Greenlining is also asking the magazine for demographic data on its staff and management, a more thorough and heartfelt apology, and a follow-up story on the true causes of the housing crisis (bank greed) rather than blaming the collapse on Blacks and Latinos.

The cover showed a caricature of Black and Latino people literally rolling in cash because of the improved housing market.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO VIEW

So far, neither the mayor nor the magazine have responded. If there is no response, Greenlining plans to contact the magazine’s regular advertisers and event sponsors—including several DiversityInc Top 50 companies, such as AT&T, IBM, Verizon, Toyota and Dell—and ask them to pressure the publication. Other advertisers in the 84-page issue with the inflammatory cover included Xerox, Bank of America, State Street Corporation, Netsuite, T. Rowe Price, Microsoft, UPS, Hampton Inn (owned by Hilton) and Capital One.

“I don’t think these companies want to be associated with a company that can do something so despicable and backward. We will ask them to send Bloomberg Businessweeka note and speak up that diversity does count and Bloomberg should comply with our information request. They owe the community a better policy and it needs to be written in their magazine,” said Greenlining Executive Director Orson Aguilar.

A look at the top management of both the magazine and its parent company, Bloomberg LP, shows its senior management is mostly white and male. That includes Editor Josh Tyrangiel, Creative Director Richard Turley and Publisher Hugh Wiley at the magazine, and President Daniel Doctoroff, Chairman Peter Grauer, Chief Content Officer Norm Pearlstine and Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler at Bloomberg LP.

Bloomberg does not participate in the DiversityInc Top 50, so we do not have actual management demographics. By comparison, 18 percent of the senior level (CEOs and direct reports) of the DiversityInc Top 50 are Black, Latino or Asian, 80 percent more than the average of the Fortune 500. And 24 percent of the senior level of the DiversityInc Top 50 are women, 20 percent more than the Fortune 500 average.

The Greenlining Institute—which is supported by the Greenlining Coalition, comprised of 37 business and community groups—wrote in a letter to Bloomberg and the editors:

<blockquote>It may well be that you would have done it “differently” if you had known the cover illustration would garner so much public outcry. Nonetheless, your magazine is only reacting to negative feedback from its readers and the nation. The vast majority of America’s Latinos, Asian-Pacific Islanders and African-Americans may still be hard-pressed to understand why a serious magazine with excellent writers and substantial literary acclaim believed that insulting America’s diverse citizens was the best way to portray “The Great American Housing Rebound.”</blockquote>

The letter was signed by Aguilar and Economic Equity Senior Program Manager Sasha Werblin.

Referencing the advertisers/sponsors, the letter stated: “After all, what company would want to make enemies with the fastest-growing consumer segment in America?”  The letter also questioned whether the “tone deafness” of the cover and the staff that approved it is a reflection of the lack of diversity among the management and the staff.

The cover was designed by Andres Guzman, a freelancer who was born in Peru and now lives in Minneapolis.

The image and the cover lines are particularly offensive because Blacks and Latinos were disproportionately impacted by the subprime crisis from 2007–2009, which has been demonstrated by the billions of dollars of fines levied against the likes of Bank of America and Citigroup.

Pew Research Center noted that the bursting of the housing bubble caused far greater damage to these two communities, mostly because of the subprime loans given to people who didn’t have enough money or credit to qualify.

According to Pew, from 2005–2009, Latino wealth fell by 66 percent and Black wealth fell by 53 percent, compared with 16 percent for whites.

One study found that during the subprime years, banks were twice as likely to approve whites for prime mortgages with the best interest rates, while Blacks and Latinos received two to four times more subprime loans, most of which had such high rates they put the borrowers “under water” quickly. Another study found that the major banks made 70 percent of their high-cost loans in neighborhoods that were predominantly Black and/or Latino.

After the cover came out, Tyrangiel issued this “apology”: “Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret. Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we’d do it differently.”

The post Advertisers Asked to Pressure Bloomberg Businessweek Over Racist Cover appeared first on DiversityInc.

The Greenlining Institute, a nonprofit organization that works for equality in lending, studied racial/ethnic diversity in the workforce and management at federal financial regulatory agencies. While several of the organizations had workforce diversity, especially Blacks in agencies located in Washington, D.C., or cities, the lack of Latinos throughout the workforce and lack of all racial/ethnic diversity in the top levels of management was significant.

Greenlining feels that without an adequate understanding of these communities from senior leadership, regulatory agencies cannot effectively prevent marketplace discrimination. Other studies have documented the increasing race-based wealth gap.

“A glaring piece of data in the report is the huge lack of representation of Latinos,” says Orson Aguilar, executive director of Greenlining. “If their management more mirrored the workforce, it could have prevented the mortgage fiasco.”

Methodology

The Greenlining Institute initiated this study after the Dodds-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act created Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion in 20 regulatory agencies. The agencies surveyed were the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, Federal Reserve Banks in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Francisco and St. Louis, as well as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. One agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, did not respond, and another, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was in the process of organizing and wasn’t ready to participate.

Greenlining requested workforce, management and senior-management demographic data from each of the agencies. Initially, Greenlining also requested supplier-diversity direct-contractor dollar spend for minority-owned business enterprises, women-owned business enterprises and suppliers owned by veterans with disabilities. However, the responses were limited and aren’t included in this report.

It took about five months to collect the workforce/management data, says Divya Sundar, community reinvestment fellow.  

Key Data Findings

* For the workforce, the most racially diverse agencies were the Board of Governors and the Federal Reserve Banks in Atlanta, New York, Dallas and San Francisco.  

* The least diverse in the workforce were the Federal Reserve Banks of Cleveland, Kansas City and Minneapolis.

* Latino representation in the workforce ranged from a low of 0.9 percent at the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank and averaged 3.8 percent nationwide. By contrast, the DiversityInc Top 50 average 8.9 percent of their U.S. workforces as Latino.

* The federal agencies have a ratio of 1:2 when comparing Black senior managers to all Black managers, while the DiversityInc Top 50 have a ratio of 2:1 for the same variables. Senior management is defined as the top three levels of the organization.

* The DiversityInc Top 50 companies are comparable for Blacks in management but have 50 percent more Latinos in management than the federal agencies and double the percentages of Asians in management.

* The DiversityInc Top 50 companies have twice the percentages of Latinos and Asians in senior management as the federal agencies. Of the 15 agencies that submitted data, only 11 had any Blacks in senior management; only eight had any Latinos in senior management; and only six had any Asians in senior management.

* Three agencies, the Federal Reserve Banks of St. Louis, Boston and Cleveland, had only whites in the senior-management category.

Recommendations

The Greenlining Institute has created a community-based advisory board to ascertain next steps. Board members, including the National Council of La Raza, the National Association of Asian American Professionals, the Center for Responsible Lending, the Los Angeles chapter of the National Urban League of Young Professionals, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, will meet in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 24 to begin to draft more formal recommendations for action. In the interim, Greenlining suggests:

* Transparency: Requiring all financial regulatory organizations to publish diversity data online

* Analysis: A study of recruitment and retention policies in the financial regulatory sector be undertaken

* Accountability: Establishing benchmarks, including region-specific benchmarks for the Federal Reserve Bank

See also: Did the Fed’s Stunning Lack of Diversity Cause the Housing Crisis?

The post Report Documents Lack of Diversity in the Federal Reserve Banks appeared first on DiversityInc.