In recent years, powerful white executives have lost their jobs because of racist statements they made to employees and others. Papa John’s founder John Schnatter used a racist slur during a conference call; Greg Glassman, the founder and CEO of CrossFit, posted a tweet highlighting the murder of George Floyd, and spoke belligerently with CrossFit gym owners about racing in a video call.
But Mr. Demsey is an executive whose past three decades have been a case study in which diversity is good for business, and some of his most prominent proponents are members of fashion’s black power elite.
“Racism may not be the way to describe everything that is wrong with the company, but it is certainly dominated by favoritism. Nepotism towards white models, nepotism towards white actors and nepotism towards white editors,” said Steve Stoute, who headed Urban Music at Sony Music in the 1990s and became executive vice president of Interscope Geffen A&M and then a marketing and branding agency started. Translation, in collaboration with the NBA, NFL, Jay-Z, Nas and Beyoncé, among others. “John Demsey was one of the first to break that circle.”
In the apology Mr Demsey posted on Feb. 25, he said he hadn’t read the meme. But no one else had posted it for him. (While Mr. Demsey does not have a nondisclosure agreement, his financial settlement depends on him not discrediting Estée Lauder, and he declined, through a lawyer, to comment on this article.)
The meme was created by Chris Taliaferro, a 39-year-old self-proclaimed Chingy superfan, who is black, and said in an interview that the original post was intended as an absurdist joke about people’s desire to party during a pandemic. (A good party rapper, no sharper than Bruno Mars, Chingy’s last big hit was in 2005.)
mr. Taliaferro didn’t expect someone like Mr. Demsey would post it again.
“As a white director of a multi-billion dollar company, you have to have situational awareness,” said Mr. Taliaferro, who refused to give his job title or occupation because his own employers had problems with his positions.