One striking aspect of the Ceres Conference last week - in addition to the sustainability report awards, the inaugural Joan Bavaria awards, and the CEO plenary on cap-and-trade - was the monochromatic hue of the audience: overwhelmingly middle-class, middle-aged white folks. In hallway conversation, one middle-aged, middle-class white guy remarked that this is more the rule than the exception in CSR conferences.

Underlining this dynamic, the cover of Sandra Waddock's new book profiling the pioneers of CSR, The Difference Makers, looks like a study in melanin deprivation. A picture is worth a thousand words, and the 2,300-word story told by the pictures of the nearly two-dozen leaders is that CSR developed largely devoid of racially diverse leadership. This is a big contrast to the history told by social economist Bill Cunningham, who traces the roots of socially responsible investing to December 1, 1955, when Dr. Martin Luther King combined social activism with corporate engagement and direct action in launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

In a recent post on the Intel blog, Perry Gruber documents a similar view that CSR traces its roots to the Black Power movement of the 1960s. So said several participants in a recent diversity practitioners conference where Gruber contended that diversity plays an important but relatively minor role in CSR. Participants disabused him of this belief, arguing instead that diversity plays a central role in corporate health, vitality, profitability, and reputation. Indeed, this echoes the underpinnings of the annual DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list released early last month.

Recognizing this tension between the stated importance of diversity and actual diverse representation in corporations, IBM recently sponsored a conference on this very topic. The conference responded to conflicting demographic trends: while the Hispanic community is expanding toward a quarter of the US population by mid-century, the number of Hispanics working in the information technology sector is declining with the Hispanic high school drop-out rate of 24 percent boding poorly for reversing this trend. The conference gathered leaders in business, education, government, and community organizing to brainstorm strategies for upping the number of Hispanic students pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math in the US.

The next step is to match such actions with the historical framing and the practice of CSR.

This article was written by CSRwire contributor Bill Baue.

CSRwire's Top Multimedia Picks of the Week

This week is heavy on a topic on everybody's mind: FOOD. Where does it come from and where is it going? • The Organic Center has a great video "All Crops Not Created Equal?" filled with disturbing facts about the biotechnology in food production. • This video from Stonyfield Farm offers a unique glimpse into the life of an organic farmer in Vermont. • HarvardBusiness.org contributor Mark Kramer contributes his ideas about the world food crisis and the roles and responsibilities corporations play in his article. • And finally, the Dogwood Alliance, an organization that holds corporations accountable for the impact of their industrial forestry practices, has just released their report: 2008 Fast Food Industry Packaging Report, which documents the effects of disposable paper products on the environment.

CSRwire accepts multimedia contributions to its Video, Commentary and Research section, vcr.csrwire.com.


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