The Juneteenth holiday marks how far we’ve come and still have to go.
A national holiday celebrating the end of slavery was unthinkable when I was growing up. Then the fights were over everyone being able to vote, ending “whites only” sections in public and private facilities, and banks refusing Black people mortgages as a matter of policy.
Since then we have made great strides toward the Declaration of Independence’s promise that all men are created equal. Marketing has played a part in that. My good friend Steve Locke told me he loved watching TV commercials when he was a kid because it was the only place he saw Blacks doing everyday things: Buying aspirin, going to McDonalds, etc. Representation matters.
Today the fight to get equal rights for all is more heated than I’ve ever seen. However, positive signs can be found in some interesting places, like artificial intelligence. AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on and a lot of that data is problematic. Racial and other biases are easily found. There are now AIs trained to remedy that. They include Latimer.AI, which provides answers reflecting the experiences of Black and brown people and ChatBlackGPT, a chatbot also centered on these communities.
Below is some of our coverage of diversity and inclusion in marketing.
Constantine von Hoffman
Managing Editor
