Abercrombie & Fitch: Classy Race Issue

[monk222]

~
"In another unusual move, the settlement requires Abercrombie to stop focusing on predominantly white fraternities and sororities in its recruitment. Many Abercrombie workers have said that company employees were often told to go to college campuses and to urge good-looking fraternity and sorority members to apply for jobs."

-- Steven Greenhouse for The NY Times

I just thought some might enjoy this story of race relations still working itself out in twenty-first century America. We've come some way from the lunch-counter days, and we are still working things out...

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Abercrombie & Fitch, one of the nation's trendiest retailers, settled race and sex discrimination lawsuits yesterday, agreeing to alter its well-known collegiate, all-American - and largely white - image by adding more blacks, Hispanics and Asians to its marketing materials.

After a federal judge in San Francisco approved the class-action settlement yesterday, the two sides announced an agreement that calls for Abercrombie & Fitch to pay $40 million to several thousand minority and female plaintiffs. Abercrombie also agreed to hire 25 diversity recruiters and a vice president for diversity and to pursue benchmarks so that its hiring and promotion of minorities and women reflect its applicant pool.

In an unusual step, the settlement calls for Abercrombie to increase diversity not just in hiring and promotions, but also in its advertisements and catalogs, which have long featured models who were overwhelmingly white and who seemed to have stepped off the football field or out of fraternities or sororities. Plaintiffs' lawyers said they insisted that the company agree to add more diversity to its marketing materials so as not to discourage minorities from applying for jobs.

In another unusual move, the settlement requires Abercrombie to stop focusing on predominantly white fraternities and sororities in its recruitment. Many Abercrombie workers have said that company employees were often told to go to college campuses and to urge good-looking fraternity and sorority members to apply for jobs.

When Abercrombie was sued in June 2003, several Hispanic, black and Asian plaintiffs complained that when they applied for jobs, they were steered not to sales positions out front, but to low-visibility, back-of-the-store jobs, stocking and cleaning up.

"Abercrombie had a back-of-the-bus mentality," said Kimberly West-Faulcon, Western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. "Now instead of hiring them in the back of the store, they will have diversity recruiters. It sends a message to young people that we're moving past this kind of thing."

Bill Lann Lee, the plaintiffs' lead lawyer and former director of the Justice Department's civil rights division, said Abercrombie had refused to hire many minority students who had impressive work and school records. He added that the percentages of minority and women managers at Abercrombie were far below industry averages.

"We're talking about discrimination being visited on some of the best and the brightest within their community," Mr. Lee said.

He applauded the settlement, approved yesterday by Judge Susan Illston of Federal District Court. "The import of this settlement is that a major American company has stepped forward and become a model," Mr. Lee said.

Abercrombie, which did not admit guilt, agreed to hire a monitor, to provide diversity training to all managers who do hiring and to revise performance evaluations for managers, making progress in diversity goals a factor in bonuses and compensation. The settlement also called for $7.2 million in lawyers' fees.

In a statement, Mike Jeffries, Abercrombie's chairman, said: "We have, and always have had, no tolerance for discrimination. We decided to settle this suit because we felt that a long, drawn-out dispute would have been harmful to the company and distracting to management."

Several industry analysts said the settlement would help Abercrombie's marketing. The company has 700 stores and 22,000 employees and had $1.7 billion in sales last year.

"Their profile, their image is going to evolve," said Robin S. Murchison, a retail analyst with Jefferies & Company. "It will still be the cool kids. You can walk onto any Ivy League campus and there's a lot more going on than Waspy-looking guys and girls. I think they'll tap into that. I actually think it will work to their advantage."

In an interview yesterday, Carla Grubb, a 21-year-old black plaintiff who is a student at California State University at Bakersfield, said that after she applied for a sales job at an Abercrombie store, she was hired to dust, clean windows and vacuum.

"I was always doing cleaning - they said I was a good window washer," said Ms. Grubb, who later landed a job elsewhere repairing computers. "I should have received the same treatment as everybody else. It made me feel bad. No one should be judged by the color of their skin."

Eduardo Gonzalez, the lead plaintiff and a senior chemistry major at Stanford University, said that when he applied to an Abercrombie store in Santa Clara, Calif., managers urged him to apply for the overnight stocking crew. Noting that his application was rejected, he said that when a store manager interviewed him and 13 other applicants at once, the manager overwhelmingly favored the two white applicants.

"I love this settlement," Mr. Gonzalez said. "It's a landmark thing for an American icon. They were portraying this image that all-American is all white. That's not the case."

Thomas Lennox, Abercrombie's director of communications, said that with the settlement, "we're bringing this issue to closure as well as implementing policies and practices that will ensure greater diversity throughout our organization."

-- Steven Greenhouse
.

