These are the First Steps — Working Towards Racial Equity in the Beer Industry
The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020, and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests that occurred all over the world has led to some long-overdue scrutiny of areas of society where diversity and multiculturalism are sorely lacking. Today, anti-racist campaigners are not afraid to call out sectors where Black representation is low and to demand immediate change. The beer industry is no exception.
The industry may market itself as being diverse but the reality is very different, with few people of colour employed in management roles and very low numbers of Black undergraduates attending brewing courses. Worse still, many people of colour feel that craft beer is a product that excludes them and feel uncomfortable visiting events, such as festivals, where several have experienced racism and prejudice.
My own experience as a British-Asian beer lover mirrors this, and I’ve had to work hard to feel at ease when visiting most independent bars and pubs. On a recent brewery, visit I was whitesplained what a milk stout is (a type of beer I’ve drunk for decades). I was then made to feel highly uncomfortable when I ordered a curry, with the bartender deciding to interrogate me (and not my white partner) about it. This kind of racism is almost impossible to challenge when it occurs, and often gets defended as “banter”, as though I’m an unwitting character in a poor sitcom. Worse still, when I tell my white friends about this kind of treatment they’re never interested, as young urbanites being prejudiced doesn’t fit their narrative of how racism occurs.
However, the Black brewers and people of colour working in the industry that I’ve spoken to in the UK and US aren’t willing to accept this situation. They’re vocal about the need for immediate change, which they hope they will help achieve by setting up anti-racism initiatives and investing in measures, such as mentoring, that can encourage a more diverse representation. I caught up with eight beer experts from the US and UK respectively, who spoke candidly about a problem that up to now has been hidden in plain sight.
***
When I go to a craft beer festival or taproom in a diverse, metropolitan area I’m always struck by the lack of people of colour. Why is this such an obvious problem for people of colour?
Stacey Ayeh — Owner and head brewer at London’s Rock Leopard Brewing: You’ll go to a brewery or you’ll go to a bar and see black people: you’ll see them working behind a bar, as security, or you’ll see them in the packaging department. You won’t see them as head of sales or as brewers. The craft beer industry has been kind of a closed shop. I can only think of Garrett [Oliver], I’ve not seen anybody else do it. That wouldn’t encourage others.
Garrett Oliver
Garrett Oliver — Brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery: You could ask the same of any top wine bar. You could ask the same of many, many pubs that might be in black areas. You could ask the same of great restaurants. Go to London’s East End—look at BRAT, Brawn, and Smoking Goat. Go into these places and find the black people. It’s not just money. People have money but they walk into the room, they don’t see anybody who looks like them, there’s no apparent interest in anything from their background and they start to feel unwanted and alien. And then in very subtle ways people speak to them: a black person may come up to a beer counter and be quite [the] expert in beer, and without realising it the bartender will speak to them as if they knew nothing.
““If you want a different result you have to change what you’re doing.””
Edwin Methu-Frost — Head of sales at Cloudwater Soda: [During my time in the industry] I’d get comments like: “He’s the cool one, he can dance.” It’s racial profiling and that’s something that happens prevalently because the reason why craft beer is so white is the people that are in it don’t have black people within their circle and personal sphere.
I get “I bet he’s got a big one.” It’s not banter and it’s not funny either. It makes that person feel different and isolated. Now, whether it’s done maliciously or not, I’m not sure. But I also don’t care because the effect’s the same. For a long time what happened with craft beer was the word “inclusive” just meant women and it didn’t dig into the more uncomfortable conversations and the more glaring disparities or lack of inclusion of people of colour.
Khris Johnson — Head brewer and co-owner at Florida’s Green Bench Brewery: I'll go to many festivals here in the States and I can count on one hand how many black people I usually see—that still hasn’t changed. There might be some pockets of festivals that do better than that but generally speaking, the ones that I’m at it’s still four to five black people and oftentimes we end up making friends with each other. There aren’t a tonne of people that I know who are completely 100% comfortable in a room full of white people and vice versa.
Dr. J. Jackson Beckham
Dr. J. Jackson-Beckham — Equity and inclusion strategist and diversity ambassador for the Brewers Association: The degree to which you develop a thick skin as a black person who predominantly travels through white spaces in the US is probably inherently underestimated. If you’re not accustomed to [people’s reactions and prejudices], it’s unbelievably hurtful and even if you are accustomed to it, it can be a bit of a gut-punch when you’re tired, not emotionally prepared and have your guard down. The idea that you have to persistently have your guard up, is an exhausting way to live.
