This should be called a “we-wonder-what-happened” section, as we would like to know what happened to Cyrus Mehri, the top civil-rights attorney and one of the most feared lawyers in America, and his big showdown with Madison Avenue.
In January 2009, Mehri turned up the heat on the ad agencies’ woeful diversity record–less than 5% for African Americans; lower for Asians. The record is not close to the 20% range and up projected yearly.
The study reportedly came from Bendick and Egan and demonstrated quantitatively widespread racial discrimination in the ad industry.
This puts the ad agencies on the defensive. For more on this story, click on these links.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2009-01-07-minorities-ads_N.htm
http://www.madisonavenueproject.com/
Another thing we wonder about is why Asians, who are even less represented than African Americans, are not mentioned as much in most of the writeups.