Racism in Corporations

The second meeting I've had was with the other biggest media group of Mauritius, and it is rated as the most listened radio as well as some newspaper, and even tough they seemed much more keen to help us raise awareness on our issues, how they wanted us to do it was much more weird. We were explaining the scenario of the video : A young guy wandering in the streets of port louis, inviting the passerby for a quick match of street foot and inviting them to sign a petition, as the interrupt us to ask about the ethnicity of the guy who will appears on the video. ‘Anyone ?’ I say wandering aloud. ‘Yeah, that’s not going to work, you need one individual from each ethnicity if you really want everyone to engage with the message of the video.’ (The guy know that all the members of the organising committee was from a particular ethnicity.

Normally, I would take the time to take a deep breath to answer negative feedback from people who don’t have all the information’s in the first place, but I was having a pretty tough day, so those words came out of my mouth before I had the time to balance them in a more corporately corrected way : ‘I'm sorry sir, but we are not trying to sell coca cola here, if it wasn’t already obvious, that issue will put people together because every community has a child to lose in the war against illegal substance’. He smiled and paused for what seems an hour, and then simply said : ‘Ok, but we aren’t gonna be able to help you, we are here to help address national issue not to talk about what happens in the cite when no one is watching, it’s the family care business !’ I had just realised that this corporate guy just assumed that synthetic drugs was a threat only to the 'creole' community because they are convicted of being the poorest community of our demographic. What I was witnessing is my very  first case of ordinary racism in a very public corporation, and that make me dive straight into a ocean of mostly abstract thoughts about, why people advocating for causes, will systematically be crushed by a system where the people who have the power to give you the fund are usually a bunch of cynics who will take pleasure humiliating people who wear their heart on their sleeves, like its generally the case of people volunteering.

 My stomach called me back to reality, it was already lunch time.

First Meeting with Sponsors: Hopes and Reality

After brainstorming with the team on what kind of event would bring a national visibility to our community, we all agreed that viral video on social media were very big right now in Mauritius. Indeed, those video seem to be seen from very different people, but also create a lot of free media feedbacks, and are really cheap for implementation. If we could fund the video by ourselves, we still needed sponsors to help us promote the video online to become a viral material. So we phone the head marketing executives of the biggest news groups and schedule appointments. 

The first meeting was with the first radio, and it went horrible. We were waiting with two of my colleague in the hallway when a girl with a  tattoo came to ask us to follow her to the meeting room, there we waited for about fifteen minute for a suit guy to come in sweating, he was obviously in a hurry, not ready to focus on a new project, but we still went on, introduce us as an organisation. We went very quickly on the purpose of this meeting : would him share our video campaign on his Facebook page to help us raise awareness on this issue. The answer was quick as thunder : ‘Did somebody died ?’. I was fixed. I stare back at him starring at his watch, and was about to answer as he went on : ‘Listen kid, we do news here, not prevention, come back to me when you have dead kids, and crying mothers, THAT will be news. But hey listen, come back to me when you have the video, if that can be a click bait why not, when we’ll have the material, we’ll be able to know how many views it can get, come back then, or just email me that so you don’t have to come all the way here, ok, are we good’ ? No, we aren’t. 

Teenage idealism crushed by corporate sensationalism. How cliché is that ? I'm left wondering rushing out of the building to smoke a cigarette.