David Olusoga Addresses Racism in TV Industry in MacTaggart Lecture

Historian, broadcaster and writer David Olusoga delivered the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, during which he outlined the impact of marginalizing non-white voices in the TV industry.

Olusoga hailed 2020 as a “historic year,” but also “a year of terrifying and bewildering events that have affected all our lives. And the impact of the past six months on our industry has been serious and troubling.” He pointed to how SVODs, the pandemic and lockdown measures have led to changes in viewing habits, and he highlighted the brutal murder of George Floyd and the strengthening of the Black Lives Matter movement. “These events—the pandemic and Floyd’s murder—created a chain reaction. A new virus made manifest and obvious some of the oldest and deepest inequalities in our society.” He said that Black Lives Matter and the pandemic have forced our society to have conversations that have been put off or avoided for decades.

“In the spirit of Black Lives Matter, in the spirit of an age in which millions of people have come to recognize that silence on these issues is a form of complicity, I am going to say what I really think about race, racism and our industry,” Olusoga said. “And I’ll discover if, at the end of it, I still have a career.”

He went on to talk about his own experiences and those of other Black people he’s known in his years in TV. “I stand here today not as one of the TV industry success stories, but as a survivor. I am one of the last men standing of TV’s lost generation. The generation of Black and brown people who entered this industry 15, 20, 25 years ago with high hopes. I’m a survivor of a culture within TV that failed that generation. I’m here because a handful of people used their power and their privilege to help me.”

Olusoga said that there is a “brutal answer” to the question of why there is a lack of Black controllers, Black company owners and Black commissioners—”the people we need right now, to bring their experiences, their stories, their viewpoints, and those of the communities they come from into our industry. That answer is that we had them—and we lost them. They left because our industry failed to support their careers and nurture their talents. They left because they never got the next contract, because they had no one champion them or help plan their careers. Some are running indies, some have left TV altogether.

“They left because even when they got work, their voices were too often not listened to, their stories too often were not of interest to the tastemakers and program-pickers who, over the same period, grew ever more powerful within the structure of TV. They’re not here now because we didn’t have the will to keep them and, worn out by it all, they gave up on our industry.”

He said that from the outside, from the perspective of audiences, “TV appears to be doing much better at representing the nation. TV’s lack of diversity and lack of career paths for Black and brown people is often most pronounced in the parts that are least visible…. There is a willingness to accept Black people as performers in front of the camera, but unwillingness on the part of the industry to make space for them behind the scenes, in the rooms where the decisions are made and the real creativity happens.”

Olusoga asserted that “no industry training scheme and no amount of monitoring will lead to real change unless we accept that merely having Black people in the room is not enough. The industry also needs to listen to us, to value our perspectives and our stories, to understand that we come from a different place, consume different culture, read different books and see the world from a different perspective. And that that perspective is valuable.”

He said that “marginalizing the voices of non-white producers and directors risks inhibiting our industry’s ability to tell a wider range of stories. But it is also damaging non-white people themselves. There are consequences of always being in a minority of one. Always being in a minority of one, fighting every fight alone, seeing what others don’t see, all of this takes its toll. My own history of depression testifies to that.”

Overall, he said, there is reason to be hopeful. “This time it does feel different. The response of the U.K. broadcasters to Black Lives Matter is different in multiple respects, distinct from the initiatives of the past. There is a new determination among the broadcasters to drive diversity into senior management, at board level and critically in commissioning. But is there a willingness for real structural and cultural change? And where will accountability come from? Who will determine if the money pledged is actually spent and if recruitment targets are met?”

Olusoga argued that it’s not just broadcasters that need to be held accountable. “The part of our industry in which most people are employed is the independent production. The independent sector needs to do better and needs to want to do better. All companies, but particularly the larger ones, need to champion careers and spot talent. They need to recognize that many of the young Black and brown people who have got a foot in the door of our industry have already climbed mountains of disadvantage that their more privileged peers have never encountered and know little about.”

He pointed to the new generation as being hopeful beacons for bringing about real change. “Young people in this country, both Black and white, simply do not want to live in a society disfigured by racism and racial inequality. And they are willing to have the difficult conversations that the generations before them chose to avoid.

“Black Lives Matter is a movement with a simple message: silence, inaction or ineffective action is not neutrality it is complicity.

“The generation that is leading this global shift in consciousness, and for whom these principles are sacred, is also the generation that our industry is at risk of losing. They are a generation we have yet to convince of the lesson I learned in my childhood—of the magical, transformative, educative power of public service broadcasting. This is a generation to whom we have yet to demonstrate our relevance.

“So in the end, it comes down to this, Does our industry have the will to genuinely share power with those who have, for so very long, been marginalized and silenced?”