Black Lives Matter

For the last two weeks I have felt increasingly moved, depressed, angry and helpless as news of another black person being murdered by police in America dominated the headlines and my social feeds. As a company that not only closely follows news and political campaigns but also tries to champion diversity, we talked about this in our team meetings, but I needed to write down my thoughts to really organise them. I checked in with my black friends, but I also asked them to review my words, so up front I want to say thank you to Zainab, Viya and Chantel. I broke a key rule of allyship by asking them to help educate me, instead of doing this work alone and taking the responsibility for not getting it right. Reflecting on this makes me all the more resolute to be better.

It is painful to contemplate a gruesome death and the grief of a family. It is painful to comprehend that there is one rule of law for white people and another for people of colour. It is painful to acknowledge that my black and brown friends and employees are at greater risk because of the colour of their skin. It is uncomfortable to accept that my own successes are thanks in part to an invisible system designed by people like me, for people who look like me. It is horrific to see a professional woman weaponise her whiteness, harnessing her unfair advantage over a fellow citizen, threatening him with potential police brutality in response to a civil request to put her dog on a lead, because he was African American. If that doesn’t hurt, you are not really seeing the full picture, even though for many it felt more familiar than shocking. The desire to look away or give up is completely understandable, because these headlines and the reality they reveal are hard. But we need to embrace that profound discomfort if we are to change – both ourselves and the world we live in. And we must change.

This problem is more than just one man’s life cut short. The tragedy is that there are thousands who preceded George Floyd, whose names we never knew or have too swiftly forgotten. The firing and charging of the policemen responsible feels nonetheless inadequate, in the context of centuries of oppression endured by black communities, most recently at the hands of biased criminal justice systems. When the rule of law isn’t equally applied it undermines the fabric of our whole society, our promises to each other about rights, responsibility, power and consequences. This isn’t just about seeing inequality, recognising rights and improving the lives of minorities. This is about working towards a more inclusive, diverse, innovative, safe society that would benefit us all.   

Although many have already made this point, it is important to say again and say loudly that this problem is not exclusively American. Our institutions and communities across the UK are shot through with racism. Our prisons are disproportionately filled with people from BAME backgrounds. This flows from a negative racist stereotype that creates asymmetric treatment, enforcement, distrust and disenfranchisement, not a pre-disposition to criminality or illness. Black people are five times more likely to be stopped and searched by police. They are twice as likely to die from Coronavirus. Black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth and more likely to experience pre and post-natal mental health problems. People of Black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage are more likely to be on low pay and in insecure jobs, especially those on the frontline of the health and care services. Our judiciary, police force, parliament and councils are woefully under-representative of the communities they supposedly serve. Employment segregation, justice, income and health inequalities reflect and perpetuate a lack of diversity that makes for poor productivity, bad public policy and worse politics. Yet too often you will hear that Britain is a post-racial society where we simply “don’t see race”. To me this is denial. This is fear of the discomfort that asking hard questions of ourselves and each other entails.

What do we do next?

There is no denying it is a long road ahead. Beyond a black square on your Instagram and a vague promise to listen and learn, what should we do to help make positive change? Acts of solidarity by those wielding white privilege are a start, but how woke are they really? How do we go beyond good intentions? My token post feels pointless, if not matched with a more substantial commitment. I have the power to make change, at home, at Atlas Partners and through my work with Activate, how do I deepen and sustain that? Both individuals and brands need to carefully consider whether one tweet will live up to comparison with their daily actions. How do you step up from simply being ‘not racist’ to more actively ‘anti-racist’?

