This is an open letter to the commissioning editors of music and culture publications.

I’m writing this in response to the unsolicited freelance writing assignments I received from three different white, male editors of well-known publications in Germany, the UK and the US, over a period of eight days. These offers came in the direct aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, and the grief and turmoil that has since enveloped Black communities globally.

Unfortunately, I cannot share the emails that prompted this letter [due to email privacy regulations in Germany] but all three were hurtful, insensitive and, I believe, intended to tokenize me as a Black writer.

In the first request, I was asked to write “a personal piece about what it means to be black in Berlin.” I had to remind this editor that the publication he works for misquoted and misrepresented a Black community leader in a cover story they published three years ago; this publication then refused to publish a public retraction or apology despite a chorus of public call-outs to do so.

For the second request, I was asked by an electronic music publication to write a cover story about Black voices within the scene. This is an industry characterised by three decades of disenfranchisement and exclusion of Black musicians and industry professionals in the pursuit of whitewashing, gatekeeping and monetisation. I was asked to “include the experiences of black artists and industry figures” but to be “forward-facing” in tone to encourage “positive change.”

For the third request, I was asked to unpack a haphazard theory about Co-VID19 and the global uprising against racist violence— two pandemics that disproportionately end the lives of Black and Brown people—leading to “better racial representation across [music] festival bills” in the future.

In all three cases, I understand that the commissioning editors work within almost exclusively white departments.

To be clear, this is:

- What the bypassing of white accountability by individuals in positions of power and influence looks like

- What leaning into oppressive structures in the pursuit of virtue signalling for profit and cultural capital looks like

- What the exploitation of workers of colour looks like

- What the hubris of white privilege looks like

- What assumptive requests for emotional labour from people of colour looks like

- What racial weathering looks like

Tasking ad hoc writers of colour with half-baked pitches in a time of acute trauma and stress due to systemic racism, while your writer’s room of employed staff remains stacked with bros, is transparent, self-serving, lazy and harmful.

Thankfully, music and culture writing is no longer my sole source of income, so I was able to strongly and critically decline all of these requests for my labour. I’m sharing this in the hope of forcing some shamefully overdue conversations and accountability in the creative field I lost faith in a while ago. I also hope this will contribute to ongoing efforts to help writers of colour organise collectively and protect themselves.

To these and other editors: HIRE writers of color in employed positions. Empower them to develop their own content ideas, hire their own teams, and support their networks of freelance contributors.

And if you insist on scrambling for the labour of precariously employed BIPOC freelancers during a race-related crisis, do so with the question “what do YOU think needs to be addressed by this platform at this time?” Then be prepared to accept the answer, open your purse strings of your budget and get out of the way.

Christine Kakaire

19th June 2020