The Accidental Racism in New Age Publishing
There were three chocolate chips in the whole cookie bag. Maybe that’s too old a phrase, but the meaning remains the same — there aren’t many people of color in the publishing world. When I was hired to work for a New Age publisher, I assumed it would be different. Being a heart-centered love-promoting place they would be able to transcend color lines, wouldn’t they? I couldn’t have been more wrong.
On my first day of work, a fellow black woman came into the break room eagerly saying hello. I figured it was because she was friendly and maybe high on the good vibes from working in a spiritual environment. She worked in the art department and it showed. Her flowing dress held patterns intriguing to the eyes. I spoke with her maybe twice. Each time in the break room over a tea or coffee, her desk only a few cubicle aisles away. Within a month, she was gone.
Then there were two.
A deep brown skinned person worked in customer care. He’d pop by my desk from time to time, sharing his side hustle. He was the only black man in the entire building. A deeply loving and giving person, he often led team breakfasts on Fridays. He also should’ve been given angel wings for his infinite patience and gentle attitude toward the volume of distressed calls he had to take. He’d been there many years before I arrived, yet as job openings occurred, he was never promoted. Each time thrusted back into answering calls and seemingly forever doomed to the looney bin of self-help spin outs who weren’t getting cured from their affirmations.
I was the only black person in marketing. I didn’t notice it at first but over time I began to feel my color. To be clear, I felt respected for my expertise and was given opportunities to explore my talents, but there was still something glaringly unaddressed that I had to speak out about: representation through imagery.
As part of my role, I wrote a lot of marketing and sales copy. I also had the job of reviewing landing pages and providing my feedback. It took about 10 launches for me to realize the pictures used in every campaign had no diversity. And when I say none, I mean even the white people lacked variance. It was the same old Eurocentric ideals of beauty spattered on every page. And it meant, there were no people of color being displayed for this global brand.
I couldn’t be silent. I went to the web page developer in the office and asked if they could change some photos to include color diversity. She looked at me baffled and responded that there wasn’t anything wrong with the images she chose. I brought this up several times in different teams, met most frequently with the response “I don’t see color.” An eye-roll worthy bypassing technique if ever I had heard one.
As more campaigns launched and the company expanded in fresh directions, some new people were hired into the office. One person happened to be a Mexican American who was developing landing pages and choosing imagery. I went directly to him about the same issue, which he happily obliged and made the changes I had wanted to see for the months prior. This maneuver wouldn’t earn me a cape, but I could put a W in my column, even if it were a short-lived one.
During my time working at that publisher, I never felt that seeing zero brown people in marketing imagery was purposeful oversight. It felt more like accidental racism as I looked around a building replete with white people in most roles and filling every managerial position. What it called on me to consider was if everyone looked like me and talked like me in my immediate life, wouldn’t I build that look to echo into my surrounding world? So, I decided to conclude that what I had been encountering was selective ignorance:
Ignorance (definition): a lack of knowledge and information. The word “ignorant” is an adjective that describes a person in the state of being unaware and can describe individuals who deliberately ignore or disregard important information or facts, or individuals who are unaware of important information or facts.
I had to realize even the most woke people have blind spots they may refuse to see. Because, lack of representation matters, and feigning colorblindness is a dismissive way to bypass a cultural struggle — in hopes of ultimately avoiding the discomfort and change that must follow.
It has rested on my heart for years that I had to plead my case for image diversity in a company that promotes love. When I took up the cause, I thought it was entirely to show end client images of themselves. But as time passed, I understood I needed to bring awareness to this issue for myself too. I refused to be made invisible, even if it wasn’t consciously so. Being a self-proclaimed seeker who desires exposure to alternative ideas, I wanted to see myself physically represented. And I was silently angry I never saw any version of me looking back from those pages.
It’s possible the lack of relatable imagery is why it took me three and a half decades to discover things like tarot, channeling, mediumship, crystals, and more. I never saw black people doing yoga let alone clearing quartz crystals in moonlight. The only images selected for me were that of the stereotypical sassy-grandmother-preacher-type who talked about Jesus and God on an imaginary pulpit. And, I couldn’t relate to that person. Her image didn’t represent the totality of me.
My former company’s limited representation in imagery is a symptom of a larger problem in publishing. Most publishers use Eurocentric imagery as the default in their marketing campaigns. And these selectively ignorant decisions have the worst kind of ripple effect — one of perpetuated exclusion.
By the way, if you’re wondering if they’ve continued the imagery movement I helped to implement — I don’t have an answer for you. What I can tell you is this: they’ve only hired one other brown-skinned person since I left, and they weren’t hired into management. I have a hard time believing that since they can’t see color, they’ve noticed there are only two chocolate chips left in the cookie bag — an unfortunate blind spot that is insidiously becoming status quo.
