Challenging Racial and Gender Inequality From the Front

Hari Gopalkrishnan, our Client Facing Platforms Technology executive, shares his perspective on the importance of speaking up about racial and gender injustice.

The greatest fear I personally felt on September 11, 2001, wasn’t when the first plane struck the World Trade Center, even when I felt the building shake as I sat on the 40th floor. Along with my teammates and strangers, I walked down the building stairs, oblivious of what had happened. Even as we exited the building and understood the gravity of the situation, we were united in our shock, fear, anger and sense of tragedy that was unfolding upon us.

It was when we had completed a frantic run across the Brooklyn Bridge to avoid the collapsing building and debris that I felt for the first time in my life a sense of fear because of what I looked like. As tempers flared and more information became available about what had transpired, a voice in the crowd yelled out that they needed to get the people who did this, and the crowd agreed in unison. It took me a minute to realize that their eyes turned to me, and it was then that I understood my appearance seemed to fit the description of the “enemy” they were talking about.

I will never forget the range of emotions I felt during the next 15 minutes: shared anger, tragedy and loss with everyone around me, but at the same time isolated fear of personal danger, because I looked like someone who was to be feared.

Fortunately for me on that day, cooler heads prevailed, but in the days and weeks that followed, we learned about tragedies resulting from hate crimes targeting people based on their actual or perceived religious beliefs, as though their religious affiliation had something to do with the horrific events.

Personally, it made me realize the role that fear of the unknown and mass generalization, especially when one feels pushed into a corner, has on how we treat others. I became very aware of two things that I have tried to get better at every day.

First, I try to understand what unique challenges people from different backgrounds face, and to appreciate privileges I have that perhaps others do not. Do you really understand the conversations a Black teammate needs to have with their kids about what to do if they get pulled over? Are those the same conversations you are having with your kids? Do you understand what it feels like to be someone who has struggled to come out as LGBTQ because of how they were treated by family or friends as a child? Or do you understand what drives some of the ongoing inequality we see and the systemic issues that hold people back?

Second, I try to keep in mind that it is important not to wait for your own community to be marginalized before you become outraged over marginalization. We should be outraged when anyone is marginalized. Over the past few years, we have seen issues impacting Black, Hispanic, Asian and LGBTQ teammates. I was particularly proud of the stance that the Bank of America Asian Leadership Network took last summer in support of our Black colleagues and community members.

I continue to be humbled by how much there is left to learn in my personal journey to become a better person when it comes to understanding challenges that remain in our quest for racial and gender equality. I also am very grateful to work for a company that is truly committed to this journey and that continues to lead from the front.