There may be readers who have, after parsing previous Diversity in Publishing posts, come to the conclusion that there is more being done to promote diversity within publishing than there is a need for it. Authors are able to write books about characters like themselves; editors are able to work as sensitivity readers to create better, more meaningful stories. With all the attention being given to diversifying the employees of publishers, is there really still such a problem within the industry?
…Obviously, yes there is. But let’s consider the cases of publications that improve the diversity of their hiring practices. Maybe a company has begun to hire more people of color and publish a more diverse range of stories. Are these displays of genuine growth, or are they surface-level displays of wokeness? For this case, we turn our attention to a branch of magazine publisher Condé Nast: Bon Appétit Magazine and the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen.
A social media presence that appealed to culinary experts and novices alike, Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel was home to series like It’s Alive and Gourmet Makes, where staff members within the Test Kitchen experimented with unique forms of gastronomy while being filmed in an invitingly unpolished manner: the camera was shaky, the mistakes were frequent, the sense of community was genuine. The atmosphere of the Test Kitchen videos was that of “authenticity and candidness,” and its food editors, primarily Brad Leone and Claire Saffitz, quickly went from contributing writers to influencers: new releases on the channel were met with enthusiasm from social media users, with video revenue for the magazine increasing 40% in 2019. Compilations like the one below were created by fans in support of the apparent sense of community within the Test Kitchen’s staff.
While it was its white staff members who received the lion’s share of attention, Test Kitchen viewers were aware of the diversity within the publication: Priya Krishna was hired to make videos for the Kitchen while promoting her cookbook, while Sohla El-Waylly worked as Assistant Food Editor and routinely appeared in episodes of Gourmet Makes. Test Kitchen, and the magazine by extension, were places that promoted healthy work environments and offered equal opportunities for writers regardless of race.
In June of 2020, an image of Bon Appétit’s editor-in-chief, Adam Rapoport, wearing “brown face” was circulated online. Rapoport resigned days later, which may have seemed like an end to the issue; however, a few months later, ten of the thirteen members of Test Kitchen resigned from their positions, leaving the magazine as full-time employees (some remained freelancers). All of the nonwhite food editors were included in this departure, Krishna and El-Waylly among them. But the bad apple left the company! The one who must have been promoting an unhealthy working environment for his employees resigned! What was the issue?
The issue was simple: Bon Appétit was promoting diversity without supporting its nonwhite staff members, and one member of the team leaving only drew more attention to the areas in which the company was lacking. Both Krishna and El-Waylly took to social media to openly discuss their long-standing poor treatment at the hands of the magazine. White chefs were allowed to prepare whatever meals they were interested in, while nonwhite employees were restricted by their race. “I have been told so many times that my Indian food isn’t click-y, that it won’t get page views,” said Krishna (whose debut cookbook remains Amazon’s top seller in Southeast Asian Cooking). “And then I see white cooks and chefs making dishes that are rooted in Indian techniques and flavors, calling it something different, and getting a lot of attention.”
El-Waylly experienced these limitations in a different way, describing the company’s ideology as, “We’re going to let some brown people into this world but only if they focus on the food that looks like the color of their skin,” she said in a 2021 interview with NPR. “Hey, maybe people of color can make other stuff too…?” As Dhonielle Clayton explained, the issue with white writers deciding to tell stories about nonwhite characters is that they are “taking a seat” away from the people of color attempting to tell their own stories; when these writers do get their own seat, their work is forced to “possess what white publishers viewed as authentic,” as Sarah Raughley framed the issues surrounding #OwnVoices.
The nonwhite employees at Bon Appétit were also compensated in drastically different ways. Krishna revealed she was paid roughly $300 per video, much less than her colleagues were receiving and a small amount for the effort she was putting in: “It’s really exhausting to do a three- or four-hour video shoot.” Though “the opportunity was specifically framed as a PR opportunity for my new cookbook,” the company was still profiting off of the work Krishna was doing for them. El-Waylly was not hired to be in videos at all, but while testing recipes in the Kitchen, other editors were turning to her for help. Regular Bon Appétit viewers would hear refrains of “Sohla?” followed by, “Do you have a minute?”, “How do you say this?”, or “Would you mind explaining why tempered chocolate is?” The framing of these bashful inconveniences betrayed the fact that El-Waylly was contributing to these videos for no pay. As she wrote when condemning Rapoport’s past and practices as editor-in-chief, “I was hired as an assistant editor at $50k to assist mostly white editors with significantly less experience than me. I’ve been pushed in front of video as a display of diversity…Only white editors have been paid for their video appearances. None of the people of color have been compensated.” Being an unpaid “sidekick” was only half of the issue, as El-Waylly later revealed that the experience expected from people of color applying to entry-level positions was much higher than it was for white applicants.