Weirdly, in the US racism is probably more associated with a refusal to acknowledge the lasting impact of slavery. So it’s a refusal to acknowledge that ingrained bias or the penal system or the law enforcement system or the way real estate has been divvied out.
The Society of Independent Brewers [SIBA] doesn’t keep figures of the ethnic breakdown of its members. As a person of colour, why are you an outlier in your industry?
Prof. Sir Geoff Palmer — Professor emeritus in the school of life sciences at Heriot-Watt University and human rights activist: A black person is sometimes not even aware of the options. I wasn’t. I got my A-levels and I took a degree—I took botany because I thought it was easy! The most dangerous place for racism is in the interview room. Somebody could look at that [Edward Colston] statue and say they defaced my statue, I’m not going to have them in my place. That’s how racism works, it’s as simple as that. The fact is all the prejudices of the person who is interviewing will influence that decision.
Prof. Sir Geoff Palmer
A diverse society needs diverse management for it to be effective. In Edinburgh last year I went to give a lecture and the guy looked at the list and said “you can’t be lecturing at 2pm because that lecture is being given by Professor Sir Geoff Palmer.” And a month or two before that I went to another institution and told the guy I want to charge my phone, he said “do you know anybody in there?” I said “yeah, I knew the previous boss,” and he said “were you his chauffeur?”
Why are breweries not employing people of colour?
Edwin Methu-Frost: There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on because the words “local, inclusive and diverse” are used a lot and I just feel that a lot of these breweries and—don’t get me wrong, all good people—but a lot of them aren't making enough effort to really integrate with their community. “Community” is a word that’s used a lot in craft beer, but it’s only used in a way that suits them.
Community is like “yeah, we were involved in our community.” “Yeah, how?” “We sell to pubs in our community and support them and we work with cafes.” That’s not really it… if your taproom doesn’t make up some portion of your local inhabitants—that’s a problem, and they feel like they can’t go there. That talks to a much bigger problem we have with including more people of colour in taprooms, letting them know that these spaces are for them.
““Community” is a word that’s used a lot in craft beer... If your taproom doesn’t make up some portion of your local inhabitants—that’s a problem.””
Dr. J. Jackson-Beckham: There may be some perceptions going on about the [Black] community that they are not into craft beer or that they are not educated about craft beer and it’s also fair to suggest there may be some evidence that it’s the other way round. If you are a long time resident of an area that is subject to rapid gentrification and you’re seeing that you are maybe being displaced, you may not have positive feelings towards that organisation. It may be the case that a lot of brewers are going to the well that they are already familiar with and hiring folks that they know or folks that are known by the folks that they know.
Edwin Methu-Frost
Is having a lack of Black role models in brewing self-defeating?
Garrett Oliver: The idea that one person should have to be an example to others is certainly sad especially given that in the US, up until it became big business, Black people were doing almost all the brewing. Then if you go back far enough, before some areas became Islamic, every single African village was based around brewing. It was brought over to the new world and, under slavery, Black people were doing all of the brewing. If it was not a household thing that the wife did then you had enslaved people doing it: so the idea that many Black people have that somehow beer is “European” is beyond absurd. Obviously, the styles of beer that we see today are based on European styles but that’s an artefact of history. It doesn’t mean that other people aren’t making beer, it just means you haven’t had it.
Sir Geoff Palmer: What we’ve got to do is to address the educational system and the social system in terms of employment, and that will take care of it.
What practical measures are you implementing to increase the representation of people of colour?
Alan Mahon — Owner and founder at Brewgooder: We thought we needed to do a lot more than just post a black square or a message of solidarity. We developed a programme called Work In Progress and the idea was: “how could we become a more actively anti-racist company, rather than just one that considers itself non-racist?” So we developed lots of different points that included working to brew beer with an anti-racism charity, to providing internships for BAME [Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic—a term not without its own issues] people who wanted to get into the industry. But we thought it would be really awesome to create a bursary for students who are from that background that want a really long career at the [forefront] of the industry.
Alan Mahon
Dr. Dawn Maskell — Head of the international centre for brewing and distilling at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh: A former student, Kirsten Nicolson, from Brewgooder, really wanted to do this, got in touch and drove this. I have had some Black British students in my classroom, but I haven’t had many. I don’t want to go into specifics because you could probably identify people—the numbers are that low. How do you widen the diversity of the students that are applying?
You need Black people to be doing [science] subjects in the first place and you need them to know that this subject is out there as a potential career, and that’s not without its challenges for us because ethically they’re making their choices at 16 to 17 years old or earlier. But at what age is it acceptable for you to go and say “have you thought about a career in brewing?” when they’re not old enough to drink. It’s a challenge.
