Disney Senior VP Recorded Admitting That Company Engages In Blatantly Racist Hiring Practices, Says “There Are Times When It’s Spoken ‘There’s No Way We’re Hiring A White Male In This Role'”
Despite the company’s constant denials to the fact, Disney’s Senior Vice President of 20th Television Michael Giordano has been caught on camera admitting that the House of Mouse’s hiring practices are actively racist towards both white and black individuals.
As seen in a video shared to the O’Keefe Media Group’s official YouTube page on June 20th, Giordano offered this insight not in public as part of any official company communication, but rather in private conversation during a date with a woman who, unknown to the 20th Television exec, was secretly recording him.
[Editor’s Note: In light of O’Keefe’s presentation style, which sees him edit together various clips of actual conversations in order to help his pieces flow, the clips shown in his exposé will be addressed individually according to where O’Keefe himself cut the footage.]
Composed of numerous video recordings taken across what appear to be a number of dates with the OMG plant, the first of O’Keefe’s clips sees Giordano explaining that while Disney’s does have a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion department dedicated to promoting the concept of ‘diversity’ within the company and its productions, the edict for this promotion comes from CEO Bob Iger himself:
Giordano: You know, we have a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion department who is very involved in setting standards, to make sure that shows have diversity.
Woman: Do you think Bob has a say in the diversity stuff when they’re casting people?
Giordano: 100%. He gives the directive.
Woman: For each show?
Giordano: Not that specifically, but like, you know, ‘Hey, I want every show to have substantial diversity.’
In the next clip, Giordano clarifies that while the company’s former Chief Diversity Officer Latondra Newton was responsible for overseeing said directive, she was far from alone in her support for its implementation:
Woman: Is it like an all across thing? Like all of HR? Or there’s like that one specific person that kind of like…Because I forgot the lady’s name [former DEI chief latondra newton]. She’s the head of the –
Giordano: Oh, I know who you’re talking about.
Woman: – the African American lady. Is that like kind of her deciding?
Giordano: She oversees a lot of that for sure, but it’s pretty broad I would say. There are other people in HR who are also focuesed on that.
Addressing the company’s recent shift towards telling more LGBTQ stories, the exec reveals that this was a result of their creative teams being themselves member of said community:
Giordano: A relatively large percentage of our top writer/creators, happen to be gay.
Woman: Just ‘happens to’?
Giordano: I mean like, just like, if you say whatever, I don’t know, whatever 10 or 15% of the population is gay, I would guess that 30 or 35% of our top writers happen to be, you know, gay. And so I think a lot of them lean into trans stories more than the average straight writer would.
From there, Giordano can be seen providing a brief oversight of his current duties:
Giordano: I do business affairs, like negotiations for television shows. So I’m not really on the creative side.
Giordano: So a lot of it is knowing the guild agreements and the union agreements and everything, make offers for the writers and the actors who are going to be working on the show and producers and directors., try to like, get to a place where we can close a deal with them, help the production to budget. So much of my job is just the negotiating world. And then the other people are doing kind of like the drafting of the contracts.
Woman: Oh wow, so what’s the negotiating like?
Giordano: I’m like sitting down trying to figure out, okay, you know, what are we going to pay this actor for this role. What do we think they want – I kind of strategize that. Everything from how you produce a show, how you distribute a show, how you exhibit a show, how you market a show, things like that, all of the negotiations and deal making and things that happen to be related to that.
The VP then details that rather than pushing for representation because they thought it would have a genuinely positive effect on society, most of Disney’s higher-ups only did so out of a belief that pandering will lead to higher profits:
Giordano: I think there are times when it [diversity] is so front and center it’s like, great, because that’s the focus, you know. We have so many shows where we’re casting and we’re like “yeah, we’re not even gonna see certain people for it.” because we need that particular role to…
Woman: So is it intentional that they want like, they only look for diverse candidates for certain roles?
Giordano: At times, yeah. I think there’s certainly a belief that it’s just good for society, but there’s also a belief that ‘We’re gonna make more money if we appeal to a wider variety of people and it’s a good thing.’ We have shareholders too and diversity helps with that’.”
Woman: Diversity helps with financial incentives?
Giordano: Yeah.
Woman: Do you think it’s more so on that side, like any good crisis gets to put to use?
Giordano: I think Disney would do it regardless, but I think that there are even conservative people who may not want to lean into it can easily make that argument that ‘We make more money when we appeal to a wider variety of people and that means diversity’.
There’s a real focus on every show and I’m sure the movies too, though I don’t deal with that side of it. Just making sure that the writers room has real diversity. Not just gender or sexual orientation, ethnicity, but making sure that they’re hiring some writers who may have certain disabilities where they wouldn’t have hired them before. There’s a really broad look whenever we’re doing hiring to make sure they have many clients.
