Friday, September 22, 2017

Munroe Bergdorf’s firing shows the futility of workplace diversity campaigns -- sorta


Just under three years ago, cosmetics giant L’Oreal announced the latest purchase in its long line of acquisitions across the beauty industry. Carol’s Daughter, a hair and skin care brand launched by entrepreneur Lisa Price, was wildly popular on the Home Shopping network, as well as a staple of Target’s “ethnic” cosmetic section. Carol’s Daughter offered something that L’Oreal and most of the beauty industry had been missing—an inroads with Black women. As a market segment, Black women reportedly spend $7.5 billion annually on beauty products, yet have historically been under-served by the industry. But many customers of Carol’s Daughter voiced their displeasure on social media at the time the purchase was announced. Skeptics believed that L’Oreal intended to cash in on the trend of corporate diversity awareness, while doing nothing to remedy the underlying issue of white supremacy, which among its other more violent effects, shuts people of colour out of both the marketplace and the boardroom.

Last week, L’Oreal fired Black transgender model Munroe Bergdorf—not only proving their critics correct, but bringing forward a deeper question in the Trump-era conversation on race: When the people most violently affected by white supremacy can be fired for speaking truthfully about it, what good is served by “diversity and inclusion” initiatives at the corporate level?  (more...)


Corporate media mouthpiece Macleans does what corporate media is paid to do -- misdirect and omit. They fail to note that corporate diversity is an absurdity in the modern world of the global corporate monopoly cartel. In small enterprises, you see people of all hues and stripes competing on a reasonably level playing field, with a fair chance of success. The cartels kill competition and hold business in a vice-like grip of mediocrity.

Now, let's look a little closer at the vanity industry. Coco Channel was a Vichy collaborator who, due to her political connections, was never brought to justice. Bold and brazen, she continued to trumpet her fascist views till her death. The French financial/industrial elite has long been the willing and enthusiastic concubine of the German/American corporate cartel system. This corporate fifth column was the reason for France's swift fall in the Second World War -- not any military brilliance on the part of Hitler. The Vichy regime thoroughly corrupted French business and politics, and continues to hold it hostage to this day.

So what about this "white supremacy" business? It depends on what kind of white you are. Neo-Ottomans and Japanese got along famously with the Nazis. Hitler had black units in his military machine. Sodomites had high positions in the Feurer's inner circle. But, having studied Machiavelli, Dolphy knew that keeping his underlings fighting among each other was an effective way to consolidate his own power. Down the road from I. G. Farben and Deutsche Bank, Hitler's puppetmasters, the Frankfurt School was established to invent myriads of imaginary identities so that society could be engineered for passivity and made unfit for democracy. Therein lies the secret of "corporate diversity".

To get an appreciation of the German iron fist within the French velvet glove (hello Paul Fromm)  read:


No comments:

Post a Comment