I have found white female ad execs just as likely as their male counterparts to shy away from serious conversations about systemic racism in our industry.

Kevin Roberts was inadvertently right about one thing. We need to stop talking about gender and racial diversity as a problem. Our industry’s impotence when it comes to dealing with structural racism and gender bias isn’t a “problem,” because if it were, it would be fixed. That’s what we do in advertising. We design strategies to solve problems.

Continue reading at AdAge.com