Barnie ChaudryDiversity in the Media, book launch, SOAS, 25th February 2008
Ladies, gentlemen, academics, guests. Thank you so much for coming to the launch of Anver Jeevanji’s book: Diversity in the Media. When Professor Werner Menski asked me to say a few words I was flattered and my ego immensely satisfied. I’ve known Werner for more than a decade. He’s done so many helpful things for me in the past, that it would’ve been awfully bad form to turn him down.
But as you know, I work for the BBC. And sometimes, like people who write about their underpants, what you say can come back to haunt you. So let me make my position clear: I speak purely as an individual today and my words are my own and these are simply my opinions and observations.
Also it’d be hypocritical of me not to praise my company. After all, I’ve been in the BBC for almost twenty-two years. And you don’t stay in an organisation that long if it’s not good to you.
I’ve read Anver’s book. I agree with some bits and disagree with some bits. But the main thing: thank you for writing it. It is: honest, frank, insightful, incisive, uncomfortable.
Anver writes from a position of frustration born of years of waiting, reflecting the views of many of my colleagues. These are his perceptions and his perceptions to him are a reality. At times, reading this book, I felt as if I were intruding on private grief – two parents about to get divorced. They want to achieve the same thing but are poles apart in the way it should be done. But I need to let Anver know how he and his Cultural Diversity Advisory Group have made a real difference. His group took the industry to task. And one of his main supporters wasAndy Griffee . Andy, for those who don’t know, is the man who runs the BBC’s English regions – that’s all local radio stations and regional television stations in the whole of England
The good news is that – thanks to your persistence, Andy and his team have met their diversity targets. His senior management team has TEN percent ethnic minorities – picked on merit. In the entire English regions diversity is at NINE percent. Two years ago this stood at SIX percent. At BBC London the figure is now a creditable TWENTY-SEVEN percent. But he knows this is only part of the journey – and Anver will know that from past conversations with Andy – that he regards diversity not as a set of targets but something that makes real sense. So when Don John asks in Anver’s book: “What have we achieved?” I can in all honesty say, quite a lot compared to when I first started – but we still have a long way to go before we cross the finishing line.
So what’s been my journey? Well, I’m a working class, immigrant, fromWest Bengal in India Coventry Coventry
I always knew I wanted to join the BBC. And I got in on the first time of asking, as a prestigious trainee. I wondered what the big problem was – until I heard stories of how some black and Asians applied six times before being accepted. Six times. How many other groups would knock on the door and never give up?
But I’ve been very lucky. I have, on the whole, been shown nothing but respect from my white colleagues. Sure I’ve felt frustrated at times. Sure I wondered why I didn’t get a job. I could so easily have blamed it on racist managers who didn’t give me a chance. But there are few slight problems. A couple of times other Asian reporters got the job and on the last but one occasion I really was beaten by someone who’d done it, been there and bought the tee-shirt. And here, I have to make a confession. Since 1998 I haven’t got a BBC job as a result of an interview. I’ve been asked by white managers to do it. My current job is weekend business correspondent. I didn’t apply, I was asked. And boy, has it been a learning curve. I assure you that it’s only a coincidence that there’s been an economic slow down since I took over the brief. And you’ll be relieved to know I give up the brief at the end of March.
So what advice would I give to those who feel they’ve been blocked or snubbed? Well a white mentor told me early on about a saying Confucius said: “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” In other words – there are many ways to skin a cat.
Now, twenty-two years on, I feel I’ve achieved everything I want to, within an organisation which has done pretty well by me. I have a fantastically high national profile. I appear on your television screens most weekends. I get to rub shoulders with top leaders. I’m made to feel important. But that’s nothing to now. I get to meet the people who really pay my wages – YOU. And that is why people like Anver, and his group, are so important. They keep me on the straight and narrow. They are my honesty anchor and integrity compass. If I fail to do my best, be my best, show of my best, then I have let down, not only Anver and his group, but the thirty million licence fee payers. Lest we forget whom we really serve.
So I may have nothing left to prove to anyone – except me. Yet our industry still has a long way to go. Better minds than mine have commented on this recently. Lenny Henry, that Don of Comedians, gave a Royal Television Society speech recently. If you haven’t read it – go to the RTS website and read it. It’s simply brilliant. Humour helps the medicine go down, medicine go done, medicine go down.
