Elevating Diverse Creators
Grace Miller
Public
Seen by 199
The vast majority of high-profile creators on YouTube are white and male.
As Akilah Hughes writes in a recent article on Fusion, “there are arguably fewer than 30 creators darker than a paper bag among the top 500 YouTubers.” In other words, less than 6% of high-profile YouTubers are people of color.
The same data source also indicates that only 18% of the top subscribed YouTubers are people who identify or present as women, or 60 of 327.
Akilah’s article asks for high-profile creators and YouTube itself to promote diverse talent, most notably through sharing videos on their social media. How can we, as a community, elevate diverse creators on YouTube?
Gea Nils Sat 22 Aug 2015 5:44PM
"I think a really important thing to keep in mind when discussing diversity on YouTube is that ~diverse creators on YouTube do exist already. They’re out there, they’re talented, they’re making stuff. We don’t need to pull them in to fix the numbers because they’re already out there."
Oh my gosh this ^
Auden Granger · Thu 20 Aug 2015 4:08AM
I was just asked on my blog: "What's the proper way to improve diversity on Youtube that doesn't involve tokenism?" That question was an interesting one for me to receive and really emphasized the importance of the wording here- "elevating diverse creators", rather than "attracting diverse creators" or just "improving diversity", which seem to me much more likely to fall prey to tokenism.
I think a really important thing to keep in mind when discussing diversity on YouTube is that ~diverse creators on YouTube do exist already. They’re out there, they’re talented, they’re making stuff. We don’t need to pull them in to fix the numbers because they’re already out there.
What they need is the same support and attention that cishet white guy creators get so that they can keep making their stuff. Seeking out, paying attention to, elevating, and supporting women, people of color, trans people, disabled people, etc. on YouTube who already make content that you’re interested in isn’t tokenism, and that's where our efforts should lie.
As a creator, asking those people to participate in projects that you’re working on because you’re interested in the art that they make and think you would make good artistic partners, that isn’t tokenism, because you’re not pulling them in for the numbers but because you feel like they have a valuable and unique perspective to share in the stuff that they’re making.
And that has a huge positive effect, because what happens then is that those creators become a role model for other creators in the next artistic generation. They help to make a place for new artists to share their work, to gain an audience, to become a part of the YouTube community.