Obama may inspire minority hiring

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- The "threshold" for hiring black leaders may have dropped with the election of the first U.S. black president, a leading advocate for hiring diversity said.

"Our dominant sense is vision, so we gravitate to what we see," Luke Visconti, co-founder of DiversityInc., told the Chicago Tribune.

"As we become very used to an authority figure who's black, we're going to be much more comfortable with authority figures who are black. The threshold will have dropped," he said.

On the other hand, the country should not "confuse the accomplishments of one individual with an entire societal shift," Gloria Castillo, president of Chicago United said.

"The (presidential) victory … of Barack Obama didn't change the high school graduation rates. It didn't change the fact that there's an under-representation of minorities in senior management, the pipeline to senior management and boards of directors," Castillo said.

DiversityInc. Counts 19 Fortune 500 companies with non-white chief executive officers, a gain of five from the same time a year ago.

The number rose although three of those 19 minority CEOs left their jobs this year, the Tribune reported.