People in H&S:Ed Lang;

              PEOPLE IN H&S:
EDLANG
his committee's resolution
commits American Institute of CPAs
to open the doors to minorities
In all honesty it must be said that in
some ways the accounting profession
has had to be nudged into recruiting
Negroes into its ranks. As in other
fields of endeavor, it required govern­ment
prodding, including new laws,
before organized action was taken.
Let it also be said that once the issue
was out in the open, action was not
slow in coming. On taking office in
October 1968, Ralph E. Kent, then
President of the American Institute of
CPAs, named a Committee on Recruit­ment
from Minority Groups, with Ed­win
R. Lang of H&S as chairman. At
last spring's meeting of its governing
council, the Institute committed itself
to action that would "integrate the
accounting profession in fact as well as
in ideal" through a resolution sub­mitted
by Ed Lang on behalf of his
committee.
The climate was right for action. Ed
reported to the Institute's Council "a
widespread feeling" that the present
situation "is intolerable because, in ad­dition
to moral reasons, it results in a
waste of scarce human resources."
Favorable as the climate was, the
actual picture was not good. The num­ber
and proportion of blacks in the
CPA profession is far below what it is
for other leading professions. Of more
than 100,000 CPAs in the country, only
about 150 are blacks. Fewer than 300
of the 16,000 students with accounting
majors who graduated in 1968 were
black. Although some in the profes­sion
contend that many blacks do not
have adequate education, a more likely
root of the problem is the reluctance to
hire all but the very best in order to
minimize risk of failure. But as one
black member of Ed's AICPA commit­tee,
Bert N. Mitchell, says: "The mi­nority
groups must have employment
for their fair share of average perform­ers,
like the rest of America. A black
should no longer have to be a Jackie
Robinson in order to make the team."
In fact, as Ed told Council, what is
needed is more than a response to civil
rights laws. "It is easy to make all the
right motions. In spite of compliance...
the profession as a whole does remain
segregated in fact." He set the stage
for initiative, not simply response. His
committee is now embarked on a pro­gram
of communicating to minority-group
students and their teachers the
genuine desire of the profession to
recruit blacks and to ensure that a real
opportunity awaits them in accounting.
Recruiters will have to get to know
the black accounting faculty, who are
wondering: "Is there really an oppor­tunity
for black kids in business?" Ed
Lang strongly advocates informal dis­cussion
for getting to know the black
students. "... not getting up and lectur­ing
to them, but sitting down infor­mally...
talking to them about their
problems, and asking how they see this
whole thing." To be effective, recruiters
must adopt new attitudes and tech­niques.
The recruiters will need the
kind of sensitivity that makes them
aware of a black student's special
needs. He may be a well trained ac­counting
graduate and still not be con­fident
of the way to respond to an
invitation for an office visit. He may
have a housing problem. He will prob­ably
need more than usual patience,
understanding and on-the-job training.
Ed has a feel for this kind of recruit­ing
which he credits in part to his
background as a boy with a Polish
immigrant father in Cleveland, and to
his five-year experience as national
partner in charge of personnel. He was
born and raised in the Hough section
of Cleveland during the Depression,
in a home without car or telephone.
Beginning at age 10 he was in ad­vanced
groups in school. At 11 he had
a paper route. At 12 he worked for
the Cleveland Indians as usher and on