How do you effectively respond to racism?

A short while ago I was contacted by someone who questioned why, as a headhunting firm, we were voicing our support for the Black Lives Matter campaign #BLM. My reply is published below.

I titled this article "How do you effectively respond to racism" not because I profess to have all the answers, but because this issue affects me and my family directly and needs to be called out. I would love to start a conversation on how systematic racism can be unpacked and challenged - especially when it comes to recruiting more Black and Ethnic Minority (BAME) candidates into leadership roles.

Please add your thoughts in the comments - it's time we spoke the truth and harnessed this moment for positive action.

See my email response below...

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Dear Anonymous, thanks for your message.

I do hope you’re keeping well? It’s been a difficult few weeks and months to say the least.

I really appreciate the courage and honesty of your email. In the current febrile atmosphere, most people would rather err on the side of caution and avoid controversial conversations because they’re trying to be “politically correct”. However, I think this approach actually worsens the divide as it results in people existing in their own echo chamber and not substantively engaging in discourse with someone who shares a different set of views from their own.

I take your points very seriously and I accept that you have raised some valid questions, although I do not profess to know the answers. Nevertheless, there are some irrefutable facts that cannot and should not be denied or ignored.

Systemic racism does exist and has existed for hundreds of years. Racism might not be innate or biologically inherent as you put it, but as social beings (as most animals are because there is ‘safety in numbers’), we all have inherent “us” and “them” biases. When we appropriate a belief system to such biases, they turn in prejudices. When we act on such prejudices, that is discrimination. If enough people who hold such prejudices and are willing to act on them, infiltrate our organisations and institutions, they create a system that manifests itself in a culture and power structure that is discriminatory. That is how systemic racism works. Racism is just weaponised prejudice. Racism itself is an arbitrary construct formulated and designed to justify the heinous act of slavery and colonisation and it also propped up an entire global system of the exploitation of labour upon which most western countries (the US and UK in particular) were built. There were spurious scientific theories postulated to support this arbitrary and wholly economic decision. Slavery and thus racism have been at the heart and foundation of our wealth in the western world.

To your point, it is precisely because we ARE individuals that we can exercise our free will to stand up against “the system” that protects police officers in particular, who seem to be fatally negligent in their interactions with non-white citizens of the US and the UK. There are individuals who uphold the system that need to be held to account by people like you and I, who should be allies in the fight for greater equality. And yes, you are right! The lockdown was a catalyst for this global reaction. It meant that we were less distracted by all the activities of our “normal lives” and we had the mental space to meaningfully internalise the true gravity of racial inequality as characterised by that utterly reprehensible act committed by one human on another.

You are also right to say that racism is individualistic because it is taught and conditioned. If there is a critical mass of racists or people who are conditioned by upbringing, background or institutional/organisational cultures to think and see certain people as different from themselves – then those individual racist attitudes now become a collective perspective. Eventually, that collective perspective soon becomes a culture. This is how systemic racism works. 

The legacy of slavery in the United States still has undeniable ramifications on the descendants of those slaves. By almost every index, black and ethnic minorities are disadvantaged compared to their white counterparts. In a white-normative world, this is not surprising but it is also not inevitable. It would also be myopic to assume that a narrative which classifies a set of people as second-class citizens will be a just and unbiased one. This is simply impossible.

Politics is a jaundiced and complicated exercise, fraught with special interests and ulterior motives and people make various political decisions for different reasons so I cannot comment on that. However, when it comes to crime rates, there is a self-fulfilling element to this. The 13th amendment of the US Constitution was designed to deliberately criminalised the newly emancipated slaves. Therefore, the authorities of the law were incentivised to disproportionally incarcerate black people. That historical perspective of seeing black people as criminals and “thugs” persists to this day and results in the over-policing of black neighbourhoods. The presence of the police in those neighbourhoods further inflames tensions to the extent that suspicions of criminality and other minor infractions such as incidents of public disorder or civil disobedience are more likely to be treated as arrestable offences because they are perpetrated by black people. That further drives up the crime statistics which then feeds the police response in that neighbourhood and the vicious cycle continues. That is systemic racism.

You are right to highlight Redlining as an example of systemic racism but redlining wasn’t an isolated policy as it existed in a financial system which was regulated and supported by the government and fed into various sectors of the economy. Although it wasn’t only black people that were “ghettorised” by this action, they were disproportionally affected by it. In addition, black people had more significant barriers to exit the ghettos even when they were financially capable of doing so. It has been well documented that banks and financial institutions imposed punitive rates on mortgages issued to black people compared to their white counterparts. Not to talk of the immense and overt acts of racism they faced from their neighbours when they made the mistake of moving into “white” suburban neighbourhoods. Redlining also hampered access to social and educational support systems which were underfunded due to the meagre property tax receipts linked to property values deliberately decimated by the redlining policy. The impact of redlining on the accumulation of generational wealth is unquestionably phenomenal. That is systemic racism. 

