Authentic Silences

How silence incurs violence on diversity & inclusivity progress in business 

BlackLivesMatter is an opportunity for organisations to strike uncomfortable but necessary conversations if they really want to invoke positive social change

Of all the corporate buzzwords that have been doled out over the last decade, I was trying to think of a way in which to sum up the response, to date, by UK PLCs on the tensions in America. This task was tricky because, largely, there hasn’t really been one. It’s been like tumbleweed rolling across a deserted plain.

LinkedIn provides an excellent window into the current and much needed conversations that are, and aren’t, happening. The relative silence from this community with regards to the racially charged protests sweeping across the US around the murder of George Floyd, is resounding. It’s like the largest elephant in the room that no one wants to be the first to address.   

Even black professionals, I note, seem to have expressed hesitancy over posting anything at all on the matter; perhaps for the fear of looking ‘unprofessional’ or hurting their career prospects. And corporate Britain, including CEOs and Diversity & Inclusion ‘professionals’ up and down the country appear verbally paralysed, unsure of what to say. Confused, embarrassed and awkward silences have followed. Why? What is fuelling the deafening silence?

Silence kills progress. It wields damage on the rigor and authenticity of diversity & inclusivity initiatives. It affirms the status quo. Where government is failing to move the needle on race issues, businesses are empowered to set better standards for all. But that can only come from a place of uncomfortable, if painful, authentic discourse.

I’ve spent the last 20-something years working with and for large corporate spaces. I was reminded of the many management conferences I had been to where people had talked about the need for authenticity, and – in particular - authentic leadership. And yet I couldn’t drown out the silence.

When we’re at work, we all ‘filter’. On landing at a large company to lead a transformation program, I remember telling the CFO that he wouldn’t get ‘Sheryl on maximum volume’ until I had a chance to get my feet under the table and get an understanding of what is really going on. It was a very polite, reserved, quiet kind of organisation and I didn’t want to startle them with my somewhat energetic and upbeat personality.

The degree to which we filter out ourselves, our thoughts, our true identity is partly down to social norms and partly down to how authentic we feel we can be. There is an amazing piece of research by Deloiite and Kenji Yoshino on ‘covering’ which is the term used to describe how much we ‘cover’ parts of our identity in order to fit into corporate spaces. We all do it: from straight white men who hide their working-class background all the way to black women who straighten their hair for work rather than wearing an afro, braids or other styles that are otherwise ‘deemed’ to look less professional.

The events that have unfolded in the US have left people in the UK and especially those from a black or minority ethnic background in disbelief, shock, anger and anguish. It has been like opening up old wounds and revisiting the pain of generations. Racial wounds go deep. The history is long and painful. But in many corporate spaces, we have been afraid to share and express how we feel.

We are collectively hurting right now; each of us taking very personally the anguish of George Floyd’s family and the sense of dismay that African American citizens will feel in a country torn apart by hate, run by a President who flunked D&I training. Each of us are reminded of the institutional racism still present in our systems in the UK today. Each of us thinking of the black men we know personally who have been stopped and searched or treated disproportionately harsh. Each of us being reminded of instances where we have personally been slighted or discriminated against because of the colour of our skin.

The Black Lives Matter movement, energised by renewed anger at recent gross injustices, provide a vital opportunity for businesses today to strike uncomfortable and awkward conversations – with colleagues, clients, leaders – especially BAME individuals if they truly want to invoke positive social change. Indeed, it is an opportunity to learn and understand the power dynamics of white privilege and systemic racism as if it were a bug under a microscope. We need to get curious about it, dissect it, and understand if we’re to dismantle it. This is the time for authentic conversations to occur. For empathic leadership to be exercised. It’s a time for marginalised voiceless to be heard.

How then should we progress with undertaking such awkward conversations? By challenging and re-evaluating our usual go-to way of thinking.   

We think that ‘the UK is not a racist country, like the US’

Did you know that at least 12 US president, over a quarter of those that have served, were slave owners during their lifetimes? Of these, eight held enslaved people while in office. Did you know that in 2018, HM treasury posted and then deleted the following tweet?

Here’s today’s surprising #FridayFact. Millions of you have helped end the slave trade through your taxes… The amount of money borrowed for the Slavery Abolition Act was so large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015. Which means that living British citizens helped pay to end the slave trade.