He explained his main regret over not insisting on having black or Asian script writers on the hit show “Three of a kind”. He told his audience: “I met some fantastic writers. Even though there were over 200 writers in the room, not one of them was from an ethnic minority. All of those guys were on the starting blocks of their careers, and quite a few of them have ended up working on some of the top shows in TV. Perhaps if we’d been bolder, and included some black and brown faces in that room, they too could have had a career in this business - but they weren’t given a chance. I’m saying – that when I started, I was surrounded by a predominantly white work force. 32 years later… not a lot has changed. I think that’s a great shame.”
Well, here’s the thing Lenny. I talk to a lot of black, Asian and white workers in and out of the BBC. The one thing I’ve found is how united the white folk are. They don’t slag off the competition. They stick together. But black and Asian folk – well, they’re in a class of their own when it comes to dissing their brothers and sisters. I just wish some of us could learn the thing white folk have known for years – strength in unity. If only ethnic minorities would form their own club – and be united in their message – they’d learn how to progress. It’s about networking. We recruit in our own image.
Now a couple of weeks ago Samir Shah, a non-executive BBC director, picked up on Lenny’s theme. Only 4.38% of senior managers are ethnic minority. He told our in-house magazine: “Some years ago the BBC had three hundred diversity schemes, but it’s the outcome that matters.” So I need to ask: what are our diversity units and so called diversity champions doing? Why do they become so defensive, defending an indefensible position?
Now some white colleagues tell me about the unfairness of diversity and black and Asian colleagues complain about – you’ve guessed it – the unfairness of diversity.
I want to complain about diversity too: I just wish I knew what ‘diversity’ meant? How do we measure success?
The dictionary definition of diversity is: to be different and varied. So having a black presenter should have nothing to do with diversity. Employ them because they’re the best candidate. I know how naïve I sound. But does the brilliant Frank Gardiner, the BBC’s Security Correspondent, stop being brilliant just because he’s now in a wheel chair? No, of course not. Do I have insights into certain communities because I know, understand and live among them? Of course I do. In our ways we possess qualities that someone is looking for. So why can’t we employ people for what invaluable skills we possess or am I being too naïve?
Now the BBC is to practise ‘positive action’. This is different from ‘positive discrimination’, Daily Mail readers. The first is legal. The second is not. The BBC’s taken a look at the Senior Management roles and realised it hasn’t enough black, Asian or disabled senior managers. So it’s starting a scheme in the next couple of days to try to address this. Samir, this is scheme three hundred and one. But I’m not going to carp about it. I’m going to apply. And I’d urge all my ethnic colleagues to do the same if they want make a real difference. If you don’t take part, then don’t blame the BBC ever again. Blame yourselves.
I’m often asked by black and Asian audiences I speak to whether the BBC is “institutionally racist”. “No,” I reply “it’s institutionally insensitive.” What do I mean by that? Simple. McPherson defines institutional racism as “unwitting racism”. We, the industry are “unwittingly insensitive”. We just don’t get it. Black, white, it doesn’t matter. If it doesn’t fit our stereotypes or our news agenda or our news angle that particular day – it ain’t going to get on. It is the same with hiring and firing staff. I’ve found that you’re popular for a while and then the love just goes. It’s all too often business not personal. It’s all too often cock up not conspiracy.
Last year Jimmy McGovern called the BBC “one of the most racist institutions inEngland
Or at least can we call for a parliamentary select committee inquiry? The police service has gone through it. The NHS had a ‘festering wound of racism’. I genuinely want to know – what is the extent of racism in my industry. Am I blinkered? Have I been lucky? Or have I simply sold out to my white masters? I want to know.
So let’s stop the speculation, let’s have a real open, honest to goodness debate. I want all sides to engage and give me proof of racism. The BBC is a public service. Under race relations laws we need to make every conceivable effort to prove we’re not racially biased. I’d like to think my bosses know about the dangers of their staff paying lip service to hide a deeper, pervasive problem. That can only be bad for our industry – for they will be found out and will pay the consequences.
So today I want the companies to stop being defensive and engage in this, no matter how painful. For without an honest conversation we can’t lance the racism-accusation-boil. I’m just sick and tired of having to defend our industry to the black and Asian people I meet on the streets. And we need to do this ourselves because if we don’t then such an inquiry will be foisted on us by Trevor Phillips.