To this end, the next set of clips shared by O’Keefe features Giordano confirming that Disney’s obsession with superficial diversity had resulted in them adopting a number of blatantly racist mindsets when it came to their hiring practices.
First, Giordano recalls that a black individual was passed on for a job because he was not physically ‘black enough’ by the company’s standards:
Giordano: We wanted to hire somebody in a department from a few years ago now, who was half black but didn’t appear half black. And there was a creative executive who was like, ‘That’s not what’s wanted.’ They wanted somebody in meetings who would appear a certain way and he wasn’t gonna bring that to the meeting.
Woman: And so this is like on the corporate side, like the business side?
Giordano: Corporate side.
Woman: I never understood that. I have a lot of black friends who are not as dark. So do they care about that? Or is it like the ethnicity actually?
Giordano: They say they don’t care about it, but the truth is, to some extent, they do. If you’re mixed, you don’t look black at all – which sometimes happens – then they’re like “Oh I’m not so sure.” But if they’re mixed and you can they’re part black but not that black, then okay. It’s crazy.
Woman: So would Meghan Markle, who’s pretty white, would she be considered diverse?
Giordano: She would still be, yeah. She would, yeah.
Next, Giordano reveals that that the company does, in fact, make an active effort to avoid hiring or promoting any white individuals, particularly men.
His proof? His own experiences:
Giordano: Right now I’m like, a half-step below being a department head. I have a team under me but I don’t oversee a whole department and I’d like to oversee a whole department. Whether that’s at Disney or having to leave for that.
Woman: Do you think that you’ll have opportunity at Disney?
Giordano: I’m not sure to be honest with you. I think I’m sort of well prepared for it. I’m well positioned for it. But as far as Disney’s concerned, I’m a white male and that’s not who they’re looking to promote at the moment.
Woman: Do you think that has a lot to do with it?
Giordano: I don’t know about a lot, but it has something to do with it.
Woman: Really? What do you think the competition is.
Giordano: I mean, I’ve been up for jobs internally against people who have less experience than me, and I haven’t gotten them.
Woman: And they were given to somebody else?
Giordano: *nods*
Woman: Do you think it had something with their [race]?
Giordano: In one or two case, you know, I was told explicitly that it did.
Woman: Explicitly how?
Giordano: I mean, I’ve been at the company for 11 years now so I have friends in HR and I have friends in those divisions. And they’re like, ‘Look, nobody else is going to tell you this, Mike, but they’re not considering any white males for this job. They’re just not. Like, that’s not who they want.
Further, Giordano told the honeypot that not only was there a genuine anti-white male hiring bias at Disney, but that the company had, at times, actually outright declared that
Further, Giordano told the honeypot that rather than this anti-white bias being an ‘unspoken rule’ within the House of Mouse, some execs had taken to making it an outright ‘spoken’ one:
Woman: And so it’s probably fair that Disney would say we don’t want a white person to play this role.
Giordano: Yeah, I mean, they’re very careful about messaging because they don’t want to get sued for discrimination in either direction, but certainly there have been times where, there’s no way we’re hiring a white male for this.
Woman: Just kind of unspoken.
Giordano: There are times when it’s spoken
Woman: How would they say it?
Giordano: There’s no way we’re hiring a white male in this role.
Woman: Like straight to you?
Giordano: Yeah. They’d be very careful how they messaged that to the agents.
Woman: It kind of feels like where, at some point there’s going to be a lawsuit. That’s kind of how it feels, because of, you know.
Finally, closing out the first entry in what O’Keefe says will be a multi-part exposé was a clip of Giordano elaborating on just how dedicated purportedly Disney is to diversifying both their workforce and production output:
Giordano: I mean HR keeps a huge spreadsheet, yeah.
Woman: What kind of spreadsheet?
Giordano: I haven’t seen it exactly, but I mean literally they have stats. ‘17% of our executives at this level identify as XYZ’, 40% of our executives at this level identify as such. They want a certain percentage of the diversity here A certain percentage of diversity there.
Woman: But are these like, open goals? Because you’re saying that they can’t say it in such specific terms.
Giordano: They are open goals at a senior enough level, yeah. I’m guessing that there are acceptable code words and buzzwords that are used to explain what they are looking for. They might say something like, ‘We’re not looking at the usual suspects for this job’, so it’s not like a legally actionable thing, but everybody knows what it means.
At current, O’Keefe has yet to confirm the release date for the second part of ‘The Disney Tapes’.
Further, neither Giordano nor Disney have yet to publicly address the above footage, though since its release the former has deleted his personal LinkedIn profile.
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