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Throughout my career as a designer in South Africa, I have been faced with racial issues in and around the media & advertising industry. It’s a space very much dominated by white males even to this day, which is also very much reflected in the work being produced and ideas which are spread within it.

After reading Ramon Thomas’ post which is his response to an article by Mandy Dewaal in ITWeb, I thought I’d give the topic a bit of focus, not just because Ramon mentioned me in his article, but because it is an issue which I feel needs to be addressed.

The White Boys club

Mandy’s article was specifically focused on web 2.0, and she admittedly calls it a white boys club. I would say the issue spans across the majority of media & communications focused industry. I’ve been a designer for close on 10 years now, not the best by a long shot but I’ve been around the block a few times and seen my share of Brands and communications campaigns.

What does BEE really mean?

I spent some time specifically in the Advertising industry and found it to be a place where the old South Africa is alive & well. I remember not too long ago working in on of the big Agencies we were sent a notice saying that our agency is now BEE compliant. So naturally I took a look around me and found a handful of people of colour, mostly in junior or non-decision making positions. The “Black” people filling mostly kitchen & cleaning roles.

I asked what the BEE status was supposed to mean and got a very poor response to my pointing out that in fact there were only a handful of people of colour out of the majority white staff compliment.

When pitching for a huge SA Brand, most of the coloured & black people were summoned into the boardroom along with some other creatives & strategic people to shoot a video on the agency brainstorming ideas.

Currently I have been looking around to find some good designers and web developers to partner with or outsource work to and have found a lack of talent form the non-white communities. I think one of the factors is economics, especially if you consider what it costs to study design nowadays. The majority of young non-white people studying design is also significantly lower than their fairer skinned counter parts.

Signs of racial disharmony and a coming storm

We take a step out of this scenario and look at the recent spate of Xenophobia which has shaken up our country and ask those in decision making positions in companies across South Africa. Do you think you will remain in the driving seat forever? I am amazed that people do not fear the racial tensions finally reaching their own doorsteps. We need to reach out to each other before it’s too late.

Can Affirmative action work without proper development

Affirmative action, though it has been heavily abused in many cases has a rightful place in the society we find ourselves in. If we don’t implement a sustainable plan of affirmative action and affirmative development or empowerment, in the not too distant future we will be staring a Zimbabwe type situation in the face. Development initiatives are crucial. Young black talent needs to be nurtured in the web & other communications arenas so the messages moving across the many media can be more representative.

I think companies can make a big difference as well by providing training for interns or fresh graduates from the more colourful side of the divide. I for one have been trying to track down young black graduates to employ on a part time basis or to outsource certain functions to though it’s tough finding them from where I am standing as well.

Web 2.0 community needs to be more open

As many have pointed out before, the web 2.0 community is very much a closed community though it should by it’s very nature be the opposite. Why then is it that we find the same names mentioned over & over to a degree that you can read the title of a post or project and give a very calculated guess at who’s names will be mentioned.

I do agree, many of the names have achieved success in their respective fields, though in many cases, when initiatives are conceptualised, gatherings co-ordinated and opinions disseminated, many people are perpetuating the problem by involving the same people over & over making it a very boring and incestuous scene.

I’m not going mention any names here, but I’m sure you know what I mean. One positive development which has opened me up to some of the non-white professionals in our industry is the Tech Leader Platform, which I have been invited to contribute towards as well.

Darren Ravens, who I only stumbled across by tracking this conversation, commented on his own site saying:

What these two pieces highlight is that there exists a network failure. The nature of social networks (the real world kind) is that there’s a tendency for homogeneity, especially in the short to medium term (long term always trends towards the diverse). Birds of a feather and all that.

To create diversity within specific sectors it’s important to sow the seeds of integration. Once you’ve done that things are more likely to naturally become inclusive.

With all of this in mind, for a while now I have been looking at creating an online network of black web professionals.

http://www.darrenravens.com/2008/06/02/where-are-all-the-black-web-professionals/

It’s an idea which has it’s pros and cons. By creating a non-white network will probably perpetuate some of the problems we are experiencing.

I was thinking of this issue in relation to general integration of the races in our society and wondered how to go about establishing more connections between people of different races.

We are still very much living in our racial silos faced with barriers like language, culture, religion and economics. What can be done on the whole to mix us up a little more.

I think an Online Social Network which allows people from opposite sides of our colourful spectrum to connect and interact, share ideas and solve problems together would be a great start.

What do you think?