'Appalling,' 'Untenable': Inside the U.K.'s Diversity Disaster
Backlash as a struggling market, U.S. right-wing influence, put TV's DEI jobs under pressure
When you’re a person of color in a senior leadership role — in an industry where there aren’t many — quitting can feel like letting people down.
But sometimes, quitting is about self-preservation. “I loved my role at the BBC. It felt like I could — and indeed was — making headway . . . So, why did I leave?” Joanna Abeyie, who had served as the BBC’s head of creative diversity until last July, wrote earlier this month. In a column in Sight & Sound magazine discussing the industry’s diversity initiatives, Abeyie for the first time revealed why she departed the broadcaster after just a year and a half.
Jobs like hers, she said, become “untenable when autonomy, influence and decision making is minimal to absent, when there is no sign of improvement and the role is created because optically it’s the right thing to do.”
The column hit a nerve in the industry, which also saw the departures of two well-respected Black executives in the last month: Miranda Wayland, head of diversity and inclusion for the U.K. and Europe at Prime Video, whose role was cut as part of the streamer’s restructuring; and Chinny Okolidoh, director of diversity at the BBC, whose position was eliminated in another reorg. (Her job responsibilities have been folded into a broader chief talent and inclusion officer role.)
“If you're a broadcaster here and you're cutting back on diversity jobs, that's because you're not seeing it as being business critical,” says Aaqil Ahmed, a former head of religion and ethics at the BBC and Channel 4. “You're seeing it as being something that you do when things are great.”
Indeed, when business goes south, DEI execs are among the first to go.
Underpinning concern over diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) positions is new U.K. census data showing that 90 percent of people working across arts, culture and heritage jobs are white, while just one in 12 people working in film, TV and radio is from a lower socioeconomic background — the lowest levels in a decade. (In terms of market disconnect, the U.K. is 18 percent non-white, with 48 percent of the public considering themselves to be working class.)
Now, as corporate America backtracks on DEI commitments from 2020 amid a flurry of “reverse-discrimination” lawsuits, and Hollywood sees an exodus of DEI leaders at Disney, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, Brits appear to be catching America’s cold — where a noisy aversion by some to so-called “woke” policies and agendas has been felt across universities, corporations, politics and, of course, entertainment. Even as the vast majority of Americans support diverse workplaces, a Marist Poll this year revealed resistance to mandated training.
“I worry that right-wing U.S. politics are starting to filter through to our mainstream creative industries, normalizing a regressive approach,” says Angela Chan, a former Channel 4 creative diversity exec, and current head of inclusion for an applied tech lab at Royal Holloway University.
In this issue, I’ll dig into:
How U.S.-backed companies such as Comcast’s Sky and Paramount Global have more stable diversity teams than their Brit counterparts
Corporate optics vs. execution
How a leadership change can turn a DEI exec “from hero to zero”
Who’s “doubling down” on DEI
But how they’re doing it so as not to attract backlash
The leadership structure that best produces success
Why the BBC is now being criticized by DEI advocates
Why leaders are calling for an independent DEI monitoring body
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