Today we are proud once again to partner with The Aspen Institute to present a conference on The State of Race In America. The conference has an impressive array of panelists including moderators Juan Williams and Jose Diaz-Balart discussing a wide range of issues related to race in America today. It will be a conference rich in ideas and opinions. You can watch the conference here.
Given how crucial this issues remain in our society, the timing of this conference is perfect. The more progress we make toward being a truly inclusive society, the more we realize how far we still have to go.
For example, the latest census figures show stubborn patterns of residential segregation that affect where we live and the kind of public school education children can expect. Economic segregation is still with us, with the median income of Black and Latino families still at less than two-thirds of White family income.
America is making progress and corporate America is beginning to engage to help the progress by recognizing that the diversity of American society is a strength that needs to be reflected in the private corporate workplace.
At Comcast, we want our employee community and our vendor community to reflect the growing diversity of our customer community. We want programming that reflects the rich diversity of the thousands of communities we serve. We want to encourage more participation by minority entrepreneurs in the media industry.
To this end, we were very excited in February to announce the selection of four new, minority owned independent networks which we will distribute over Comcast cable systems.
We're not there yet. But trying makes us a stronger company — and a stronger country.