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.
Hey Nur excellent post. I do not think we need another online social network. We are all on the major ones any ways. What we need is more face to face time. And maybe an open dialogue facilitated by someone we all respect. There is no crises only opportunities. I’m in Cape Town till Friday morning. In fact I have discussed the importance of a mastermind group with a few people although nothing has been formalised yet. This would allow us to move forward quickly in co-opetition or a collaborative environment.
Great post. This is a hard one..I am what the government classifies as “black” and I am a self taught designer/coder.
I was afforded the opportunity to learn what I do now through education. I was at UCT from 2000 and moved to Wits in 2004.
These institutions made the internet available at all times. Some chose to concentrate on MSN IM whilst a few of us used the opportunity to learn stuff.
I still remember the day I discovered HTML, I literally kissed Geocities website wizards goodbye and went about writing my own.
The truth is, we need access to information. With current internet costs, the situation is hopeless. For this reason the government should not impose any empowerment demands on our fragile industry.
I dig all great SA websites, I do not think about who coded it or who owns it. If the site looks good and works well then thumbs up.
We do not need BEE in our Web industry, we just need access to the internet. If the gov is serious about stuff, let them tackle our high internet charges.
I believe its that simple, please forgive my rant, I just feel strongly about the issue at hand
@khathutshelo – thanks for your feedback, I agree passion needs to be part of the equation, and access to information is integral.
Changing of mindsets on all sides of the racial divide needs to take place as well though. People who are given opportunities need to appreciate them and use them as best they possibly can.
I do however feel that affirmative action has it’s place, but that it needs to be a supervised and closely managed process to ensure that it is practiced in a beneficial way.
Khathutshelo makes a few VERY valid points that I’d like to sum up if I may:
1 – No one cares if a site was developed by a white or a black, a pink or a yellow, a male or a female, or a bloody androgynous transgender – does the site work? At the end of the day – thats what it is all about.
2 – Telkom is bleeding us dry. And not just Telkom – ANY bandwidth provider (Let me not get onto my soap-box about MTN 3G – I’ll get arrested for slander). But this is a self-fulfilling prophecy: Telkom (and others) will NEVER make bandwidth available cheaply. Because its not good business sense to do so. I’d love to know the figures of how much of any telecom provider’s bottom line is made up of bandwidth.
However, as a reborn capitalist and staunch libertarian, I cannot hold it against the providers, even though I have a monthly fight with MTN regarding their creative way of billing.
That does not kill the fact that we need access to information. And then we need people who can use that access to information.
Hypothesis: Assuming (always a dangerous thing) that all young white people have access to information – IE, the opportunity to access the internet either from school or home, how many of those people end up in the web industry? Heck, go back a step – how many of them can actually RUN a computer with any level of competence? (Having worked helpdesks in my life, I can tell you its a scary number!). so out of a shallow pool of people who can use a computer, how many of them will then go into web? And to do web design/development you need a very unique skillset of left- and right-brain capabilities. Show me another industry where you need to be both creative AND logical?
Point being is that even with the “elite” having access to all the resources, there is a pitiful amount of people who really CAN do web – and I’m not talking about the masses of “web designers” who can import clip-art into Dreamweaver, or *gasp* FrontPage, I’m talking about people who knows what the heck is going on.
Should we then by some minor miracle get access to the masses, we first need to then educate them into USING a computer, never mind using the web – and developing the web – esp. the enigmatic myth of web 2.0. Secondly, how many of the newly-liberated black people will choose web? It’s not a high-paying career, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. As with any industry, there are a few fat cats who really made it, but let’s face it, unless you pull a Google or a YouTube, and remain a normal “designer”, you will never drive the BMW 4×4. Design is at the best of times a low-paying job, web may pay slightly better than pure design, but no one looking to pull themselves up out of poverty will aspire to web – that’s what accounting and law degrees are for. Invariably the fat cat at the top of name-your-web-company is not a designer or a developer, but rather a dinkum businessman who happens to be in the web industry (Same as every other industry).
Point being – if we want a “normalised” web building community, we first need a normalised society. And that, as we know, will take a generation or two. But my clients want websites now, not in a generation or two. And as such, we need to dip into our shallow resource pool and use what we got, and not get too hung up on BEE in this industry, and just get the job done.
Ka-ching, two cents.
@Gerry
Wow what a “comment” or rather should I say Essay. LOL
Firstly, lets look at a few of the issues you seem to think are reasons why the web industry should not be worked on to be more representative.
Web is not a high paying industry. Mmm, I don’t think this was ever paret of the conversation. We’re not necessary looking to get more people driving BMW 4X4’s but getting as many people employed in various fields as well as creating more representative industries which are more open to all people. The web industry, by camparison to what young job seekers are getting into would be a great place to be.
How many Lawyers & Doctors or Accountants do you think would be viable?
Web companies do not only hire designers & programmers, they hire all types of people from writers to project managers to sales people etc.
Access to information, or rather technology, is a huge factor. I know some young kids who could go out and earn a living straight out of school because they were exposed to computers. They were not just trained in design or web but in technology in general.
Our argument is never that it makes a difference to the end user who designed or programmed the site, though I have had some incidents myself where a client found out a non-white person designed his site and did an about turn and revoked his previous approvals.
The argument is about creating fair opportunities in all industries so that we can level the playing fields as the economic power in South Africa still belongs to a minority of White people who have historically controlled access to positions and decision making.
If we did an analysis of who owns what and who is in what position in South Africa, you will see what the aprtheid legacy has left behind it. This is our issue, it has nothing to do with the specifics of web design, or specific individuals.
The process of integration needs to take place and I find, most times those who complain about it are those who had and still do benefit from the unfair segregation of our society.