Writers of colour don’t experience press trips the same way
Faima Bakar tells us about her experiences
“Yes, it’s different when you’re coloured, isn’t it”, she says casually to me while we’re sat eating a traditional Japanese breakfast on a press trip to explore the lesser-known regions of Japan. Notedly, I’m also the only journalist of colour on this trip, as I’ve been on almost every one of the trips I’ve taken in my career these last seven years. She calls me ‘coloured’ when I bring up the issue of being commissioned as a writer of colour. Her intentions may not have been malicious but words like that are loaded and I was stunned into silence.
Press trips are a huge privilege, and not one afforded to even the best writers so I don’t take this honour lightly. But constantly being otherised in this way is grating and reminds me how different I am. When it happens, I find myself minimising my presence, not wanting my difference to be so loud. ’Coloured’ conjures images of racial apartheid and it’s a heavy word to be called, and becomes even heavier when I realise that the two other journalists I’m with say nothing to challenge her.
The same woman who called me coloured also consistently called me the wrong name, despite my name being two syllables. It wasn’t just this trip where I felt otherised – I’ve been ignored, had people over-exaggerate trying to learn my name, made to feel like a pariah because my Muslim faith means I don’t drink alcohol. I’ve had my name butchered multiple times, been mistaken for the only other person of colour, or been called the wrong name entirely, too exhausted to correct them.
It’s not just on racial lines I’ve felt like an outsider, but due to my class too. Journalism remains one of the most exclusive industries. According to The Sutton Trust, 51% of the country’s leading journalists were educated privately, and 80% of its top editors went to either private or grammar schools. I was born and raised for the better part of a decade in Bangladesh, a country ravaged by poverty and the effects of climate change. I went to several state schools, on free school dinners, moving from council home to council home.
I wear my working-class roots proudly, but when I joined the media I realised an ostensible lack of privilege became a costume for posh writers to wear, clinging on to their parents’ struggles and adorning it as their own – one of them had ‘a dad who grew up in Liverpool’, after all. I’ve been on press trips as the only person without a private education, while posh, well-off, home-owning writers moan and argue over one another about not being all that privileged.
Travel media needs to do better. Journalists from diverse backgrounds need to be invited on press trips and commissioned by mainstream papers and magazines. It’s easy to say ‘there aren’t enough writers’ but I’m part of multiple groups dedicated to writers of colour; we’re here, we just need to be given the same opportunities as our white, well-off counterparts. And when we’re present, treat us like the rest of the group, don’t alienate us or put the onus on us to challenge unsavoury behaviour.
This was the second in our free series on race issues within travel writing. We hope you’ve found it interesting and insightful. We are a reader-funded publication and pay all our writers from the revenue this newsletter generates, so if you want to support independent writers in future, subscribe here.
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You are so right about being othered.
Thanks for sharing!