Canadian media have continued to uphold whiteness at work
The institutional refusal by Canada’s media companies (with some exceptions) to deal with diversity, and its pesky twin, equity, in a transparent and accountable way is concerning. As journalists, we flock to cover gender-equal cabinets and to criticize “diversity is our strength” while rarely mentioning our own failures on race and gender. On matters of identity, representation and equity, we are hypocrites.
I was raised by a statistician. Aside from “always have a tool box,” he passed on this: you can’t solve problems you don’t account for. Most of the data we have is neither new nor precise. A study in 2010 found that visible minorities were less than five per cent of people in senior decision-making positions in media. Seven years ago — that’s the most recent exhaustive data we have.
Federally regulated broadcasters are required to report their diversity data to the CRTC. Yet it took an access to information request to get the CBC’s diversity data. That data revealed 90 per cent of the public broadcaster’s staff is white. This is at an organization that has high-profile racialized stars and a department committed to Indigenous news and issues.
Without any reflection within, it is easy then to be blindsided by Black Lives Matters protest at Pride, the still-simmering outrage following Desmond Cole’s departure and the fallout from the “appropriation prize” fiasco. You can’t hear from communities you don’t see.
Dangerously, we risk doing them more harm. Not a day goes by without continuous and blithe anti-Muslim rhetoric in news coverage (think: coverage of Montreal’s proposed Muslim community that turned out to be little more than an unpresented slide show) and in widely published op-eds written by Islamophobes. When it comes to the humanity of whole swathes of people, there are not two sides.
In our newsrooms, we consistently make choices in favour of whiteness and its twin, white supremacy. A media that doesn’t challenge its own whiteness will foment racial animus then both claim surprise and feign objectivity.
More tragically, it will lose credibility with the communities it claims to serve. For example, in the video of a woman in Mississauga insisting on a white doctor for her child and using racial slurs, many organizations chose to blur her face. The reason? To protect her son. What of the people of colour who face someone like her every day? Who protects their children? Under the pretense of fairness and balance, the media chose to shield a racist from the consequences of her own actions.
This is not the first time. The Queen’s University students who dressed as racist stereotypes also received a similar benefit of the doubt from the national media.
All of which puts people who are affected on the offensive. For the media, non-white doctors and Asian students now have to dredge up the racist traumas they face while the perpetrators are tacitly absolved.
No wonder racialized writers often find a more welcoming platform outside Canada. We cannot claim any superiority on race when people consider their intellectual work safer in the United States.
For the few who do find jobs or regular work, the labour is of a different kind. We’re called on to be diversity mascots. At a panel hosted by the Ethnic Aisle, the Star’s Tanya Talaga called it “the invisible workload.”
An institutional, editorial and business priority cannot sustainably be one person’s unpaid and undervalued job. Which leaders in journalism are taking on the challenge of learning anti-Blackness or anti-Indigeneity? Who is making it their job?
Answering the diversity question becomes a burden for people of colour inside and outside the media. It fails to address a long history and an imbalance of power that white people in journalism — from the intern up to the CEO — have had.
The few of us left in the building are working on surviving. The majority of writers outside the walls are trying to find a foothold to stand on. The data isn’t for us; we live out the consequences of the problem. It is for those who insist that an internship program is the same as diversity and equity.
Meanwhile, the people who write cheques and make decisions opt not to see the problem. The prophecy fulfils itself.
Rather than tangling with the diversity question, the better question is for publishers and editors: how do you uphold whiteness at work? Who really counts to you?
Vicky Mochama is a co-host of the podcast, Safe Space. Her column appears every second Thursday. She also writes a triweekly column for Metro News that mixes politics, news and humour.