Canada isn’t immune from this systemic racism either as its indigenous people account for about 30% of its prison population despite being only a fraction of the general population. The tragic death of George Floyd seems to be the last drop that caused an overflow of frustration and emotion. The sense of injustice is palpable and it is our duty to listen. Riots and protests are the language of the unheard. I think you’ll also agree with me that Jewish businesses and places of worship are under more of a threat from right-wing white supremacist organisations such as the Aryan Brotherhood or American Renaissance, than it is from Black Lives Matter. The Aryan Brotherhood and American Renaissance were even endorsed by President Trump as “very good people” in the aftermath of the Charlottesville incidents a few years ago.

 For years, the Republican Party has been funded by Lockheed Martin and the National Rifle Association and its links to ultra-conservative organisations such as the Heritage Foundation have driven policy in the US for a long time. However, making racism a political issue undermines the very cause we here are seeking to fight. 

Also, George Floyd’s chequered past doesn’t justify his summary execution at the hands of a police officer who in that moment, acted as judge, jury and executioner. George Floyd should’ve been entitled to his day in court like everyone else.

I am inclined to agree with you that it all seems rather convenient that this is happening at this moment but seismic change in our society often comes when we least expect it. The fact that Black Lives Matter has had its voice amplified by an incident which crystallised the ethos of the movement, at a time when everyone across the world is listening and thus ready to be galvanised, must seem like a conspiracy - but I consider it to be the perfect storm necessary for us to understand the real issues that affect the lives of black people all over the world. Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland were also potent protests against injustice that were ignored. When Colin Kaepernick peacefully took the knee, the President called him a “son of a bitch” and he was ostracised by the NFL. It seems that there is no pleasing people when it comes to the mode of protest. Therefore, anyone who is more worried about the mode of protest is actually an obstacle to change. If police brutality affects white people in the way that you claim, then you too should be an ally in the fight to end it. Consequently, the term “black on black crime” to which you allude is another spurious construct designed to perpetuate the biased notion that black people are somehow more violent than their counterparts when this is simply not true. Crime rates in countries like Jamaica, Nigeria and Ghana are not higher, even though more black people live in those countries. Why don’t we record other crimes as “white on white crime” or “latino on latino crime”? Drug gangs are more accurately referred to by their nationality, not by their race (e.g. Mexican or Columbian) but black people are tarnished by the same brush to suit this prejudiced narrative.

 As you can see, I appreciate your comments and have taken my time to respond as objectively as I possibly can. I may not have answered all your questions or points to a satisfactory extent but I hope you are a least aware of my own thinking when it comes to race equality and justice for all across the world. I don’t jump on bandwagons, nor do I passively imbibe what I am told to believe.

 I too am apprehensive about what sort of world my son is going to grow up in and I am also worried about the short to medium-term impact of all these disruptions on the economy. However, instead thinking “it’s a shame that George Floyd died but all the destruction is not an appropriate way to protest”, I’d rather think “it’s a shame that the protests have turned violent but it happened because someone died”. We can rebuild those structures but we cannot bring George Floyd, Armand Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, or Botham Jean back to life. If we are more worried about the riots than we are about the gross injustices against a group of fellow human beings, then we are part of the problem. Lest we forget, we now look back at the leaders of the US Civil Rights Movement in the 60’s as icons of peaceful protest but we now know that there were concerted efforts by institutions of the US Government at the time, to falsely paint them as violent communists who threatened the very fabric of American society. No societal change comes without disruption of the norm. Here in the UK, the suffragettes were characterised as purveyors of terror and disruption even though they were simply campaigning for equal voting rights for women. The establishment will never change without disruption.

Racism is real. Systemic racism is the bedrock of many of our economies and the white heteronormative patriarchy is the scaffold that holds the system up. Here in the UK, black people are 9 times more likely to be stopped by the police than their white counterparts. They are also more likely to be arrested for the same offence as their white counterparts. They are 4 times more likely to receive a custodial sentence than their white counterparts and those sentences are more like to be twice as long. 183 black people have died in police custody in the last 30 years with no punishment or prosecution for any of the officers involved. In education, black students are more likely to be marked down on standardised tests. They are also more likely to get excluded from the school system for the same type of juvenile delinquencies as their white counterparts. If they graduate from University, they are 75% less likely to get an interview than their white counterparts with the same qualifications. These unfortunate trends are also prevalent in the healthcare system where socio-economic obstacles such as access to healthcare facilities and other environmental factors coupled with a dangerously racist sub-conscious bias about the pain threshold of black people has seen disproportionate fatalities in the black and ethnic minority communities. COVID-19 has also exposed these shocking racial disparities in both US and the UK.

This not a question of commerce and conspiracy. It is a question of justice and humanity. As women who have fought and are still fighting barriers to equality in the boardroom, corporate settings and society at large, ignoring the plight of other disadvantaged groups, is utterly unconscionable. 

I truly hope you receive this email as it is intended and that we both understand each other’s perspectives more clearly. I value our relationship and I hope you understand the strength of feeling behind this message. I too, pray for healing and good health but most importantly, justice and peace for us all.

 Kind regards,

Zia