Do industries and businesses only speak out about racism when it suits them?

By Emily Wong

#StopAsianHate – a hashtag and movement that’s becoming second nature to many of us in the East and South East Asian (ESEA) community. But are we seeing it enough across brands and organisations? Corporate communications specialist Emily Wong investigates ESEA representation in the media, marketing and the vast amount of work still to be done.

In the last few months we’ve seen the heady rise and growth of grassroots organisations, funding campaigns, and celebrity backing, all united in the goal of raising the profile and the voices of ESEA people.

The stats about the rise in racially motivated attacks and violent incidents are all too familiar to us, and not one to dwell on. Instead, we focus on the positive - that voices from ESEA communities are breaking into the mainstream. But is it resonating with this wider audience? 

One thing that’s been noticeable is the muted support from brands and businesses during the wave of attacks and hate crimes plaguing the ESEA community. As I’ve previously discussed in relation to the PR and communications industry, ‘the importance of allyship and support has been pivotal during any anti-racism movement. The strength in numbers and power of influential voices cannot be denied. And none more powerful than the brands that frequently reach millions of people’.

The power of brands to influence the public, along with their sticking power cannot be underestimated. Consumer facing industries are  built on image, selling a concept, lifestyle or mindset that can only be achieved if you buy or use their product. People listen to brands. People buy into their ethos.

The lack of ESEA faces in UK politics and media is all too apparent. Problem is, we’ve always been here, we just haven’t had a presence. The deeply flawed terms ‘model minority’ and ‘hidden minority’ that get slapped upon ESEA communities all contribute to the same narrative – that we are invisible, and that it’s a good thing. Stay quiet, stay subservient, stay back.

The irony was our faces were seen more than ever in COVID-19 news reports over the past 18 months. Across the media during the pandemic we saw a disproportionate use of images of ESEA people in news pieces about coronavirus, sparking racist bias by associating the pandemic with our communities. This is dangerous and irresponsible, and we’re still seeing the fallout.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

This all boils down to representation, or lack thereof. Whilst we’re perhaps the first generation of ESEA people in the UK to start making our presence known across a variety of sectors in which ESEA people are underrepresented, industries like media, marketing and advertising are still in their infancy when it comes to diversity. This makes things tricky, as these are the sectors with most influence over what the public see. Could it be that brands don’t feel the need to support ESEA people in the UK, because our identities aren’t often authentically represented or because there are too few of us making a dent in these sectors?

The numbers are still shockingly low for the media sector, which often fails to provide a true breakdown of the full range of different ethnicities in their diversity statistics . Nonetheless, the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) indicates the number of non-white journalists has hardly changed in recent years. They make up 8% of the industry, despite representing 12% of the total UK workforce (2021). In PR and Communications, it’s a similar story in their 2019 census, the industry body, the Public Relations and Communications Association reported that only 10% of the industry identifies as people of colour.

Therefore, it’s a safe assumption that when brands decide who to throw their support behind or who to target for consumer focus groups, ESEA people are rarely given much thought. This likely explains the lack of brands mobilising behind our communities’ plight in the last 18 months or showing solidarity with #StopAsianHate campaigns, because it doesn’t resonate with many in the industry. Having worked in the media and communications industry for nearly 10 years, I still do a sharp intake of breath and profess my joy when I see another ESEA sounding name or person in the room. The feeling of ‘I’m not the only one’ is hard to shake off because more often than not, you are the only one.

It’s not all bad news. Huge steps have been made recently with prolific actors like Gemma Chan and Henry Golding publicly backing the #StopAsianHate campaign. Movements like #StopAAPIHate and #StopAsianHate have been gaining ground thanks to the power of social media, where awareness has been able to spread. Media house Omnicom is urging the ad industry to be more inclusive toward Asian Americans amid a dramatic rise in anti-Asian hate and violence since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Advertisers have been asked by the business to show their support for the AAPI community throughout May. This was to be demonstrated by casting three in five characters with Asian actors and to make three out of five posts on Instagram and other social channels about Asians stories. The company is also urging advertisers to hire the same proportion of Asians in influencer campaigns, and to recruit, hire and promote three in five Asian workers throughout their workforce.

Voices like these matter- when you recognise someone from the TV or an advert in a magazine, it makes you sit up and listen that little bit more about what they have to say.

The fight now is to get more people like that on screens, in newsrooms, in brand marketing teams and in the media. The more you see us, the harder it’ll be to look the other way.

Emily has worked in the PR & Communications for the past eight years, specialising in corporate communications. Over the years, Emily has been active in contributing her skills as a communicator to activities related to diversity & inclusion, women in the workplace, sustainability, and technology for good. She mentored for the Girls Network, a charity that focuses on connecting girls from the least advantaged communities in the UK to a network of professional female role models. In 2019, she was part of the UK’s BME PR Pros mentorship programme that focuses on advocating and progressing the careers of professionals from a BAME background. She’s also been a guest speaker at the University of Greenwich for its past two International Women’s Day events.