Comments

[newkanada.livejournal.com]

That's ridiculous. Next they'll sue Lane Bryant for not selling clothes for skinny people.

[newkanada.livejournal.com]

More importantly, not hiring skinny people to work the floor. Obviously!

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

I take it Lane Bryant do outsize?

You think you have problems? I ran my late mothers bra shop after she died, and sold twice as much as any woman who ever worked in my stead. (To women, btw). But of course that couldn't happen --- Worse still, I only took 75% as much with a woman working with me as I did on my own. Despite the lack of a measuring service, I always sold more.

[newkanada.livejournal.com]

Do I think I have problems? No...am I missing something?

I've also seen black women sell more vibrators to white women than white women sell to other white women. The point is...? This lawsuit is just another reason to sue. It would be like a lawsuit against Victoria's Secret for only having women work the floor.

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my English was not clear. 'Problems' didn't follow from your entry, it was just a figure of speech meant in fun to introduce the rest. It is 3am here, and that probably says a lot.

I think the claim could well be frivolous. The trouble with allegations of this sort is that if one proceeds from bits of anecdotal evidence one can make a convincing sounding case, where there may be none. The world is full of coincidences when you look for them, but do not also look for the mundane non-coincidences that are more prevalent.

I treated all women the same whatever their age or size, whereas every woman who worked for me proved incapable of doing so. That's why I was keen to work with Thursday_Next, who doesn't have the problem, but was too far away. The other thing was I felt that women buying basques etc. found it easier as they would not be being judged. The theory may be wrong but the results remain.

Maybe something similar was happening with the vibrator sales - it was easier to buy from someone who was supposedly not from ones own social grouping?

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I must say that I'm a little surprised. Having people with the same qualifications, and then putting the darker-skin people to do the back labor while letting the white people do the relatively glamorous sales work. I don't understand how that's the same as your Lane Bryant example. In any case, race is a suspect class in constitutional law, and it's plain illegal to discriminate on the basis of race - in contrast to say weight classifications.

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

Maybe if the fat had been slaves, then the law would be different.

[newkanada.livejournal.com]

My point is that people focus on this race thing as if it were worse than gender discrimination. As I said, it's equally bad to refuse to allow men to work at Victoria's Secret. The majority of the people that buy from Victoria's Secret are white women; therefore, the majority of people who work there are white women. Same for Abercrombie & Fitch. The majority are white college students; therefore, the majority of workers are white college students. It shouldn't be about one evil over the other. Job discrimination includes everyone, more particularly in the areas of race and gender. I don't see anything wrong with a store who wants to appeal to its consumers by hiring those of the same class, gender, race, etc. I don't see anything right in it either. I'm just really tired of people who play up the race thing. I'm a white female and it's extremely hard for me to get a job and I wouldn't be surprised if a male got chosen over me for a job more than once. Gender is just as important.

[newkanada.livejournal.com]

And, honestly, it isn't even mentioned the qualifications of these hispanic, black, and Asian people. It's like when my dad worked for public housing. He's required by law to hire a certain number of black people even if a white person is more qualified for the job. He has to meet a quota and that is wrong because it's like a broken leg in the system.

Being a young American, I definitely do not see Abercrombie & Fitch as "all-American." I don't think it represents America at all. If anything, Wal-Mart does.

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

This pretty much confirms what I thought was going on, and yes it's wrong. Stupidly wrong, because it just angers people and does nothing to encourage minorities to better themselves. Why bother when they can get jobs on a quota?

I'm sorry that it's hard for you to get a job - I suppose it also gets harder because you're not in one of the quotas that gets preferential treatment. That's another problem with quotas - they're not only about who gets jobs, but who gets passed over despite being a better candidate. Now I can see why your comments about race not being more important than gender apply; you not only get whatever discrimination is out there, but also suffer from not being in a quota. This sounds like a good argument for no quotas, as if I wasn't convinced in the first place.

Whilst I have no time for racism, do you think that the existing counter measures have more to do with guilt complexes than rationality?

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

Hurray for Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice! If nothing else it suggests that the country cannot look to its presidents and say that they never hire minorities of any kind. From my limited knowledge over here, they certainly both appeared to be excellent candidates for their positions. And that is the only reason for hiring anyone. Discriminate and everyone loses; over compensate and you discriminate in reverse, and cause new bitterness and division. The appearance is of America having fewer, but still real, pockets of isolated apartheid. However I know that at ground level, there are ordinary Americans who feel that minorities are pandered to for fear of discrimination claims. I find that credible too. Perhaps, perhaps, some day there will be a proper balance.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

This is a big, complex nation with examples cutting every which way. It is reassuring to see this continued interest in racial justice even as we have been going more conservative for the past twenty years.

