This month, I’d like to share a few thoughts on the cost of selling products rooted in the dark side. 

On May 3rd, we lost a man whose work was enlightening, predictive and vitally important.  Leonard Eron was a noted psychologist who authored a landmark study that linked violence watched on television with aggressive behavior in children.  Eron found the more violence children watched on television, the more aggression they displayed in school.

A Los Angeles Times article recalled that Eron’s study began in 1960 with 875 third graders who lived in a semi rural community in upstate New York.  Nine years later, as concerns over violence on television grew, the U.S. surgeon general commissioned a study to determine definitively whether linkages existed between violent programs and children's behavior.  Eron responded by returning to the youths interviewed in his 1960 study.  He found that boys who watched violent television had been involved in more fights.  Even more startling was the discovery that children who had not demonstrated aggressive behavior in third grade, but watched television programs with violent content, were more likely to be aggressive at age 19.

Eron, who was 87 when he died, had been a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago for 20 years before going on to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he continued to teach psychology for ten more years.  The children who were the subject of his initial study remained the focus of his research.  When the children were 30, researchers found that those who had been aggressive as children had police records for felony assaults, drunk driving and speeding as adults.

Although television executives took exception to Eron’s findings, nearly every major public policy organization concerned with children’s welfare now opposes children watching violent images on television and in film.

Unfortunately, with the growing presence of adult material on both cable channels and in network programming, children today have much greater exposure to more frequent and explicit forms of violence then they did in 1960 and 1969, when Eron first conducted his studies.

There is a dark side to human nature that is reflected in our economic activities.  Darkness has its appeal, and because advertisers know that people are drawn to violence content, there is plenty of money available to fuel the proliferation of violent programming – programming that is literally destroying our nation.

If you think my conclusion is hyperbole, consider the following headline that ran on the front page of the May 16, 2007 edition of the Chicago Tribune: "Year of violence, grief: 27 city students slain."  Below that headline was a large color photo of elementary students filing past an enlarged portrait of a slain classmate.  Below the photo was the following: "Desolation, loss, nightmares plague those left behind at schools throughout Chicago." 

Our country took notice when 13 children were killed at Columbine High School.  We even lowered the flag in memory of the 32 slain last month at Virginia Tech; but there’s not much outcry in Chicago, or the nation, over the deaths of nearly 30 urban youth, who happen to be African American and Hispanic. 

Our nation is spending billions of dollars each month in Iraq, in a vain attempt to stem a ceaseless tide of violence fueled by ancient rivalries and exacerbated by external agitators and religious extremists.  One has to wonder why we are exhausting precious treasure half way around the world when we have blood flowing every day in our own urban centers.

We continue to live in a divided America characterized by privilege, prosperity, protection and justice for some and poverty, fear and victimization for others.  Sadly, the distinction between these two America's continues to reflect our nation's racial divisions. 

As a nation, we are unwilling to blame the system; we prefer to blame those who are exploited by the system.  We see violence in our inner cities as symptomatic of what's wrong with those who dwell there, and not symptomatic of a social system that fosters inequality and poverty.

We live in the society where people like Don Imus are paid millions of dollars each year to mock and demean everyone and everything, including the uplifting accomplishments of the downtrodden.  Just think about this: if Imus hadn’t combined racially insensitive and sexist words in his disparaging remarks about the Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team, he would still be on the air adding millions of dollars to CBS’s coffers. 

I find it telling that he is now suing his former employer, essentially for termination without cause. Imus claims that he was just doing his job – per his contract.

Today, our young people are exposed to an endless barrage of verbal and visual assaults, and the by-product of these attacks are evidenced in the anger and blood that run in our streets.  Yes, blood that fuels the imaginations of television and cable screenwriters, but rarely generates mass empathy or calls to action.  We are all too concerned with who will win the current season of American Idol to expend real empathy for the carnage that occurs in the underbelly of our society.

This website exists to provide a sliver of hope and a voice for those who aspire to higher visions, or simply aspire to more.  In this edition of diversityinbusiness.com, I am pleased to join my colleagues in showcasing Rising Stars - young people of color who represent the Next Generation of Advertising Talent.  This is our fourth annual salute to emerging diverse talent in marketing; and I am pleased to give global recognition to such amazing talent.  While I am moved by the passion of each of the five young professionals highlighted in our salute; I would like to give special acknowledgement to Mike Williams, creative director for commonground, an African American advertising agency that we have followed for some time.

Williams sees himself as a man with a mission to transform, and ultimately elevate, the image of African Americans in advertising.  He follows in the footsteps of Edward Boyd, who died earlier this month.  Boyd was the creative force behind an early Pepsi ad campaign that showcased an African American family in a positive light.  The ad campaign helped Pepsi build market share in the African American community and reinforced the value proposition of inclusion.

Perhaps Williams will realize his mission; but the road will not be easy. If he does, his success might rest in the fact that he works for an African American ad agency.  However, commonground, like all agencies, is only the middleman.  Agencies work for clients; and the true values of marketers is reflected in what and how they market. 

I believe too many companies are willing to make and market products to urban youth without regard for how that product will affect the economic or social condition of the end-user.  Consider one hundred dollar gym shoes as a case in point; or the recently withdrawn beverage brand labeled Cocaine;  or consider rap music and their supporting videos.  A great deal of hip hop culture violates the sanctity of human life, womanhood and the African American struggle for human dignity, but such vulgarity generates huge revenues for the record companies. The executives at the companies that produce these and other dark products are as dismissive of the consequences of their economically enriching activities as the television executives were  when they learned of Professor Eron’s findings.

Yes, there’s a great deal of money to be made from products linked to the dark side.  The only problem is, we all end up paying one hell of a price.

My prayers go out to the families and friends of the Chicago 27.

The End