Feature Ethnic diversit


I became a part of Hysteria, a radical femi- nist collective, aſter I graduated. I got my first taste of actually editing the articles of academics, activists, artists and poets from around the world. I learnt on the job, with direction from the editor-in-chief and the rest of the editorial team, drawing on my experience at HarperCollins and as a writer. I needed to be a part of the move to change the increasingly Islamaphobic, racist and homophobic narratives churned out by the right-wing media, and self-publishing felt like one of the most liberating ways to do that. We relied on Kickstarter fundraising rather than Arts Council grants, meaning that we only had to prove ourselves to our readership and the interna- tional feminist communit. In October last year, I was elected co-editor-in-chief of our biannual period- ical, which is distrib- uted internationally. Hysteria was begun


by a group of SOAS, Universit of London graduates who were intersectionalit- minded but not particularly intersectional in and of themselves. Along with my fellow co-editor-in-chief, we spent a great amount of energy with the collective working to diversify our body of editors in terms of race, disabilit and gender identification. Like so many unfunded creative areas of profession, those of us from immigrant or otherwise marginalised communities are oſten not granted the luxury of working for free, and Hysteria remained an unpaid project. As soon as I became co-editor-in-chief, and in part because of my performance background, I suddenly became “the face of the collective”. Being a mixed-race face, the collective was suddenly run by “a woman of colour” and therefore must be a “black collective”. Once again, I found myself speaking about feminism in major- it-white spaces, and all of the questions directed at me were about race. Because I am light-skinned and well spoken, I became a very palatable sort of black person, and eventually found myself having to insist that I would not speak on panels on which I was the darkest participant. More than this, other queer women of colour in my communit made assumptions about the demographic of the collective based on my position as co-editor-in-chief.


Being a spokesperson in any industry— especially one such as publishing, where you are deciding whose voices are (and


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are not) heard within an already oppressed and marginal space, such as self-publishing— is a dangerous responsibilit; my race could become a mascot for diversit rather than a frictious point of intersection. I felt subcon- sciously tokenised within my own collective, and more deliberately so in the outside world.


are not used to being told: “No, that’s cultur- ally insensitive.”


Producing a semi-academic journal that was full of so many white bodies rubbed up against my politics, even though we had a very diverse submissions body and published poets and activists from all over the world, somehow it was the white bodies that stood out to me. I realised that, being a woman of colour in publishing, I didn’t have to only publish “black work”, but I did have to constantly challenge my position as what Malorie Blackman has called “a gatekeeper”: those that can stop you geting through, or who can swing the door wide open for you. While diversifying publishing is essen- tial—I now do my best to avoid working in all-white spaces at all—as black and brown editors, we must also be aware of how we are being used for other people’s agendas and constantly question what our own agenda might be, and for whom we are swinging the door wide open. ×


Samar Habib Simon & Schuster Multimedia designer


O


N THE SURFACE, publishing is the nicest, politest industry I’ve ever worked in. It is also, by some margin, the whitest. Over the past 11 years I have never really noticed any issues overtly targeting black or Asian workers in the office environ-


ment. I have never been made to feel uncom- fortable. It also helps that most people in the industry are women, meaning the machismo associated with male-heavy work environ- ments is, on the whole, non-existent. What young black and Asian people enter- ing the industry need to know is that the terms and phrases that they are growing up with are light-years away from making it to the ears of the 40-plus-year-old, white middle-classes. Want to talk about being “woke”, about “slaying”, about “reading for filth”? You can mention “cultural appro- priation”, for example, and you may have to spend the next hour explaining why some- thing is insensitive. For all the politeness, this is still very much a world in which people


In the new world, in which communica- tion is shaped around social media, BAME employees (and employers) have access to support networks around the world that help them navigate the working world while also voicing their grievances for the world to see. It’s a sort of power, and it’s an empowerment that workers of my generation (I entered the industry back in 2005) and earlier ones didn’t have. I believe it’s a powerful tool through which those who once felt disem- powered can now discuss their views. We can all be polite. But we can also all use social


The terms and phrases [young people of colour] are growing up with are light-years away from making it to the ears of the 40-plus-year-old white middle-classes


media to further build and shape our opin- ions and the ways in which people see us. There are a lot of negative things to say about social media, for sure—especially for black and Asian people. But there is also a great support structure if you can find it.


There are very few BAME people in publishing, and you must remember that not all of them share your batles or your concerns. There will always be those who choose to navigate the path of least resist- ance—and that’s fine, as long as they don’t try and muddy the waters for others who choose otherwise. Everyone has their own challenges and it’s important to remember that not everyone shares your struggle. Denzel Washington once spoke about a


part in a film that he turned down in the 1980s. He remembers turning down the role when Sidney Poitier told him: “The first few films you make in the business will dictate how you are perceived in this business.” That’s the best advice anyone could give to someone of black or Asian heritage starting their career in publishing (or, in fact, in any industry). The way you will be perceived for the rest of your career will be dictated by how you present yourself. Social media just made your life so much easier in that regard. ×


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