The arts world is facing a fierce reckoning about diversity. But is it too late?
The writer Chip Cheek got paid an $800,000 advance for his erotic debut novel, Cape May. Good for him, right? Even he, however, admits he was shocked by the figure. “But I’m more shocked to see the numbers from writers of color like the extraordinary Jesmyn Ward,” Cheek tweeted earlier this week. “I hope this movement begins to change things.”
The movement in question is #PublishingPaidMe. Started by the black fantasy author LL McKinney, the hashtag urges authors to share the amounts of their book advances, in order to highlight the disparities between what black and non-black writers are paid. Cheek, I probably don’t need to tell you, is a white man. His advance, received as a relatively unknown writer, eclipses that of many established writers of colour including, as his tweet notes, the two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.
“Even after Salvage the Bones won the [2011 National Book Award for Fiction], my publishing company did not want to give me 100k for my next novel,” Ward tweeted on Sunday. “My agent and I fought and fought before we wrestled our way to that number.”
The protests sparked by George Floyd’s killing have ignited an international conversation about race and inequality. While the conversation has permeated every industry, the arts and media world has been having a particularly public reckoning about its lack of diversity. The past week has been a frenzy of cancellations, resignations, revelations and apologies.
On Monday, Adam Rapoport resigned from his role as editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit magazine, after an old photo emerged of him wearing a Halloween costume which seemed intended to stereotype Puerto Ricans. The Refinery29 editor-in-chief, Christene Barberich, resigned on the same day after former employees spoke out about a culture of racism at the femalefocused media outlet. Meanwhile, Anna Wintour has apologized for not doing more to elevate and highlight black staff and designers at Vogue.
As well as the conversations about racist workplace cultures, the media world has been grappling with what to do with racist content. The sketch show Little Britain has been removed from all UK streaming platforms because of concerns over the use of blackface by its two stars. Come Fly With Me, a follow-up to Little Britain, was taken down by Netflix for the same reason. Gone With the Wind was pulled from HBO Max because of its racist depictions but will, reportedly, be back soon with “an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions”.
This isn’t exactly the first time the arts and media world has grappled with questions of diversity and racial equity. We’ve been having the same conversation over and over again for the past decade but nothing seems to change. Endless diversity initiatives have been set up, innumerable panels have been convened to discuss the matter, but there hasn’t been a real shift towards the creation of a more inclusive and equitable industry.
Indeed, to some extent, the conversations we’ve had about diversity so far have made things actively worse. One of the most frustrating things about being a minority is that you’re constantly being gaslit. You’re constantly being told you’re not being discriminated against. You’re constantly being told that all the diversity initiatives out there mean that, actually, the worst thing you could possibly be these days is a straight, white man: they’re the ones being discriminated against, while trans black lesbians are scooping up all the opportunities! At the same time, every time you achieve something notable you face insinuations that the only reason you got that job, that book deal, that TV appearance, was because you’re a “diversity hire”. You can work twice as hard as your white peers for half the compensation and still be told that you got handed everything on a plate.
While there has been a lot of talk and not much action about diversity in media and the arts, it feels like something is different this time. It feels like we might actually be on the verge of actual change. It feels like this might actually be a real reckoning, rather than a panicked reaction to a cultural moment.
One reason for my optimism is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people be transparent about their compensation in journalism and publishing before. There’s a #PublishingPaidMe Google document, for example, in which over 2,500 writers have shared their book payments and demographic information. It’s hard to gaslight people when the numbers are there for everyone to see. It’s this sort of organised transparency that actually changes things. We don’t need more panels about diversity, we need the Chip Cheeks of the world to stand up and say: “Here’s what I was paid; yes, this is unfair.”
The sad thing about this muchoverdue reckoning is that it’s coming at a time when the industry is in crisis. From 2008 to 2019, newsroom employment at US newspapers dropped by 51%, according to Pew Research. Coronavirus has further ravaged media budgets and the performing arts. Movements like #PublishingPaidMe are finally giving people of colour more tools to negotiate with – but there aren’t many jobs to negotiate for.
We’ve been having the same conversation over and over again for the past decade but nothing seems to change