Does BBC Radio Still Have a Diversity Problem?

Last week 6 Music announced the line-up for their first festival and, unsurprisingly, the acts they’ve booked are those favoured by the children of people who commute from the Home Counties to a hedge fund job. The National and Midlake are two of the big draws – bands for people who are too discerning for Mumford, but who once applied for tickets to Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow.

Perhaps that's unfair, but questions of taste aside, the most remarkable thing about the inaugural 6 Music Festival is its whiteness. The lineup consists of more than 70 musicians, 32 acts, and of these fewer than ten are people of colour. Kelis will be the only black artist to appear live on the main stage on either of the two days.

James Stirling, 6 Music’s Head of Programmes, seems to take a relaxed view on diversity. “It certainly comes into our thinking,” he says. “We're keen to be as diverse as we can as a station; that's something the whole of the BBC's interested in doing.”

“The DJ stage is a good example of where you're going to find a lot of diversity in terms of the music that's played, and for us that's what it's about. The diversity always comes through the music, like Gilles Peterson’s set for example, and Nemone's.” Peterson in particular has made significant contributions to the spread of music played by people of colour that is otherwise overlooked on mainstream British radio, and deserves all the plaudits he gets. But it is telling that 6 Music’s vision of a diverse lineup is one in which that music is played by predominantly white DJs.

Stirling insists that, “our aim for the 6 Music Festival was to achieve the best lineup possible.” But, he says, questions of diversity “invariably depend on who is available to come and play these sets.” If they are confident that they have in fact booked the “best possible lineup”, this poses questions as to why, in his eyes, that lineup is so overwhelmingly white. Quite reasonably, Stirling tells me that he cannot talk about the acts that the station tried but failed to book. Without naming any names, I ask, can he tell me whether, had they been able to book all of their first choices, the ethnic breakdown would have been different? Funnily enough, he didn’t respond.

The BBC as a whole is apparently alive to issues of diversity, even though its practice may fall short of its ideas. As part of its 2011-15 Diversity Strategy each division, including TV, “future media”, and radio, is required to produce a Diversity Action Plan setting out the steps it will take to meet the Corporation’s diversity objectives. As part of the radio division’s Plan for 2013-14, stations reported their “recent diversity achievements”. Radio 1’s achievements included the Hackney Academy, which hosted a series of workshops and broadcasts for young people, while Radio 2 cited the “continuing diversity theme” of Chris Evans’ Olympic and Paralympic coverage. The only station that didn’t appear was 6 Music, which seemingly declined to list any achievements at all.

The station’s absence from the list is particularly strange in light of 6 Music’s recent brushes with the BBC Trust, the Corporation’s governing body. In its 2010 review of the station, the Trust highlighted that 6 Music “appeals less to older people, to listeners from lower income households, to women, and to ethnic minorities.” In advance of the publication of the review it was rumoured that 6 Music was to close.

We all know the rest: the station enjoyed a wave of support on social media, spearheaded, funnily enough, by 6 Music presenter Jarvis Cocker, and it was eventually "saved". But has 6 Music actually addressed the Trust’s key concerns? I ask Stirling if he thinks the station is doing enough in light of the 2010 review. “It's a tricky question, really,” he replies. “We always do what we can. The BBC has a very clear diversity policy, but actually our mission as a network is to represent the spirit of alternative music. That's what we do.”

Of course, 6 Music’s race problem is not confined to its festival. At the time of writing just three of the acts on the station’s 31-strong playlist include people of colour. Their albums of the year lists for both 2012 and 2013 are almost exclusively white, so too is its roster of 20-plus featured presenters.

The station does, of course, have a small handful of prominent presenters of colour – welcome exceptions to the rule. Craig Charles holds a weekend slot for his Funk And Soul Show, immediately after Gilles Peterson, while Don Letts plays an admirably eclectic mix on his Sunday afternoon programme. But they remain flourishing outposts of an otherwise monocultural station – and their influence is certainly nowhere to be seen on 6 Music’s main playlists.

“I think we hire people based on their musical experience and skills,” Stirling says. “I genuinely feel we hire the best people to play the music that they are passionate about.” But even if we accept the fatuous idea that the “best people” are generally white, this argument simply does not hold. 6 Music’s remit is to “entertain lovers of popular music with a service that celebrates the alternative spirit in popular music from the 1960s to the present day.” But 6 Music’s vision of that alternative spirit is increasingly whitewashed. Think about the station’s approach to black music. Rather than celebrating the alternative spirit of the thousands of black musicians and broadcasters around the country who have proven to be such a key driving force behind contemporary culture, 6 Music prefers to fill its airtime with white approximations. Consider, for example, the absurd amount of airtime the station gave to Daft Punk last year, or the 2012 season entitled “6 Music Celebrates The Rolling Stones”. These are the spaces in which 6 Music is most comfortable: the spaces in which white artists present a neutralised, white version of black and Asian music.

How can you possibly celebrate popular music or its alternative spirit without giving space to artists of colour? What reasonable history of popular music could prioritise white facsimiles of black and Asian voices, or eliminate those voices to the degree that we see in 6 Music? The station should, and sometimes does, provide a vital space for music that is otherwise ignored by both commercial radio and the BBC – but why must it do this at the virtual exclusion of minority artists and DJs?

6 Music, of course, is only part of the problem. There is tendency across British radio to use white DJs to present black music, especially on Radio 1 and Kiss. Scratcha DVA, a prominent black producer and DJ releasing on Hyperdub, smells a rat. “It's disgraceful the amount of black DJs who I know who have piloted [for] the In New DJs We Trust show on Radio 1 [now the Radio 1 residency], who are really good in their own right as producers and DJs, and that have been turned down. I could name ten or more known names.” The show has had a number of black DJs over the years - including Chuckie, Benga and T.Williams - but they have tended to be in the minority.

“It's not that the people they're putting on ain't good DJs, but in reality if they want to cover a certain sound, from the street or whatever they're trying to do with it, then they need to have some black people up there as well. I think they only call people in to try them out for pilots just to keep the numbers. But in the end they know who they're going to have, and it's not gonna be one of us.”

Scratcha believes that the BBC hires white DJs because of an assumption that they will play better with their predominantly white audience. Black DJs, he says, are “threatening”. White DJs “can go in as hard as fuck as they like with grime and hip-hop. If you have a black guy going up there as hard as fuck, it's not gonna work, because you're black, and your music is black and hard. But having a white person do it makes it OK to the world.”

Radio 1’s playlists are notably more diverse than those seen on 6 Music; artists of colour feature in five of the acts on the current, 15-strong A-list. But Scratcha believes that 1Xtra, the “black music network” founded in 2002, has been used as an excuse for other BBC stations to downplay their commitment to black DJs and producers. “I reckon that’s the whole reason why 1Xtra was there,” he says. “’You lot go over there – that’s your thing, and stay off our playlist because we’ve got our fucking rock and shit over here.’”

I ask whether Scratcha believes that the BBC generally has a race problem. “Hell yeah!” he shouts. “I call it part-timers. I'm not saying they go home and be racist, like hiding their NF tattoos or something. It's just like…this is England, at the end of the day. White people want to see white people do stuff, straight up and down.”

Radio 1 aside, does he want to see more black DJs and producers on 6 Music? “It’s so off the radar,” he says. “It’s kind of unfair. It's just another BBC station, but fucking Radio 1 is the national thing, isn't it? We've all got a fucking red passport, you know what I'm saying? My passport ain't green. Why can't I come up there?”

Follow Josh on Twitter: @JoshAJHall

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