I can hear my colleagues now. Choudhury’s bonkers. He’s exaggerating a non-existent problem. I wish I were. I live outside the M25 andWestminster
Nigel Kay, a former BBC colleague, summed it up, Anver, in ane-mail to you: “Our meetings were sometimes uncomfortable affairs and certainly my colleagues often resented giving up their afternoons to have their ears bent!”
So we need to tell them in a quiet tone that is not hectoring and non-threatening. We need to make them understand the need to over reach their targets; the need to reach out to communities outside their comfort zones; the need to get them young and when they’re impressionable; the need for action and not words; the need to mentor; the need to question what we’re doing to be diverse at every opportunity. I’m not convinced we’ve won hearts and minds yet.
That’s the industry’s responsibility. So what’s ours, as people of colour? Recently I heard recently from one Asian friend how he was made to feel so unwelcome at one BBC station he joined fifteen years ago, that black and Asians walked through a side entrance because they didn’t feel able to use the front. That should never, ever be allowed to happen in twenty-first centuryBritain
They had probably learned something at Oxbridge he didn’t. Fake it till you make it. But he did not allow himself to be a victim. Now he produces top correspondents and makes his own reports for national television – and he knows his worth. He is an inspiring role model to anyone – and would be an ideal candidate for a Senior Manager’s position.
So what should we, people of colour, do? Here’s where I get into trouble with my black and Asian brothers and sisters. In one phrase: take responsibility and never allow yourself to become a victim. Go out and make it happen for yourselves. Don’t rely on others. If you do, you’ll be waiting a long time. Put your strategies in place. Dream about being the best. Envisage reaching the finish line first. But dreaming and envisaging don’t do it. Put teams in place. Seek champions. Learn from them. Take their advice. And remember the words of Labbi Safri: “the higher you build those barriers, the taller we become.”
If you box clever, be clever, think clever, nothing but nothing will stop you. But fight clever. We are now into our fourth and fifth generations as black or Asian born immigrants. We are part of this country and it is our right to take part and lead. We don’t need anyone’s permission. We don’t need anyone to say we have attitude. We can give orders and expect them to be followed. Equality is our right.
And what if we fail within our chosen industry? Simple. Don’t waste your time becoming a dissident or threatening to leave. Just leave. Go. Set up by yourself. Prove yourself. They will welcome you back with open arms and double your salary – if you’re good enough. And what’s more you’ll have done it on your own terms.
Anver re-prints a number ofe-mail s in his book. Among them one from Eve Turner , a former head of the South region: “…confrontation is less likely to make long term progress.” But sometimes confrontation is needed.
Yet the lesson is this: it’s how we confront, that’ll single us out. My best friend and first mentor, the late Reg Yeoman, tried to tell a sixteen year old boy: “Son, you get more from honey than vinegar.” Reg, if you’re looking below – I now know what you meant.
Thank you for listening.
Also it’d be hypocritical of me not to praise my company. After all, I’ve been in the BBC for almost twenty-two years. And you don’t stay in an organisation that long if it’s not good to you.
I’ve read Anver’s book. I agree with some bits and disagree with some bits. But the main thing: thank you for writing it. It is: honest, frank, insightful, incisive, uncomfortable.
Anver writes from a position of frustration born of years of waiting, reflecting the views of many of my colleagues. These are his perceptions and his perceptions to him are a reality. At times, reading this book, I felt as if I were intruding on private grief – two parents about to get divorced. They want to achieve the same thing but are poles apart in the way it should be done. But I need to let Anver know how he and his Cultural Diversity Advisory Group have made a real difference. His group took the industry to task. And one of his main supporters was
The good news is that – thanks to your persistence, Andy and his team have met their diversity targets. His senior management team has TEN percent ethnic minorities – picked on merit. In the entire English regions diversity is at NINE percent. Two years ago this stood at SIX percent. At BBC London the figure is now a creditable TWENTY-SEVEN percent. But he knows this is only part of the journey – and Anver will know that from past conversations with Andy – that he regards diversity not as a set of targets but something that makes real sense. So when Don John asks in Anver’s book: “What have we achieved?” I can in all honesty say, quite a lot compared to when I first started – but we still have a long way to go before we cross the finishing line.
So what’s been my journey? Well, I’m a working class, immigrant, from
I always knew I wanted to join the BBC. And I got in on the first time of asking, as a prestigious trainee. I wondered what the big problem was – until I heard stories of how some black and Asians applied six times before being accepted. Six times. How many other groups would knock on the door and never give up?
