How to best describe a mandate of cultural diversity?

February 7, 2020 2:54 PM

I'm a straight white cis man, and alongside another straight white cis man, I run a music events series in my city. We've put on ~30 events, and of those events, ~90% of the headliners have been "culturally diverse" -- which is to say, not straight white cis men, but POC, LGBTQ2S folks, etc. How do we describe this in official contexts while maintaining boundaries of respect?

We don't ask or expect our headliners to indulge or promote this aspect of themselves but as a personal friend to many of these artists I know these numbers to be true. We also didn't start our project with a mandate of "diversity," this is simply a result of the scene we're a part of and the artists that we look up to.

We're currently in the process of applying for some grants that ask for our "diversity metrics" and I'm stuck on the language of how to explain this without sounding tokenizing, or otherwise like I'm trading the "visible diversity" (a term that makes me pretty uncomfortable) of the people we book for money. Part of my question is what is the actual language to use when I'm saying people who aren't straight and white?

If the grant didn't ask for this kind of breakdown specifically I wouldn't even mention it, but here we are! Thank you all for any insight.

posted by anonymous to Society & Culture (7 answers total)

Assuming you have accurate stats on everything, I see nothing wrong or insensitive about reporting the facts, especially since you were asked quite directly for exactly that. Any reason that a quick pie chart with a race breakdown and another with a gender/LGBT breakdown wouldn't suffice?
posted by rjacobs at 3:26 PM on February 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

I understand how this can get yucky when you're trying to make determinations, but I think I would do something like of our ### booked acts in 2019, at least ### were women, ### featured non-binary or gender non-conforming performers, ### featured non-white performers, ### featured queer performers. You could also discuss ## of performers performing music from non-Western traditions if you felt that was helpful to capture, too.

I personally wouldn't do pie charts, because I think it can get muddy, but basic things when I go through my lineups "I count 40 people who are obviously non-white without doing a deep dive into peoples' heritage" or "I count 25 performers who are out and promote themselves as queer without doing a deep dive into who they are sleeping with." I don't think you need to be really exact with your stats (I like "At least" for this), but I think basic stats will provide evidence of attention to diversity.
posted by vunder at 3:50 PM on February 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

I (middle aged White lady in a very White state) am on the board of a large granting organization and we talk a lot about EDI (equity, diversion and inclusion) as a core value and expect our grantees to do so as well. That also seems to be where I feel the language is going.

So you can both make a values statement and then also include your numbers as a way of basically saying "And we put our values into action..." and then dive into some numbers. Because the way to fuck this up is to call any POC "diverse" (I know you know this, but just explaining what to avoid) when in fact what you are trying to do is highlight the breadth and depth of the music scene which already exists either in the place where you live or the world at large.

And to that point, I would talk differently about this if you were importing people to perform than if you were booking local acts -- neither is better/worse, but make sure you specify because there is additional value in hiring local folks from culturally diverse backgrounds, from a grantor perspective.

I also agree that pie charts can work okay if you have straifghtforward "Everyone is in one bucket" metrics (Ford/Chevy/Toyota) but diversity doesn't always split out easily and it might be better to have a narrative about this.
posted by jessamyn at 4:25 PM on February 7, 2020 [6 favorites]

A possibly useful language distinction for you is that groups of people may be diverse, but individual people are marginalized (possibly along different axes, depending on the power dynamics in play).

If you anticipate applying for multiple grants of this sort, you might want to make a small form that allows people to self-report their identity (make the survey as a whole and each individual question optional, use checkboxes not radio buttons, and allow for both fill-in-the-blank and "do not wish to disclose" answers).
posted by yarntheory at 4:32 PM on February 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

Lesbians Who Tech do this well - might be able to get inspiration from them:

https://lesbianswhotech.org/sanfrancisco2020/#about
posted by valeries at 7:13 PM on February 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

Depending on how the grants were looking into supporting, other than the already mentioned 'hard' numbers, the metrics can also include your organisational practice or processes in ensuring diversity. Eg your SOP in community engagement (publicity or outreach in targeted communities), affirmative action in terms of more opportunities/spots from more marginalised communities, sponsorships that're relevant to this initiative. These can then pair in your narrative with what's already mentioned about putting your values into action and how it's resulted in XX ppl from non-majority backgrounds. Because your processes matter too, and it's usually not articulated and then down the line you get trapped by just reporting numbers and tokenism.

A lot of this is also a matter of having a strong results language or narrative embedded throughout so donors can see you have a whole theory of change (to use a sectoral jargon) going on in your work.
posted by cendawanita at 11:52 PM on February 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

Since, presumably, the music is diverse, you can play up the connection that the music is diverse because the players/composers are also.

Also, it's a hoary old trick, but photos can carry a message that's not in the text.
posted by SemiSalt at 2:07 PM on February 8, 2020