If you are a white male, it doesn’t matter what your hobby is. Diversity is coming to destroy it.
Does craft beer have a diversity problem? Of course it does….
Given that big beer makers for decades courted male consumers with sexist TV ads featuring women in bikinis, it perhaps surprises no one that the craft beer business has become a haven for white males — most of whom happen to be hipsters. Sadly, what counts as diversity in this industry is the clean-shaven minority mixing with the bearded majority….
While Boston Beer may be mum about what more could be done on diversity, the Brewers Association, the trade group for small and independent American brewers, is not. Since 2016, the association has been on a mission to figure out how the industry can be more welcoming to everyone, whether as a consumer or a brewer.
Measures include updating advertising standards to ban sexually explicit, lewd, and demeaning language, graphics, and images; forming a diversity committee; hiring a “diversity ambassador;” and giving out grants to encourage brewers to promote diversity and inclusion.
Unlike big beer companies, which rely on expensive TV ad campaigns, craft brewers depend on word-of-mouth and grass-roots marketing to build their brands. Through its diversity grants, the Brewers Association is supporting Fresh Fest 2019 in August in Pittsburgh — the nation’s first black brew fest, featuring 28 black-owned breweries, and Beers With(out Beards), an event series in Brooklyn, N.Y., that promotes women in the craft beer industry and women-owned breweries.
Whether you obediently cuck or whether you try to hide in your basement and brew your beer in solitude, Diversity will hunt you down and try to inclusivate you. So, you’d better learn how to stand up and fight for your interests before they are demolished through diversification.