But I’ve been very lucky. I have, on the whole, been shown nothing but respect from my white colleagues. Sure I’ve felt frustrated at times. Sure I wondered why I didn’t get a job. I could so easily have blamed it on racist managers who didn’t give me a chance. But there are few slight problems. A couple of times other Asian reporters got the job and on the last but one occasion I really was beaten by someone who’d done it, been there and bought the tee-shirt. And here, I have to make a confession. Since 1998 I haven’t got a BBC job as a result of an interview. I’ve been asked by white managers to do it. My current job is weekend business correspondent. I didn’t apply, I was asked. And boy, has it been a learning curve. I assure you that it’s only a coincidence that there’s been an economic slow down since I took over the brief. And you’ll be relieved to know I give up the brief at the end of March.
So what advice would I give to those who feel they’ve been blocked or snubbed? Well a white mentor told me early on about a saying Confucius said: “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” In other words – there are many ways to skin a cat.
Now, twenty-two years on, I feel I’ve achieved everything I want to, within an organisation which has done pretty well by me. I have a fantastically high national profile. I appear on your television screens most weekends. I get to rub shoulders with top leaders. I’m made to feel important. But that’s nothing to now. I get to meet the people who really pay my wages – YOU. And that is why people like Anver, and his group, are so important. They keep me on the straight and narrow. They are my honesty anchor and integrity compass. If I fail to do my best, be my best, show of my best, then I have let down, not only Anver and his group, but the thirty million licence fee payers. Lest we forget whom we really serve.
So I may have nothing left to prove to anyone – except me. Yet our industry still has a long way to go. Better minds than mine have commented on this recently. Lenny Henry, that Don of Comedians, gave a Royal Television Society speech recently. If you haven’t read it – go to the RTS website and read it. It’s simply brilliant. Humour helps the medicine go down, medicine go done, medicine go down.
He explained his main regret over not insisting on having black or Asian script writers on the hit show “Three of a kind”. He told his audience: “I met some fantastic writers. Even though there were over 200 writers in the room, not one of them was from an ethnic minority. All of those guys were on the starting blocks of their careers, and quite a few of them have ended up working on some of the top shows in TV. Perhaps if we’d been bolder, and included some black and brown faces in that room, they too could have had a career in this business - but they weren’t given a chance. I’m saying – that when I started, I was surrounded by a predominantly white work force. 32 years later… not a lot has changed. I think that’s a great shame.”
Well, here’s the thing Lenny. I talk to a lot of black, Asian and white workers in and out of the BBC. The one thing I’ve found is how united the white folk are. They don’t slag off the competition. They stick together. But black and Asian folk – well, they’re in a class of their own when it comes to dissing their brothers and sisters. I just wish some of us could learn the thing white folk have known for years – strength in unity. If only ethnic minorities would form their own club – and be united in their message – they’d learn how to progress. It’s about networking. We recruit in our own image.
Now a couple of weeks ago Samir Shah, a non-executive BBC director, picked up on Lenny’s theme. Only 4.38% of senior managers are ethnic minority. He told our in-house magazine: “Some years ago the BBC had three hundred diversity schemes, but it’s the outcome that matters.” So I need to ask: what are our diversity units and so called diversity champions doing? Why do they become so defensive, defending an indefensible position?
Now some white colleagues tell me about the unfairness of diversity and black and Asian colleagues complain about – you’ve guessed it – the unfairness of diversity.
I want to complain about diversity too: I just wish I knew what ‘diversity’ meant? How do we measure success?
The dictionary definition of diversity is: to be different and varied. So having a black presenter should have nothing to do with diversity. Employ them because they’re the best candidate. I know how naïve I sound. But does the brilliant Frank Gardiner, the BBC’s Security Correspondent, stop being brilliant just because he’s now in a wheel chair? No, of course not. Do I have insights into certain communities because I know, understand and live among them? Of course I do. In our ways we possess qualities that someone is looking for. So why can’t we employ people for what invaluable skills we possess or am I being too naïve?
Now the BBC is to practise ‘positive action’. This is different from ‘positive discrimination’, Daily Mail readers. The first is legal. The second is not. The BBC’s taken a look at the Senior Management roles and realised it hasn’t enough black, Asian or disabled senior managers. So it’s starting a scheme in the next couple of days to try to address this. Samir, this is scheme three hundred and one. But I’m not going to carp about it. I’m going to apply. And I’d urge all my ethnic colleagues to do the same if they want make a real difference. If you don’t take part, then don’t blame the BBC ever again. Blame yourselves.