Yet, by all accounts, our schools are perhaps as segregated as ever. And more minorities are trapped in our underclasses. There are both real opportunities and real barriers. Obviously, it's something we still struggle with.

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

What I can't see is that $40 million and $7 million legal fees are the way to deal with things. In general here we tend to think of the USA as overly litigious. Is that a perception in the USA? And if it is so, what are the reasons - laws that are framed so as to make cases arguable, or the whole principle of having a constitution and a system of rights?

The head of the UK Commission for Racial Equality recently claimed that the health services were racist in their diagnosis of scizophrenia, as black patients were far more likely to be diagnosed. I think that is very, very questionable logic. It proceeds from the assumption that there can be no reason why it might be so in practice. I can think of several, though that does not mean that I place reliance on them. But do I trust the word of doctors, who have no reason to vary their diagnosis to discriminate, are qualified to make what is probably a relatively simple diagnosis for them, and are in any case not some all white panel; there are very many asian doctors in this country, for instance.

And again, it has often been said that West Indian children do worse at school because of discrimination. Why, then, do the Chinese do better than the white pupils? Is it because teachers discriminate in favour of them? Or is it because culturally they have a 'hard work' ethic? I think the latter is very credible, and disproves the assertion that discrimination has much to do with the spread of results.

We have lived through an age in which making reasonable assertions about figures has not been acceptable. I don't think figures should be a basis for finger pointing or abuse, but I don't think they should ignored when trying to reach sensible conclusions, either. My suspicion is that there is more discrimination behind us than in front of us, and that over here the 'positive discrimination' attitude creates more resentment than would otherwise exist. It might be wise to consider whether racism or over-reaction to it are now the bigger problem.

For instance, when most attacks classed as racially motivated in this country are committed by ethnic minorities, as figures say, is that because the 3% of the population in that grouping are 30 times less likely to commit them, or 30 times less likely to report them? I think that when someone is assaulted and it results in hospitalisation, the matter will get reported, because it is unavoidable. So I tend to think that it is more likely, based on no more than that, that our immigrants are 30 times more likely to commit racially aggravated assault than the white population. That hasn't made me hate anyone yet. But it annoys me that logical inferences are treated as hatred.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Sure, Republicans are especially big on the issue of what they like to call 'frivolous lawsuits.' Of course, their consituency is made up of the deeper pockets of our society, and Democrats represent the trial lawyers. There may be better and more efficient ways to resolve some of these disputes, but at least we are constructively negotiating and working things out, and I would be concerned about shutting the courthouse door to the grievances of minorities and the lower classes.

And it is also true that affirmative action incurs a lot of resentment and backlash, but that's part of the trickiness of dealing with minority issues. No doubt, there was terrible backlash when it first came to insisting on more equitable opportunities, and the right to be treated in general society on a more egalitarian basis than what the old Jim Crow system allowed. Nobody has come upon a great way to strike a happy balance.

As for the notion of a culture of poverty (want of work ethic), I don't know if it would help to make it harder for people to succeed. Considering the differential opportunity that prevails, there needs to be a conscious concern for providing opportunity for people and families to break out of maladaptive cycles. Does society sometimes go too far? Probably. Again, I don't think we are going to arrive anytime soon at achieving a happy balance between majority and minority interests.

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

I think the first thing that could be done to minimise the resentment, is to stop having the CRE or others decide that things are racist without considering perfectly viable alternative explanations, and instead concentrate on things that are clearly and obviously racist. Otherwise they may well get abolished at some point.

There are too many lawyers in government here, too. The first rule of society sometimes appears to be, if you have money, we will create a mechanism for taking it off you. I don't have a problem with taxation as such, but it has to be seen to be levied on a fair basis, or it will be resented.

Similarly in this country to afford a lawsuit you must be either completely impoverished, and therefore get free legal aid (to a point), or super rich. Anywhere in between, the cost is ruinous. All but the very, very poor and the very, very rich are effectively denied a real go at getting justice. That can't be right.

[tookhernowhere.livejournal.com]

I think all that is more a reason to boycott (loudly!) A&F than to legislate that they change their target demographic.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Going by the discussion that has been generated, I feel as though there is a misunderstanding somewhere. Based on the article, it seems to me the problem is about how to treat employees rather than who they are trying to sell to.

I can only suppose that others read that their employment practices are based on their desire to sell to upper-class whites, and that this is why they put such whites in their sales position. But I haven't got that impression, thinking that they are just as happy to sell to upper-class minorities, of which there are fortunately a sizeable class. I even like the cites in the article from people saying this new legal prescription is actually going to help them profit-wise.

[dave-rainbow.livejournal.com]

I've got misunderstanding all over the place. This is, for me, the best place I know to find out all about the real America of real people, and I'm ready to misunderstand my way into the facts as fast as I can. :)