Both countries have a history of kidnapping, enslaving and trading other human beings, who at one time were considered chattel, not human. Which is why when slavery was abolished, the slave owners were recompensed for their loss of assets. In the UK, this was to the tune of ￡20m, approximately ￡17bn in today’s money.

When I was running a black film festival in Birmingham a few years back, I remember the challenges of getting press coverage for the festival itself and the broad range of topics covered in the films, which ranged from Alzheimer’s disease and black fathers to slavery in Scotland. Guess which one the local media wanted to cover? A short film about knife crime.

I recently interviewed Fanshen Cox, an award-winning actor and producer at Ben Affleck’s film company, Pearl Street Films, who was instrumental in the Inclusion Rider, which was announced at the 2018 Academy Awards. We were comparing notes and I joked that in the US, racism is clearly still so overt. In schools, Mark Twain is still read aloud with white teachers making students say the N-word. In the UK, we’ve long-since erased ‘golly’, ‘golly-town’ and other non-PC references from children’s literature.

Here in Britain the long tail of racism remains, but because we’re so polite, and because being an out-and-out racist has generally become socially unacceptable, the remnants of racial inequality are generally covert and difficult to detect, especially in corporate spaces.

I have a vivid memory of a dinner lady telling a blatant lie when I was a very young child growing up in Handsworth, which got me into trouble. Don’t even second-guess it. I knew exactly what had happened and, even though I may not have fully comprehended the nature of racial inequality at such a young age, I knew it was because I had brown skin. I remember the look on her face to this day. It was one of contempt. I’m not alone here. Anyone who was black or Irish growing up in seventies Britain will have experienced racism of varying degrees, most of it now erased from our memories. Experiences that we normalised at the time and forgot about as we got older, the occurrences got fewer and we acclimatised ourselves into corporate culture.

Yes, the US and UK journey of slavery, empire, emancipation and racial equality are very different. But if you think racial bias and prejudice does not exist in this country, I implore you to have conversations with your black and Asian friends. I implore you to read up on the statistics about racial disparity in police stop and search, detainment and sentencing. I implore you to study the research about BAME prospects in the job market. I implore you to Google ‘black people detained under the Mental Health Act’. And I ask you to look at the composition of the C-suite where you work. Do you find it strange that it is so white and so male? Would you find it strange if it were an all-black, all-female board? Things may not be ‘as bad’ as in the US, depending on how you measure it, but we have certainly not ‘cracked’ it yet.

We think ‘I am not a racist so I don’t need to say anything’

I count myself lucky to have a rainbow of close friends who are enlightened and I can speak to openly about this and any other topic.

In fact, one of my white friends, raised by parents who walked the talk in terms of inclusion, is possibly just as knowledgeable as I am about race relations history. Her grandfather ran one of the first pubs in Birmingham to open its doors to people of all races. Her mother worked to support employment efforts for black men in Birmingham and was instrumental in the legislation of racial equality at work. Her father was the only white man on an otherwise all-black cricket team for years. She has read Renni Eddo-Lodge’s book Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race and Layla F Saad’s Me and White Supremacy because she sees it as her duty to educate herself on the very system of white privilege in which she benefits, in order to dismantle it. 

There is a spectrum of racism along which we ALL sit. We are all socially conditioned and the construct is one where everything that isn’t white, male and straight is less desirable, less powerful, less wealthy, inferior and ‘other’.

At one end of the spectrum, there is the cop with his knee in George’s neck and at the other end there is the apathy for racial injustice which is betrayed by statements such as ‘I don’t see colour’ or the view that there is such a thing as reverse racism, or the deafening silence.

And then there is internalised racism. I’ve told the story many times of my brother’s black friend who, on hearing he had qualified, said, ”Yeah, I don’t think I would go to a black dentist, you know”.  Ask your black and Asian friends about racism within their own community - the preferential treatment of those with lighter skin, or the cow-towing to white people by blacks and Asians of a certain generation, or from certain countries such as South Africa, India and the Caribbean.

The reasons why society is still inherently and systematically racist are way too complex to boil down into one article. The historical injustices which have created an unequal distribution of wealth and power, fuelling notions of superiority and being ‘better than’ are an important part of it. But so is the continued reinforcement, particularly in the media and by marketing, that the most desirable and important form of human being is covered in white skin.

