Grammys Install Social Justice Bureau to Ensure Music Diversity

If you thought the 2018 Oscars was an insufferable parade of identity politics complaints, wait until next year’s Grammys!

The Recording Academy has just announced it has hired Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff, Tina Tchen, as its own personal diversity consultant. The Buckley Sandler LLP partner will be reviewing and giving recommendations to the Academy to make sure it’s awards process is up the inclusivity code. By this time next year, we’ll be seeing a whole lot more indigenous women, gender non-binary dwarfs and Thai lesbian yodelers receiving Grammy nods for the sake of social justice.

The Recording Academy has had a rocky time in recent months. Asked about the paucity of women nominees at the 2018 Grammys, Academy President Neil Portnow stirred up controversy when he said that women needed to “step up.” Feminists all over the industry were outraged by his comments and calls for his resignation have since spread all over social media.

Portnow is still there, but now he’s got Tchen giving him cover.

Billboard reported Tchen’s team includes 15 to 20 experts on diversity in entertainment, and will be in charge of addressing “the various barriers and unconscious biases faced by underrepresented communities throughout the music industry and, specifically, across Recording Academy operations and policies.”

This group will scrutinize the “hiring practices, the Grammy Awards itself, and, most importantly, membership, which has up until now been largely a mystery because the Recording Academy does not publicly disclose the gender, race, and age breakdown of its voting body,” Billboard said.

While Tchen has no music background, she sure has a hefty background in the world of affirmative action-style bureaucracy. She was the executive director of President Obama’s White House Council on Women, and recently helped to set up the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. To be fair, she did help to organize the joint “In Performance” series with the White House and Recording Academy, so she knows something about getting politically acceptable performers some nice perks. But it’s her diversity industry cred that makes Tchen just what the Academy thinks it needs right now.