University of Minnesota fails the underserved population of Minnesota, with the help of Black people that work there.
On Monday, November 3, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. the man that inspired the movie “Hotel Rwanda”- Paul Ruesabagina, will be coming to Northrop Auditorium to speak. This event is sponsored by the Department of Post Secondary Teaching and Learning and co-sponsored by the Department of African American and African Studies with African Read-In. This mess falls under the University of Minnesota’s - of Education + Human Development. This event is free and open to the public. (?)
About two weeks ago, staff from a local agency was contacted about doing possible advertising for this event. The firm contacted has the Twin Cities #1 minority-ethnic media news distribution and operates a full service Public Relations agency. The problem - the General Manager was a Black Man.
So often a group of Black people get to a point in an organization where they get make decisions (or not make decisions) that effect how important information is distributed to the community that never get to attend or hear about such events. This is the case with Ms. Serna Wright, Director of Events for the University of Minnesota College of Education + Human Development. These events are usually attended by 85 percent White and the rest a mix of students and some “stratified” individuals that got the word through the “IIBN – (I’m Important Black Network). Staffers at the agency asked the GM, “How the University of Minnesota College of Education + Human Development would get the word out to the Black, Asian, Somali, Hispanic-Latino and Hmong community without using Insight News, The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Asian American Press, LaVoz, Hmong Times, One Nation News and the African media outlets in Minnesota?”
In a telephone call to Ms. Wright on yesterday, she (Ms. Wright) was asked what are her plans for message and information distribution; Cost per point; GRP; Budget; Reach & Frequency. Her reply was, “I’m going to use radio. Of course this was a call for possible dollars into our agency, but also a concern about why she’s stalled for 2 weeks.
Being in advertising and marketing for over 30 years in Minnesota, I understood then that Ms. Wright has and is consistently wasting the U of M’s money on advertising and marketing on what she feels, rather than reaching a segment of the population that would like to engage this event. This is another example of “Blue Business Racism on Pluto”.
It was apparent to me that Ms. Wright has no clue what a clean media distribution would be as it pertains to attracting people of color to the U of M that might possibly assist in building capacity for students interested in Journalism, African American Studies or other courses the U of M might offer.
Those of you that get it must know by now – Ms. Wright is the “wrong” person for the job!
Another example that no one was reading or comprehending when WEB Dubois said, “The Talented 10th is responsible for the other 90%.”
Again the University of Minnesota fails the underserved population of Minnesota, with the help of Black people that work there.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
