I am reading the story about the diversity controversy with Vanity Fair choosing a cover will all-white upcoming female actors.  The fact is the majority of roles in Hollywood are written for white women.  That will not change until other races start to cherish and tell their own stories.  I don’t have a problem with Vanity Fair’s choice.

What I have a problem with is “tokenism”. Where companies and other entities go out their way to find a non-white person (I am starting not to like the term a person of color…thats another blog post) to add to their project as to show diversity or satisfy a criteria.  It is a slap in the face.  It  basically says we need a Black, Asian,  Hispanic or someone non-white just to fill a spot regardless of if they really met our criteria or we have someone else in mind.

We recently saw backlash by black coaching candidates in the NFL. There is a rule called the Rooney rule which requires teams to interview at least one black candidate for a open head coaching job. Well a few former and assistant coaches who were being called in to be interviewed JUST to meet the rule declined to interview.  Why? In many of the cases everyone knew the team was going to offer to job to a white coach. They were just doing it out of formality.  They wanted to satifiy the rule or “skirt” it so they went looking for a black candidate to help them. I know there is another side to the coin where these candidates should do the interview just to gain the experience of doing a head coaching job interview. These candidates probably were more concerned about the principle of the process and the tokenism where they were being “used” because of the color of their skin. In the name of diversity people are being used due to public perception.

How far are we going to go with diversity.  Will we have to have a mixed race person,  trans gender person,  native American Indian etc…When are we going to stop this madness in the name of diversity?