Bait and switch: what has changed for good?

Bait and switch: what has changed for good?

Have you noticed that visible representation has massively increased since GF 2020, that is George Floyd May 2020. Hurriedly everywhere there was black representation on TV and film. Sainsbury's supermarket showed a Black family yearning to spend Christmas together.? Doctor Who, a bastion of Sc-Fi, quickly wheeled out a black Doctor. Although in true form for all black people, the “Fugitive Doctor” was being chased by the Judoon space cops. Judoon are extraterrestrial mercenary police - "interplanetary thugs" for hire; so, the police. ?Blos so folt do no cro blo cos so ro, as they say, which could be, do you know why I stopped you today.

Representation in media

The most ridiculous being the Eurovision Song contest, where artists from ethnic minority backgrounds comprised a remarkable 23 percent of the competing acts in the 2020 competition. The population of the European Union (EU) is north of 450 million people. But I am betting that 103 million are not able to follow the blueprint set out in Alex Haley's Roots and find the village whence their ancestors sprang on the African continent (can I say, it was really hard to get the demographic breakdown of the EU. Eurostat, the equivalent of the UK’s Office for National Statistics, for the 27 countries in the EU, doesn’t hold this number. Peter Drucker said, “What gets measured gets managed.” As I am finding it hard to find the data, does this mean that in the EU, race demographic doesn’t matter?). I have seen a report (that I can’t find the source for it) that UK black representation onscreen is greater than double the actual black population as a proportion (like 4% vs 11%).

So, the point being, is this change in representation on screen helping or hurting the “arc of history”? The Comedian and actor Jeff innocent, who says he looks like a white racist grandad, has a joke about the changing east end. He lives in Newham, the first place in the UK to have the majority being from ethnic minority backgrounds. In response to the comment, you must be the only white person in east London. His response is, “I am the only white person in my f**king house.” Jeff is married with lots of children, proving that you can’t make assumptions based on how people look. Newham isn’t Newark, it isn’t representative. There are still people, in the UK, who have never met a Black person. Here is the scarier statistic, there are therefore people in leadership positions who have never worked for or have never appointed a person who is from an ethnic minority background.

Glass ceiling and the glass cliff

It’s not what you do, Kev, it’s the way that you do it, said an old director I worked for. I was just celebrating the team hitting target for the first time (ever). You need to recognise that the previous manager is still in the council and so, it is wrong to make him feel bad. This coming from a manager who was shouting (veins popping out of head, top of lungs) at me about the performance of the team three months earlier. Success has many parents, failure is a black manager who has their budget cut by a third, and still hits target and dares to talk about it. This, I have since learnt is the ‘glass cliff’, getting the job is so much easier than keeping the job. Sir Lenny Henry, said something like, in response to the downfall of black and brown people in government, that people need to avoid being seduced by the 'lore' of an institutions stated values. I dutifully put on the ‘hair shirt’ and went barefoot back into the wilderness of the Guardian Society pages. Looking in the ‘help wanted’ section, for the Local Government person about town, no ego required. I sometimes think of my career as akin to the TV programme, ‘the littlest hobo’; there’s a place that keeps on calling me…the back pages of the MJ Magazine (as there are town folks with pitch forks and torches running behind me).

I accidentally went to the Solace conference this year. There was a sense that I had been delivered unto my enemies, undefended and naked. An overly dramatic way of referring to my ex-managers and others who had breeze passed me to being Chief Executives in their mid-thirties, while informing me that I, a novice in my early fifties, needed more experience. Thank you for that; “you’ll get there Kevin.” Oh, was that inadequate you got on your ILACS, bad luck, I think while smiling and nodding.

Bias: unthinking, not unconscious

I can’t say that I settled in the two days, although I was buoyed by two supplier reps, my friend who works for Solace (I hope I can call her a friend) and one CE who just walked up and started speaking to me as just another delegate. Strangely my mother was a mid-wife on his patch in the sixties, so maybe she terraformed that bit of Essex as safe for people who look like me! In any case, as I watched the main stage speakers, and got out of my way a bit (I was WhatsApp-ing the senior team back at the ranch with a count of the number of minority delegates in the room) I was gripped by three presentations. One on emergency planning which I loved as Professor Lucy Easthope told us all off for not taking this area of work seriously. This is far too true. The other two talked to my EDI calling, so much so I went back to my Airbnb and wrote something right off the bat as a call to arms.

Firstly, Professor John Amaechi OBE, who is a respected organisational psychologist, and a leadership expert did a one-on-one chat with the Solace President. For those who don’t know John Amaechi, he is the dichotomy that the audience needed to see. A six-foot 10 inch black, gay, sports star, from Greater Manchester, who is a rock star in the field of psychology. In the Q&A, I took the opportunity to get him on to my playing field, unconscious bias training.