We’ve selected some examples of brands who leapt aboard the bandwagon, for better or for worse, as well as talking more about how Atlas answers this challenge. For those with smaller platforms, I’ve curated below some of the best tools and tips that we can all adopt to steer clear of ‘performative allyship’ and condescending platitudes:

• Test: take a Harvard University Implicit Associations Test to reveal your unconscious racial, gender and other biases. Get ready to embrace the uncomfortable.
• Read: Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsh, Why I’m not longer talking to white people about race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, A Dutiful Boy Mohsin Zaidi, The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla, Candice Brathwaite’s I Am Not Your Baby Mother, Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad, How to be Anti-racists by Iman X Kaadi, to name just a few.
• Sign: The petition to teach children about imperialism and colonialism in schools, the petition to support the family of Belly Mujinga, the petition to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting, the petition to give non-British citizens who work in the NHS automatic citizenship, the petition to improve maternal mortality rates and healthcare for black women in the UK.
• Support: add your actions to those of others Charity So White, Activate, Kwanda, Generating Genius, The Reach Out Project, Step Now, More Talk More Action, Brixton Soup Kitchen, 4Front Project, The Red Card, The Black Curriculum,
• Donate: If you can, put your money where your mouth is: BlackLivesMatter UK, Runnymede Trust, Resourcing Racial Justice, Southall Black Sisters, Stephen Lawrence Trust
• Ask: what attitudes do you hold that are problematic around race? Do you cross the road when you see a black person at night? Have you laughed at the expression “once you go black you won’t go back?” Have you sat quietly while a friend or relative invoked a negative stereotype? How have you benefitted from a system designed for you?
• Listen: to this list of podcasts compiled by Vestpod: About Race, Code Switch (NPR), The Nod, The Stakes, Scene on Radio: Seeing White Series, The Heart: Race Traitor Series, United States of Anxiety, 1619 (New York Times), Intersectionality Matters! hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast
• Follow: diversify your social feeds and be inspired by the words of those who have been fighting for this cause for longer. Listen and learn but don’t ask them to help you; Gal-Dem, Afua Hirsch, Ivirlei Brookes, Layla Saad, Rupi Kaur, Rachel Ricketts, Mireille Harper, Mona Chalabi

Looking at this list and feeling a little overwhelmed? That’s ok, there is a lot to do, institutional racism isn’t going away overnight, and it will take energy and time. Mine, yours and so many others. We will have good days and bad days, working together we can support each other to keep going, long after the headlines have moved on. We can all be activists for progress.

And what about me?

I will freely hold up my hands and admit I have work to do. One of the core values at the company I started five years ago is championing diversity. This was the product of a belief that brilliant creative campaigns are not possible if you do not reflect the communities and audiences you are trying to reach. We make an effort to attract and hire diverse candidates, 25 per cent of our twenty freelance friends are from BAME backgrounds and we have sought out black-led suppliers like ClearView Research. I stalk amazing BAME women on LinkedIN, on BME PRPros and at networking events run by BAME2020, Women in Westminster and WIPA.

These efforts have led a workforce that is 16% BAME or was until my lovely colleague Charlotte got head hunted for a new role last month :-(. I will admit I looked at that number and thought - yeah great, I'm one of the good guys. I am proud to have created an internal culture that explicitly promotes diversity of thought and of lived experience as a desirable and positive thing - commercially, creatively and morally. We have invested in training to tackle unconscious bias and promote positive mental wellbeing. We have supported several clients in preparing gender pay gap reports. My team and I give significant pro-bono time to Activate, which aims to tackle the lack of black and other minority voices in politics and raise money to support women community activists from under-represented backgrounds.

And yet, despite this, my current actions are not enough. However 'good' we think we are, the headlines and protests this month have delivered a wake up call that it isn't good enough. Fostering an inclusive, not-racist culture still doesn’t equal one that is actively anti-racist. The only black member of my team told me she would not have felt comfortable talking about the protests in our company wide meeting, had I not raised it. There are questions about my white privilege and desire to be a white saviour that I need to sit with, and get uncomfortable with. By harnessing that discomfort I can also use my position of power to hold my white friends, family and industry peers to account. Rather than rushing out a plan to match an instagram post, this will take some time to really think about how we can implement change and help others who share this ambition.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.