On January 4, 1990 — twenty years ago today — Nintendo of America responded to ongoing racism accusations and protests by adopting its first affirmative action policy. The policy, according to the group leading the protests, was inadequate, leading to even harsher criticism in the future.
The trouble started the previous year, when a group of 25 African American Nintendo employees took discrimination complaints to the Seattle CORE Group, a political watchdog organization. According to their complaints, Nintendo’s workforce had fewer than 35 black employees out of around 1,600 total. Only ten of these were full-time employees, and none of them were supervisors.