In case you’ve missed it: Not only is Sohla one of the only front facing Bon Appetit editors to denounce EIC Adam Rapoport doing brown face, apparently only white BA editors are paid for their video appearances. Here’s her Instagram story just now pic.twitter.com/h0uPMlJYHN
— Sarah Manavis (@sarahmanavis) June 8, 2020
Krishna and El-Waylly’s frustrations with these conditions led to them being less willing to accept the company’s desire for the incident to blow over: El-Waylly pushed for Rapoport to resign, and Krishna was one of the nonwhite staff members who began negotiating for better, more equal pay. Here’s where we see how much meaningful diversity relies on action. Bon Appétit may have hired a number of nonwhite editors to work in their kitchen, making sure to feature them on their YouTube channel to project diversity, but they were underpaying and underusing them, occasionally pushing them into roles that relied on tokenism: Krishna recalls that, “I was pulled in to be a taster in certain videos where it was a white person making Indian food, or pulled in to be a taster in videos where it was very clear it was just a lot of white people and they needed a person of color.” After Rapoport left the publication, it had the chance to truly rectify the situation by paying its employees fairly and changing the roles that they were given. It certainly looked as if they wanted to, given the multi-slide Instagram post they released during the early days of the scandal:
But even when El-Waylly was offered a raise following Rapoport’s departure, it was nothing close to what her white co-workers were being paid. Unsuccessful in her requests for fair raises despite the company’s public words, Krishna chose to be one of the employees who left the Test Kitchen behind. As she wrote in her Twitter statement, “I refused to be a part of a system that takes advantage of me, while insisting I should be grateful for scraps.” She concludes that future food editors, “Don’t settle. Recognize your worth – these publications need us more than we need them.” While both Krishna and El-Waylly’s careers are doing well after leaving, speaking out has had negative effects. El-Waylly is open about the frequent panic attacks she struggles with now, and she doesn’t think that leaving Bon Appétit had the impact she wanted: “I had a big statement, and I had a big moment. But it didn’t make a big change to be totally honest.”
Looking at Bon Appétit today, it’s up for debate as to whether they have been changed or not. One thing that remains? Their diverse hiring practices. Sonia Chopra now works as executive editor, and a number of other nonwhite editors were hired in 2020 following the resignations within the Test Kitchen. With not all publications being as open to hiring nonwhite editors, it’s understandable why the new members of Bon Appétit might have jumped at the chance to work for the company. But can the magazine be expected to treat them any better, especially now that they have even more reason to save face in regards to their treatment of people of color? Does it mean anything if a publication, that after employing a culture of racism that negatively affected its staff and paying lip-service to better treatment that was never follow up on, hires lots of new nonwhite employees if they aren’t going to treat them any better than their previous editors of color?
A postscript on Bon Appétit today:
(An upside may be the fact that social media, the fickle platform that increased Bon Appétit’s fame, has been more than willing to support former employees, especially El-Waylly. The video above, meant to introduce eight new, diverse members to the staff was ill-received by the YouTube audience that once delighted in Test Kitchen’s endearing chaos (it has over 57 thousand dislikes). Hiring new nonwhite staff members does nothing to prove that BA is no longer racist: that was the problem in the first place. It may be nearly impossible to request decent treatment of editors by publications, but if there’s one thing that can be relied on, it’s good, old-fashioned Twitter outrage.)
the fact that sohla was hired at bon appetit for $50K/year and doesn’t get paid for video appearances like her white colleagues is digusting. anyways here’s a montage of her cooking circles around everyone at ba pic.twitter.com/uzZsRMGIwf
— sarah (@s_whip_) June 11, 2020