Diversity vs. Stereotypes

I haven’t got any gay friends. 

They seem to be everywhere nowadays; getting married, becoming Members of Parliament even becoming priests. So I think I want to rectify my lack of gay friends. But I don’t want any old gay friends I want a really gay person. Not someone like Will from “Will & Grace” you would hardly know he was gay. Someone more like Jack. Someone who snaps their fingers almost like an African American woman and says “girlfriend” a lot. You know the type?

If you didn’t realise the last paragraph was a joke or find it highly offensive I suggest you are on the wrong website. 

However my concern is that when we try and address under-representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people (BAME) in the media we almost take a similar approach. 

With the best intentions broadcasters and large media organisations regularly role out different initiatives to try and help BAME people into the media. But all too often they target a specific type of BAME person. 

The schemes go to the poorest black neighborhoods, with the highest unemployment, with the highest crime rates. They find people who invariably left school with few if any qualifications from the most dysfunctional backgrounds. It is almost as if they are purposely trying to identify the “real black people”, like the “real gay people” in my example above.

My sister-in-law works with young people from deprived backgrounds and she can wax lyrical how these are possibly the hardest type of people to reach and find long term employment for in any kind of work - let alone in professions like the media. They are almost setting up the people they recruit to fail. 

First of all I have to make it clear that the vast majority of these initiatives are commendable and I don’t want any of them to stop. But I see them more as charitable outreach rather than trying to seriously address the problem of diversity in the media. 

Nearly all the black and Asian people I come across who work in television who have suffered discrimination, or prematurely hit a glass ceiling in their career, are university graduates (with at least one degree) and they come from well functioning backgrounds with good support structures. 

If the media industry is having serious problems addressing the concerns of these well adjusted people why do they keep focusing their efforts on an even harder constituency to place?

Diversity schemes need to recognise diversity in all it’s varied forms including gender, sexuality, class, disability and race. But they also need to recognise diversity within these groups as well - free from stereotypes. Not all black people are poor, not all people from lower socio-economic backgrounds didn’t go to university, not all gay people are camp, not all disabled people are in wheelchairs.

When it comes to increasing BAME diversity in the media I want us to help all black and Asian people and not just focus on the stereotypes. 

(Now who is going to invite me to their gay wedding?)