Cyrus Mehri is a big time civil rights lawyer who's won hundreds of millions of dollars worth of corporate discrimination settlements, and scared Wall Street and the National Football League into making serious integration-like movements. His latest project: the white-ass advertising industry. A new study found that only 5.8% of advertising professionals are black—a number that should be closer to 10%, based on the demographics of similar industries. And Mehri won't say whether he's planning a lawsuit, but he is delivering a verbal smackdown, oh yea:

"What needs fixing isn't the African-Americans; it's the white guy running the agency"... "We know the industry has had various diversity efforts over the years. However, these efforts are going to continue to fall short until they understand they're operating under a false premise — that the problem is the supply of African-American talent — when the real problem is the lack of leadership at the top and their exclusionary policies and practices."

[Ad Age]