The Daily UbuntuThread 07 · Digital Solitude · September 29, 2026
In the picture, but not in charge
Seeing more diverse faces on screen is not enough: in Canada, newsrooms and boards of directors remain barely open to racialized people.
1 · The scene
Ubuntu reminds me in a low voice: I am because we are. I look at our walls of opinion like badly healed scars. It is not the storm that worries me, but the small, polite silences that let winter settle between us.
In my notebook I note: distance makes caricatures, closeness gives back faces. Sitting next to the other does not abolish pain, but it gives it back a first name. I promise myself to choose presence over posture, and to say "us" where I used to say "them." We are fireflies: brief, but able to light things up together.
Original vignette
2 · The documented case
Faces on screen, few voices in charge
We often confuse three things. Symbolic representation makes visible people who were long absent: a Black heroine in a film, a racialized doctor in an ad. Token diversity ticks a box without changing any decisions. Real inclusion opens the places where people write, direct and decide: being behind the camera, not just in the picture.
Canadian numbers show the gap. The Canadian Association of Journalists' 2024 survey, published in January 2025, covers 5,806 journalists in 270 newsrooms. White journalists make up 77% of staff and 83.4% of managers. About seven newsrooms in ten have no Indigenous or visible minority person in their top three leadership positions.
The same picture emerges on boards of directors. According to the DiversityLeads 2024 report from the Diversity Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University, Black people make up 7.9% of Montreal's population but hold only 4.6% of the seats on the boards studied, whether of companies, hospitals, universities or public bodies.
Faced with such gaps, claiming neutrality often amounts to leaving things as they are. Ubuntu invites another stance: sharing the table, not just the photo. When more voices take part in decisions, the whole community sees further.
3 · The voice
“bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible, a more human face”
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”
4 · The question
In the places where you have a little power, at work, on a committee or in an association, who is still missing from the table, and how could you make room for them?
Sources
- Canadian Association of Journalists, "2024 Canadian Newsroom Diversity Survey" (shared by CWA Canada), January 22, 2025. cwacanada.ca
- Diversity Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University, "DiversityLeads 2024," September 2024. www.torontomu.ca
- South African History Online, address by Nelson Mandela on the 20th anniversary of Steve Biko's death, September 12, 1997. sahistory.org.za
- Nobel Foundation, Elie Wiesel, Nobel acceptance speech, December 10, 1986. nobelprize.org
Every figure on this page links to a verifiable public source.
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