His scathing attack on the notion that it is ‘unconscious’ made my heart sing. It is unthinking, not unconscious. As he says, you see him walking down the road, in his hoody, head down, walking quickly. You don’t think psychologist as you cross the road or hold your bag more tightly. It isn’t the system in your body that makes you breathe reacting, it’s the story from the Daily Mail that is triggering your fight, flight or freeze mechanism. You have learnt to react; you weren’t born with this reaction. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk, she makes the point that because people who are from an ethnic minority background are reduced to a single story, a single narrative, that is all people know about that group. This narrative is that large black men, are rapists, or muggers. Therefore, the right action is to not make yourself his victim. You don’t look gay, my manager said, when I made Assistant Director. But I am and so this is what black gay men look like. John is what a black gay man looks like too (we are the same age), so there are two new stories to add to your thinking bank.

I used to work in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire. I was the only black person in the town; literally. I wore a suit, tie, and smart black shoes, and because of the single story that the community had been told about black people, residents would cross the street and avoid catching my eye. That is not unconscious, and a half day course isn’t going to address that. I have had senior colleagues and line managers walk past me in the street. They clocked the black face, and as Daniel Kahneman has said, their system one thinking kicked in and made a quick judgement. Whereas, taking a beat and looking at my face, would give their system two thinking time to come to a proper assessment of the situation and hopefully smile or say hello. That said, I had a member of staff who would burst into tears every time I entered a room, as she was frightened of black people (the name Liam Nesson comes to mind, but I can’t think why).

Hope is change; reality is sobering.

As John Amaechi, in his warm baritone and professor cadence ripped into this red meat, my eyes darted around the room for some reaction. I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen, but nothing happened. There was no thunder bolt, no Patrick Swayze, appearing as the Ghost from the film of the same name saying, “ditto”. What did I expect? A five-minute answer to a question to change the views of a group of battle harden Chief Executives and Chief Officers. Well, I tried.

Then there was a launch of Solace’s “sobering” report called, “Understanding and improving Equality, Diversity and Inclusion” (I was taking lots of pictures of the data on the screens at this point. I was blowing up the team’s WhatsApp, as the kids say). The data found every English region had an ethnic minority workforce lower than the population that it served. The lead for this piece of work, stated, “shame on us…it’s not good enough.” The fact that the majority of councils (only 36% collect a full set of equalities data) don’t even collect this data is worrying. As I have said, what gets measured gets managed. Before we get to addressing the snowcapped organisations (all white leadership teams), we still need to address participation of minority staff at base camp one.

I have been told that representation matters. You have to see it, to be it. Is that true? There has been four years where representation has been front and centre, yet polarisation is becoming starker. In response to Jeff’s riposte, here in north Kent, yes, I am the only black person in my household. Is that changing things? Who knows. Does visual representation work in reverse too. In seeing Black and Brown people on television, in leadership roles, do white managers see this and normalise this? My experience is no, positions are hardening.

Is it kind to rewind?

There must be a time for local government when it is impossible to name all of the black and brown Chief Executives that there has ever been. In the Solace Rewind publication, a look back over the last 50 years of the organisation, the journey of women in the top job is highlighted. The firsts are important, but to list all now would be impossible, rightly so. But it shouldn’t be right that I can name (and mostly know) all of the Chief Executives from a minority ethnic background in the same period.

Maybe things are changing and my hope-pium for the sector will be met with results on the ground. Doctor Who has its second black Doctor, with an in-universe background as a care leaver (not sure that the Time Lords are getting a good score on their ILACS, based on their treatment of the titular character). So, there is an institution that seems to be getting their act together. Eurovision has now again got its traditional balance of acts back (although Australia has first nation performers on their entry). So, the positive here is that tokenism has been taken out of the competition.

Place shaping is community building: time to step up.

Local Government is at the heart of community and society. It has taken on the mantle of place shaping and convening for place. ?That is pulling everyone together in common purpose. To build the society that we believe to be right and just for all. We can’t do this if we haven’t done this for ourselves. We can’t point out the twig in someone else’s eye, while the log in our own is so big.

I acknowledge that you as a recruiting manager may not have ever encountered a black or brown person, and the first time maybe when that qualified person is applying for your role. So, I am afraid that you are going to have to work a bit harder to overcome your system one thinking. You will be fighting all of the negative things that you have learnt about people, for whom you have only one or two stories, which will mostly be negative. But, if your actions are going to meet the moment, you need to engage your system two thinking and make the evidence led decision that I know that you are capable of making. Leading is growing and learning. It’s about setting the tone, setting the direction, and calling out where an organisation is going wrong, whatever level you are in that organisation. If you make decisions, it is on you to make the right ones for the right reasons. Equality isn’t pie, more for some isn’t less for you. It isn’t zero sum. It isn’t about what you say, rather than what you do. Having a false or over representation of workforce in your team pictures maybe good PR but isn’t good public relations.

George Floyd’s murder was four years ago. The call of ‘I can’t breathe’ is now etched into history. The question is now, what has changed for good for you (you know better, so do better).

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