PepsiCo's Diversity Legacy Is Strong

Joan Crawford was a superstar of Hollywood's Golden Age and she also was among the first female directors of a U.S. public company when she took the seat of her late husband, Alfred Steele, on PepsiCo's board in 1959. In addition to featuring one of the first female directors of a public company, PepsiCo, which is No. 10 on The 2007 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, was the first company to put together an all-black sales team focused on selling PepsiCo products to black consumers when it did so in the 1940s (See also: Multicultural Martketing? How PepsiCo Got it Started). A study by Catalyst, a research organization focused on women in the workplace, found that large U.S. companies with the greatest representation of women in top management generated a third more returns to shareholders than those dominated by men. "The woman is still the primary shopper ... It's hard to have a company full of men deciding what women should be buying," says Indra Nooyi, who last year became PepsiCo's first female chief executive, reports MSNBC.com.

Ex-Wife Becomes a Man, Still Seeks Alimony

"It's illegal for a man to marry a man, and it should likewise be illegal for a man to pay alimony to a man. When she changed to a man, I believe she terminated that alimony," says John McGuire, attorney to Lawrence Roach, who agreed to pay alimony to his ex-wife, Julia, but is seeking a court order ending those required payments since Julia had a sex change. Roach agreed to pay alimony until his ex-wife dies or remarries. "Those two things haven't happened," said Gregory Nevins, an attorney for Roach's ex-wife and a senior staff attorney with the national gay-rights group Lambda Legal, according to CNN.com.

Equal Rights Amendment Re-Introduced in Congress

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which originally was introduced in Congress in 1923, gained popularity in the 1960s. It finally passed both chambers of Congress in 1972 but didn't become an amendment to the U.S. Constitution after failing to be ratified by 38 states. Yesterday the amendment was reintroduced by House and Senate Democrats under a new name--the Women's Equality Amendment. The ERA states that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." That sentence would subject legal claims of gender discrimination to the same strict scrutiny given by courts to allegations of racial discrimination. In the 1970s, opponents of the ERA said it would lead to women being drafted and unisex bathrooms, while today those same opponents say its passage would compel courts to approve same-sex marriages and deny Social Security benefits for housewives and widows. Read more.

Disney May Re-Release 'Song of the South'

"Song of the South," Disney's first big live-action picture telling the story of a young white boy, Johnny, who goes to live on his grandparents' Georgia plantation and befriends Uncle Remus, a black servant, could be released on video soon. The movie has never been released on video in the United States and is criticized as racist for its depiction of black people. But Disney CEO Bob Iger told company shareholders that the company is considering a video release. Nearly 115,000 people have signed an online petition urging Disney to release the movie, and out-of-print international copies can cost as much as $100. "I think it's important that these images are shown today so that especially young people can understand this historical context for some of the blatant stereotyping that's done today," says James Pappas, associate professor of African-American Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Read more.

Washington Nationals Should Pay Tribute to Negro Leagues

Major League Baseball faces a dearth of black-American athletes. Washington, D.C., youth-baseball coach William R. Mattox Jr. says in a USA Today column that he has an answer. The Washington Nationals, the professional baseball team representing the nation's capital, should amend its name to the Washington National Grays. Adding Grays "might help restore baseball to the prominent place it once occupied in African-American life," says Mattox Jr. The Negro League's Homestead Grays in the 1930s and 1940s played many home games in Washington, D.C., and featured Josh Gibson, who clubbed at least 75 home runs in a single season. Linking Washington's baseball heritage to the Negro Leagues will likely appeal to whites, who account for 60 percent of the visits to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., writes Mattox, who is white. Read more.

Cadbury Criticized for Using Caribbean Stereotypes

Britain's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has said Cadbury's promotion for Trident Gum deeply offended Caribbean blacks in that nation. Cadbury said the campaign, which featured a black man and two white people speaking in accents and attracted 519 complaints, was meant to be a celebration of poets who had inspired multicultural audiences. The ASA noted Cadbury's own research had found the ads were likely to result in a polarized reaction, and about one in five of the British African-Caribbean sample had found the ads offensive. Read more.

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