Do We Need Positive Discrimination?

Is it time to consider positive discrimination to tackle the problems of under-representation of diverse communities in the media industry?

I know most of us interested in increasing diversity in the media recoil at the word “discrimination” (whatever word we may put in front of it). And we spend the majority of our time fighting against it discrimination. “Positive discrimination” seems like an oxymoron along the lines of “positive evil” or “helpful prejudice”. 

I for one have always felt that to increase diversity in television we must increase the equality of opportunities, challenge prejudice when we see it, and enable people from BME backgrounds, people with disabilities, LGBT’s and women to reach the top on their own merits. And I still think that.

However recently I’ve been looking back at my life and re-analysing some of the important turning points in my career. As a result I’m wondering whether my view on “positive discrimination” is slightly hypocritical. Maybe, without even realising it, I have been the beneficiary of “positive discrimination”.

I received my big break in television after I graduated from university and was taken on as a junior researcher for the BBC consumer programme Watchdog. At the time Watchdog was restructuring its team and how it took in viewers’ phone calls and correspondence. They needed two new junior researchers which they advertised for. I was told after I got that job that over 800 people applied for just these two positions. Key to me getting the junior research job was the fact that I had done a summer’s internship at a film collective based in north London called Ceddo.

Now for all intents and purposes Ceddo was a “black” film collective. It made art house feature films including “Omega Rising” (a film about the history of Rasta women), “Burning An Illusion” (about the love life of a black woman in 1970’s Britain) and “We Are The Elephant” (looking at the student uprisings in apartheid South Africa).  Denis Davis, the director of “Omega Rising”, had met me as a fresh faced enthusiastic teenager at a video course and invited me to do work experience at the film collective.

I didn’t think about it at the time but over the summer I was there I don’t think I saw any none black people working at Ceddo. And looking back on it I doubt I would have been invited to work there if I wasn’t black. The purpose of Ceddo was not only to make films from a black British perspective but to identify black talent, encourage it and bring it on. In that respect when Denis Davis told me that I could work at Ceddo there was an element of “positive discrimination”. Looking back at my career path I wonder if I would be working in TV now if Ceddo hadn’t taken me under their wing.

Twenty years later and the role that work experience plays in people getting a job in the media is more important than ever. In a recent survey by the National Council for the Training of Journalists four out of five (83%) young journalists said they had to do some work experience before getting their first job. How people get these work experience places is vital to increasing diversity in television and across the media.

Ceddo no longer exists and I’m not aware of any significant black British film collectives in existence any more. But what organisations like Ceddo ensured was that there would always be some work experience places reserved for young enthusiastic black students like myself.  While I feel a natural aversion to “positive discrimination” we need to find a way to ensure that black people, and people from diverse backgrounds generally, get work experience places.

The black film collectives played a useful role in training and encouraging black talent. In their absence what should we do to identify talent from different backgrounds and give them as much backing as possible?