Alan Mahon: With Work In Progress, a lot of brewers are coming forward because they recognise a problem. For the first wee while of Brewgooders’ existence we were a heavily white, male, middle-class dominated team and we tried to move in a new direction and, we’re nowhere near there yet, but we have a very small team and 50% of them are female. But we want to increase that diversity not just at your operational level, but also at the board level.
““It’s exciting that people seem interested in having this conversation, but also it’s like, where the fuck were you?””
Garrett Oliver: In the past, I gave jobs, gave advice and did things for whomever showed up in front of me. But it turns out that when you do that you’re basically self-selecting for a certain group of people. If you want a different result you have to change what you’re doing.
That’s the most important part. So the message here—and this is not my message—that I’ve learnt over time from many people who have been doing this work already is anti-racism is actual work. It’s hard. You have to expend time, effort and money to reverse the momentum of this thing. We’re taking people from the outset who are already doing brewing and distilling work and whatever else and filling all the technical education background in so they are more marketable and they understand why they are doing the things the way they are doing them every day.
Dr. Dawn Maskell
They have mentors to speak to who have been through a similar experience. They gain from this the self-confidence they need to push themselves ahead and these people can act as mentors to people who are coming up behind them. If there’s nobody to drop the ladder behind you then nobody climbs up.
I thought I was putting down a ladder when I wasn’t. I thought that by being there that was enough to put down a ladder—it isn’t. That’s not good enough. You have to do the work. The actions we are taking with the Michael Jackson Foundation are very streamlined and simple: we are giving people of colour technical education and qualifications so they can show up at breweries and distilleries and say “I know how to do this and here’s how I can prove it.” And that’s something that barely existed up to now.
Khris Johnson: Fresh Fest helped in Pittsburgh. It highlighted that Black people do like beer. It felt like a huge success because not only do people feel comfortable, who normally don’t feel comfortable, but all the reactions I’ve heard from white people is like, “that was just a fantastic festival.”
Khris Johnson
Garrett Oliver: My original thought about Fresh Fest the first year was “why would I want to go to a Black-run beer festival? What’s wrong with a regular beer festival? We’re all very friendly. There’s nothing weird going on here.” It sounded like some form of segregation, exactly the same kind of thing that we fought against in the 60s and 70s. It turned out that when I did go that I found exactly the opposite of what I had been expecting. I actually found the most integrated beer festival I had ever seen. People were laughing and crying because it was so beautiful and they had never seen anything like it.
““Go to a brewery or to a bar and you’ll see Black people: you’ll see them working behind a bar, as security, or you’ll see them in the packaging department. You won’t see them as head of sales or as brewers.””
Stacey Ayeh: Watching what happened [to George Floyd] in Minneapolis, I saw a chap protesting and he was speaking with the police and saying that there was no need for violence, let’s calm down and he used the phrase: “We’re all at a heightened state of alert. How are you on your good days? Show me how you are on your good days!” And so our new beer is called How Are You On Your Good Days? And it’s trying to ask people to try to do better than they are now because we are stuck in the nightmare that we’re in.
The beer was already brewed and I changed the name after seeing that clip on social media. The profits will be given to charities that are involved in helping to try and make Black people’s lives better. I’m not looking to make a single penny out of it because people are hurting out there. We’re charging a very premium price hoping that people will support it so that some good can come out of it in a small way that we can hopefully help.
Are you positive about the future?
Khris Johnson: I’m equally excited and frustrated by this because, you know, obviously it’s exciting that people seem interested in having this conversation, but also it’s like, where the fuck were you? This is not new.
Dr. J. Jackson Beckham: Perhaps we won’t have a moment like this again for a while where people are so ready and willing to come to the table and when it all kind of shakes out and we’ve done all of the accounting I’m not sure it matters that much what got us here.
Stacey Ayeh
Stacey Ayeh: It’s so much easier for folks to get involved in beer because it doesn’t have that [economic] issue that wine has, it’s relatively easy for somebody that is passionate, and is encouraged to be passionate, to get involved in this industry because there are people out there who will help you.
Edwin Methu-Frost: It’s very encouraging to see what’s happening in America where I'm seeing a very definite obvious shift in diversity there over the last five years, still nowhere near enough but it’s active and it’s happening.
Sir Geoff Palmer: I would encourage kids to go to university, do courses, and it’s up to them to do well in those courses because, for my PhD, I went to the library for two months and never came out. I wanted to know everything that was done before I started in the lab, and that’s what drove my work. If I can do it, anybody can do it.
***
Illustrations by the wonderful Tida Bradshaw. To support the Michael Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling click here.