I’m often asked by black and Asian audiences I speak to whether the BBC is “institutionally racist”. “No,” I reply “it’s institutionally insensitive.” What do I mean by that? Simple. McPherson defines institutional racism as “unwitting racism”. We, the industry are “unwittingly insensitive”. We just don’t get it. Black, white, it doesn’t matter. If it doesn’t fit our stereotypes or our news agenda or our news angle that particular day – it ain’t going to get on. It is the same with hiring and firing staff. I’ve found that you’re popular for a while and then the love just goes. It’s all too often business not personal. It’s all too often cock up not conspiracy.
Last year Jimmy McGovern called the BBC “one of the most racist institutions in
Or at least can we call for a parliamentary select committee inquiry? The police service has gone through it. The NHS had a ‘festering wound of racism’. I genuinely want to know – what is the extent of racism in my industry. Am I blinkered? Have I been lucky? Or have I simply sold out to my white masters? I want to know.
So let’s stop the speculation, let’s have a real open, honest to goodness debate. I want all sides to engage and give me proof of racism. The BBC is a public service. Under race relations laws we need to make every conceivable effort to prove we’re not racially biased. I’d like to think my bosses know about the dangers of their staff paying lip service to hide a deeper, pervasive problem. That can only be bad for our industry – for they will be found out and will pay the consequences.
So today I want the companies to stop being defensive and engage in this, no matter how painful. For without an honest conversation we can’t lance the racism-accusation-boil. I’m just sick and tired of having to defend our industry to the black and Asian people I meet on the streets. And we need to do this ourselves because if we don’t then such an inquiry will be foisted on us by Trevor Phillips.
I can hear my colleagues now. Choudhury’s bonkers. He’s exaggerating a non-existent problem. I wish I were. I live outside the M25 and
Nigel Kay, a former BBC colleague, summed it up, Anver, in an
So we need to tell them in a quiet tone that is not hectoring and non-threatening. We need to make them understand the need to over reach their targets; the need to reach out to communities outside their comfort zones; the need to get them young and when they’re impressionable; the need for action and not words; the need to mentor; the need to question what we’re doing to be diverse at every opportunity. I’m not convinced we’ve won hearts and minds yet.
That’s the industry’s responsibility. So what’s ours, as people of colour? Recently I heard recently from one Asian friend how he was made to feel so unwelcome at one BBC station he joined fifteen years ago, that black and Asians walked through a side entrance because they didn’t feel able to use the front. That should never, ever be allowed to happen in twenty-first century
They had probably learned something at Oxbridge he didn’t. Fake it till you make it. But he did not allow himself to be a victim. Now he produces top correspondents and makes his own reports for national television – and he knows his worth. He is an inspiring role model to anyone – and would be an ideal candidate for a Senior Manager’s position.
So what should we, people of colour, do? Here’s where I get into trouble with my black and Asian brothers and sisters. In one phrase: take responsibility and never allow yourself to become a victim. Go out and make it happen for yourselves. Don’t rely on others. If you do, you’ll be waiting a long time. Put your strategies in place. Dream about being the best. Envisage reaching the finish line first. But dreaming and envisaging don’t do it. Put teams in place. Seek champions. Learn from them. Take their advice. And remember the words of Labbi Safri: “the higher you build those barriers, the taller we become.”
If you box clever, be clever, think clever, nothing but nothing will stop you. But fight clever. We are now into our fourth and fifth generations as black or Asian born immigrants. We are part of this country and it is our right to take part and lead. We don’t need anyone’s permission. We don’t need anyone to say we have attitude. We can give orders and expect them to be followed. Equality is our right.
And what if we fail within our chosen industry? Simple. Don’t waste your time becoming a dissident or threatening to leave. Just leave. Go. Set up by yourself. Prove yourself. They will welcome you back with open arms and double your salary – if you’re good enough. And what’s more you’ll have done it on your own terms.
Anver re-prints a number of
Yet the lesson is this: it’s how we confront, that’ll single us out. My best friend and first mentor, the late Reg Yeoman, tried to tell a sixteen year old boy: “Son, you get more from honey than vinegar.” Reg, if you’re looking below – I now know what you meant.
Thank you for listening.
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