>the biggest problem is that when people try to have real
>dialogue about it with clients and execs, they're usually told
>to shut up and get back to work or everyone plays dumb and
>pretends nothing is going on.

that's corporate culture. no creativity in a stifling working environment. nobody's willing to breach social norms and mores - everybody believes in "evolutionary" social progression. we need more radicals in the corporate world or diverse companies without hierarchical command.

>i'm not trying to be one of these victimhood-pushers... i
>think there's a way to market brands, sell stuff and entertain
>people without degrading various cultures or genders or races
>in the process. i just want people to know what they're
>getting into so they can see where the problems are and think
>about how to fix them along the way.

there are a couple of things you should check out. first, a book called "Where the Girls Are." it may seem a little off topic, but it's a critical feminist analysis of media and marketing from the 50's to present day. its worth a skim, at the least. women faced (face) parallel issues, and throughout the book - mainstream media's attempts to reach the general market (or target in the case of the female minority) was always about ten years behind reality. there may be psychological reasons (emotional ties to the 20/20 vision that we all have of our past) but she talks about the fight to increase modernity in advertising, marketing and media. truthfully, i think black media is 20 or 30 years behind, cause we're not gonna see a black will & grace for another couple of decades,

second is the work of simmel and mannheim (both sociologists). simmel's work was done in the early 1900's. i'm not trying to school you, but check out the swipe - this is why i've got a double-major (and it's gonna take me four more years to get out of school : )

"in simmel's view, people produce culture, but because of their ability to reify social reality, the cultural world and the social world come to have lives of their own, lives that come increasingly to dominate the actors who created, and daily re-create, them. although people always retain the capacity to create and re-create culture, the long-term trend of history is for culture to exert a more and more coercive force on the actor... First, its absolute size grows with increasing modernization... Second, the number of different components of the cultural realm also grows... Finally, and perhaps most important, the various elements of the cultural world become more and more intwined in an ever more powerful, self-contained world that is increasingly beyond the control of the actors. simmel was impressed - if not depressed - by the bewildering number and variety of human products which in the contemporary world surround and unceasingly impinge upon the individual."

if this isn't the same thing that guru and krs-one said about hip-hop being a culture (rhyme & reason - documentary), and mos def's reference to people talking about hip-hop being some giant that lives in the forest when they ask him about the state of hip-hop, and he replies - 'we are hip-hop.' i don't know what is. the image that's been sold as a representation of black culture has become a beast that feeds upon itself.

anyways, i'll check out your book. i've got a lot to learn before i step onto the battlefield.