Do we only speak up when things affect us personally? Well guess what? If you’re black, racism clearly affects you and if you’re white, systemic racism also affects you - positively, every day. You can either choose to do nothing and continue to benefit from the privilege or you can get educated and play your part in creating a fairer, more equal society.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are”.

Fear of Saying The Wrong Things

Fear, even though it is generally just a figment of an over-creative imagination, is a powerful motivator for action and inaction.

In the same way that we, in the West, hate talking about grief and therefore say nothing, we get extremely uncomfortable when talking about race, and colour in particular. Many white people don’t even like using the word ‘black’ to describe someone, for fear that it might offend.

When emotions are high, there is a real risk you could get shot down in flames when you say the wrong thing. Even worse you or your company could be publicly shamed and vilified on social media.

Ask the brands with a poor track record on inclusion who are now tweeting about the injustice of it all, as if their previous behaviour has no part to play in maintaining the system that led to George Floyd’s death.

A quick scroll on the Instagram feed of a fast-fashion brand yesterday, who had not one black face in their previous ad campaigns but who then quickly mocked up a black hand shaking a white hand T-shirt in supposed support, was swiftly called out as inauthentic ‘blackwashing’. They were forced to remove it and issued an apology, promising to change going forwards.

And yes, just as the terms ‘coloured’ as a label for black people, and ‘half-caste’ for multi-racial people were outlawed decades ago, there are definitely ‘wrong things’ to say at this time. “All Lives Matter” as a response to “Black Lives Matter” will only be acceptable when people of all colours are being randomly set upon by police and killed. Right now, the problem is being experienced disproportionately by black people, so the only acceptable hashtag is #BlackLivesMatter. Right now black lives clearly don’t matter, which is the reason the slogan was created.

If you want to know what to say right now, just start with asking someone how they are feeling and express that you are sorry they are in pain. That is a start and it is better than nothing. The more you ask, the more conversations you have, the better-equipped you will be and will know what to say.

Fear of Guilt-shaming

When we feel we are being attacked, we go on the defensive and it’s difficult to move forwards.

One of the main reasons I talk about race mainly from an individual perspective - what can I do to change things - Is because firstly I believe change starts there. What are the seemingly small things I can do to make the situation better, whether that be sharing my story of being the only black female in countless corporate spaces, or cutting my straight hair and going back to my natural curly roots.

But the other reason is that I see many conversations being shut down or descending into finger-pointing and ‘Them vs. Us’. Instead of the conversation being about race, colour, and how we can move things forward, it very quickly descends into ‘You are racist and you don’t even know it’. And no-one wants to work out a solution from a place of being the aggressor, particularly as being called a racist is so offensive.

Even while penning this article, I have tried to be mindful of not guilt-shaming well intentioned white people who feel they are not racist, for fear of shutting down the conversation. And yet, sometimes you have to understand that walking on eggshells for fear of offending people benefiting from a system that works against you is tiring and frustrating. And when emotions are high, at least a few of those eggshells are going to get stomped on. For this, and right now, I ask for your tolerance. Tolerance of the frustration. Tolerance of the pain. Tolerance of the hurt. And tolerance even for the looters. Put yourself in the shoes of a specific set of people - black people - whose forefathers, ancestry, artefacts and dignity has been pillaged and looted for centuries. The killing of George Floyd and others rakes it up, time and time again.

Closing Thoughts

Leadership doesn’t always come from where you expect it.

There will be men and women who aren’t in the C-suite, don’t work in HR or D&I who, instead of being silent will be talking to their black colleagues about what is going on and how they are feeling. They will have seen the sombre looks on their faces, or detected the unusually quiet demeanour and felt compelled to say something. To be authentically inclusive, to connect with someone on a human level, by acknowledging the pain and hurt brought about by something they may not be able to understand but can sympathise with.

We have been banging the diversity and inclusion drum for a long time. Lately, there has been a realisation that where we’re struggling the most is inclusion. That and the fact that diversity still peters out the further up the organisation you get. We get diverse people in the door but then they don’t feel that they can be themselves at work. Right now, silence from the boardroom will speak volumes to black people that do not feel as if they belong in your organisation.

I’m not going to pretend it’s an easy conversation to have. But please, let’s be brave and start the conversation.