10 Foot Pole: The Whiteness of Craft Beer

     Yeah, I'm going there because I don't know any better.

     A little while back, NPR posited the question as to why there weren't "more people of color in craft brewing".  This hit Facebook and the Twitter pretty hard, because nothing ever doesn't, and the short attention spans of social media turned the share-bait into craft beer being noting but a bunch of white guys with beards.  Now, no matter which way you take that, be it the original intent or the game-of-telephone'd purple monkey dishwasher version, I think there's a point or two being missed.  Is the assessment wrong?  No, I wouldn't say that.  It's more like it's a symptom of a larger reality.

     Before we go on, yes, I am a known white male.  I also am one of those beard-havers.  I also also am writing a blog with "beard" in the name.  Now,  I may be just be a simple country Hyper-Chicken, but if you prick me do I not bleed?  If you press me, do I not mix metaphor?  What I mean to say is I recognize that this is a potentially touchy subject even if I don't intend to handle it in any controversial way (probably), but suffice to say my thoughts are my own and yadda yadda.

     First, I'd like to point out that the "white guys with beards" (or without, whatever) part of the argument would have been a lot more true even just a few years ago.  Recently, I did an article on women in the craft beer world, which led one of my friends, a known lady, to start a Pinterest board on that very subject.  She even tells me that some of those very women we talked about, along with some others, have visited and added to the board.  Now, it may be no Slothterest, but I think that's pretty dang cool.  Not just because I had a tiny (very tiny) part in it, but because it's yet another sign that the tides are slowly turning.  Maybe in three years, I could easily do a similar article on black people or Hispanic people or anyone one else in craft beer.  And that would be great for obvious reasons, but also because it would mean the growth of the industry.

     But that's just it.  The industry in growing, not grown.  In fact, craft beer is a subset of a subset.  And maybe even smaller than that.  First, let's take people who are interested in beer in any kind of way.  Then take, of that group, the people who are interested in it enough to work with it on any kind of level.  That could be ordering a Mr. Beer Kit, applying for work at the local brewery, etc.  Of those, take the ones that are successful at making their own beer.  Enough so, at least, that they can think to make a go at selling the stuff.  Of THOSE, take the ones with the finances (oh, will we ever come back to that) to start up even a picobrewery, and have the wherewithal (and perhaps insanity) to want to navigate the jumble of laws that goes along with that.  The totals become vanishing, even when you start from the general population and ignore color or ethnicity.  And let's remember where we're starting from, and that craft beer as a whole is still a single-digit percentage of the overall beer industry.

     Finances are actually a huge, huge part of this.  And to draw examples, I will now partake in probably the most controversial thing I say here.  Hopefully.

     Let's take the old chestnut about black people not playing hockey.  If you're a dumb person who is also even more dumb than one dumb can describe, you might joke (or, *shudder* actually believe) this has something to do with "cold", or even an artifact of the sport being more popular (and having originated) in whiter parts of the world, when the reasons are very much more likely to be socioeconomic.  Hockey, like brewing craft beer, has steep entry costs associated with it.  I know we supposedly live in a post-racial society (resist joke about the real reason for the government shutdown), but the racial wealth gap seems to suggest otherwise.  But again, this isn't solely about race.

    Now take another example.... COPS.  As in bad boys what you gonna do COPS.  If you want to talk the effects of socioeconomic status, how many white dudes in tank tops did you see with their face blurred out on that show?  As a thought experiment, do you suppose many of them played hockey or were into brewing craft beer?

     Yes, I'm probably taking some extreme examples, but I really do believe and hope that things will change.  That's not to say the apparent whiteness of the industry isn't a problem.  A growing industry can only sustain itself by growing in as many directions as possible and, just like there are more women in beer now, I think there will be more people of all types in craft beer if things keep going like they're going.  So really, I guess I just think this is only a really big problem if things stay this way.  But that's future blog's problem.

     To distill my thoughts, I don't think (or at least certainly hope) the lack of diversity in craft beer isn't due to some kind of internal blowback.  And yes, as the article suggests, it could be cultural preference, but I don't think that alone accounts for the dearth we see today.  The subset-of-a-subset problem coupled with the socioeconomic factors goes a bit further to cover the trend, but neither do I think that all the white dudes we see brewing beer are independently wealthy.  As markets expand, costs come down and information gets disseminated more readily.  Give it some time.  Cracks will form in the facade.

     Luckily, you can find reasons out there to think that things are changing.  The homebrewer of the year for 2013 was a black woman named Annie Johnson, and I'm not silly enough to think that she's a statistical anomaly, even if she's not "in the industry" just yet.  It proves that non-white, non-male (non-bearded) people are out there, trying, and it seems as though some of them make some very fine beer.  

    And just in case:  sorry.  I'm a dumb.