Saturdays with Seniors: Maggy asks, “What are we witnessing?”

I am pleased to have Maggy Fouché as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. The prompt for this past week was “Witness” and Maggy’s essay shows she’s been keeping her eye on a lot lately!

by Maggy Fouché

My friend Ted and I have been regularly emailing each other about amazing corporate social changes. Aunt Jemima pancakes will get a new name! IBM declares it will get out of the facial recognition business! Walgreens’ new CEO is a black female! Band Aid will introduce products in a variety of skin tones!

Ted was my boss before he became a friend. A well-known executive in the multi-billion-dollar personal care industry, Ted boasted a long and successful career that started with the small relaxer company his chemist stepfather launched in the 60’s and eventually sold to Revlon.

Ted hired me in the 1980s to be the marketing director of what was then called the “ethnic” hair care division of a long-established salon-specialty corporation. After my dad, he was the smartest man I’d ever met, seemingly knowledgeable about everything from ancient Greek philosophy to the latest urban slang. Just before the meeting with the CEO to present the new product launch plan, he stopped to correct his secretary’s posture so that she sat with elbows and wrists at proper angles to the typewriter, as prescribed in the IBM manual.

Ted knew that the most important item in our new product line would be the relaxer and its ability to thoroughly straighten hair. In side-by-side trials in the testing salon, however, our relaxer did not perform as well as the leading competitor. We learned that the formula contained buffers that the chemists said were necessary to lessen the potential damage to the hair.

Ted argued that any damage would be repaired by the post-relaxer conditioning treatment that contained the parent company’s legendary restoring serum. But R&D refused to change the formula which, they proudly informed us, they’d spent ten years developing. “Ten years,” Ted said to me later. “What’s the matter with those guys? In ten years they could have developed an atomic bomb!”

The corporate bosses were unwilling to rely on Ted’s product expertise. The product launch was a disappointment and our division failed to meet sales goals in the succeeding quarters. After about three years our division was disbanded.

Ted and I kept in touch through the ensuing years of our respective careers. Now retired, Ted has plenty of time on his hands and diligently tracks the corporate response to America’s racial unrest.

An undertone of amazement runs through our conversations, amazement at how quickly these changes have come about in the inflexible, conservative, risk-averse culture of big business. He was more philosophical when he wrote me about Major League Baseball’s decision to combine the stats of Negro League players with that of their white counterparts. I leave you here with his own words:

What are we to conclude from these turnabouts along with others affecting American Society? My theory: The George Floyd tragedy triggered a slow-moving earthquake in how Americans of all ethnicities see each other. More change is necessary before the battle is entirely won, but this surrender by America’s favorite sport, professional baseball, is a symbolic milestone not to be lightly dismissed. Stay tuned for what is yet to follow.